No native AVCHD on Mac - yet iMovie plays AVCHD clips!?

[Courtaj]

There's no native AVCHD editing on the Mac. This we know. A transcode here, a conversion there, Bob's your uncle.

But hang on.

When you've connected your camera / card reader to your Mac and iMovie is showing the clips in the import pane, you can play the unimported clips using the transport controls provided.

So what's up? Does Apple support AVCHD playback but hasn't got around to providing a stand-alone player? Or is there something really obvious I'm overlooking here?

Andrew.

 

[KeithPratt]

Or is there something really obvious I'm overlooking here?

That your camcorder is playing the clips, I'd imagine.

 

[Courtaj]

That your camcorder is playing the clips, I'd imagine.

Can't be that. I was using a disk image of the SDHC card on an external drive.

 

[NRose8989]

I know what your talking about because FCE 4 does the same thing when you log and capture. Though i don't no why.

 

[Courtaj]

It seems to me that in its capture window, iMovie is looking at the mpeg transport streams (.mts files in the AVCHD . . . STREAM folder) and, when you click on the play button, simply playing them, albeit in a size-restricted window. Playback is instantaneous: there is no apparent conversion going on, unlike when you select clips for importing and they're converted to .mov Quicktime files using AIC.

 

[LethalWolfe]

FWIW, AVCHD transcoding for editing has less to w/playback compatibility and more to do w/AVCHD being a massive CPU hog to edit.


Lethal

 

[Courtaj]

This is true, but it still begs the question of why, if Apple does H.264 playback, they don't add it to Quicktime.