How to write back HD video to an AVCHD camera?

[bertoa]

There are many AVCHD consumer camera's out there, but none of them
take's in your edited masterfile and plays it out to your full HD flatscreen.
I wonder if I can use my camera as a HD player. Why buying a (portable)
HD player as my videocamera can do that?
Is there anybody who knows how to hack the camera's system software?
I did some experiments faking the index, but it didn't work out.

 

[spinnerlys]

What camera are you talking about? Does it say something in the manual?

If not, it was probably not meant to like with a lot of those consumer DV camcorder in the old days of SD.

The codec AVCHD is only meant for capturing and editing to some degree (which will be solved with future releases of editing software), and not writing back to tape.
There are better formats for this. (But won't be applicable for you.)

 

[Courtaj]

As things stand, there are limited options for printing your edited AVCHD movies back to your camcorder for playout. I'm not sure about the other players in the market, but Panasonic allow you to do it with their consumer AVCHD camcorders - but only if you use the supplied software, which offers only very basic editing functions.

The solution, which you have yourself alluded to, is to buy an HD player. Why? Because your camera isn't one except for in very limited circumstances (direct playback of raw clips; using the supplied software solution only).

There is no native AVCHD editing support from Apple presently (conversion to an editing-friendly format via AIC or ProRes is required), so this is all a moot point for Mac users anyway.

Andrew.

 

[bertoa]

This sounds not good for an explorer of this option. Let me be more specific.
I got a Panasonic HDR-SD5 camera with 16GB memorycard. The only way to
play out of the camera is by finding a way to put the "right" encoded videofile
somewhere in the index structure. I tried compressor to encode the .MTS file
but it was not the right Panasonic H264 format. You can fake the index by
deleting a just recorded file and put inplace the edited file with the same
number in the streams folder. What is the best encodersoftware or the right
setting for this goal? Come on.... we get this working!

 

[Courtaj]

There is a way to do it, according to this fella, if you're using Panasonic's HD Writer software on a PC. Involves editing your clips, making a Blu-ray DVD, and then using HD Writer to copy the contents of your DVD back to the SD, in a format which you can then play out from your Panasonic HDC.

So Bootcamp is one "solution," perhaps.

Good luck finding an alternative. The stakeholders in AVCHD (Panasonic is one) play their cards close to their chests. I don't think there's any information about the AVCHD file structure that's worth knowing, and in the public domain already.

 

[bertoa]

Courtaj, thank's for your comments. I did the same with Roxio Toast9 and the
extra Blu-ray plug-in installed. In the Blu-ray burning menu I dropped the HD
master file and wrote the file to a normal DVD. Then I ripped that DVD with
the whole index (BDMV folder) and put that on my desktop. I took the .MTS
video file out of the streamfolder and replaced this on the SDHC card with an
existing videofile in the stream folder. First I renamed the filenumber.
So, on the SDHC card is a "Troyan file" in the streamfolder with an original
thumbnail pointing to that file. This seems a working procedure. The file
started to play in the camera but the file structure was different and did not
display well. In Toast9 there are not that much options to change the encoding.
Some more experiments to go (in OSX!!!) before we succeed.