What do people do with iMovie and AVCHD?

[aircanman]

Which camcorders support AVCHD and MP4? Seems like most HD camcorders are either AVCHD (Canon, Sony, Panasonic, etc.) or MOV/MP4 (Sanyo, Samsung, flippy-types, DSLRs, etc.). I would like to know which camcorders out there allow you to record in both AVCHD and MP4 formats!

I believe quite a few of the handheld Sony cameras do, like the HX Series.

I own the HX5V which records in full HD, I recently spend £1500 on a professional camera which to be honest, was only a shade better when it came to quality, plus it was huge!!

I love the way the Sony HX5V takes video, super steady and amazing quality, but obviously the high def thing is causing issues.

Now I am importing at the half size with iMovie, file size is much smaller. When they start putting bigger drives in as standard, and high def becomes more mainstream, I will start importing with HD again.

 

[cz9h3d]

Are you expecting the DVD media to still be intact? You might want to rethink your strategy.
/Jim

DVD Media? Any DVD media I have is strictly for either "show", or a last resort backup. The data has already been manipulated and recompressed - although this is probably pretty anal thinking given all the camera phone video people take.

I'll keep moving my full uncompressed files sucked in from my miniDV tapes, along with the raw files from my FH1a along on multiple hard drives (currently have on two local drives, as well as backed up in the cloud). Luckily, my kids are now 11 & 13, so my output has fallen drastically! Hopefully I'll get to it sooner than 20 years. But again, what should someone really do with their files? Should I be editing and pulling the best clips? But then do what with them? Argh!!!

You know, the 8mm film of my father in the 1940's as a kid is still intact. As long as you have a projector and a bulb, it's fully watchable.

 

[MisterMe]

DVD Media? Any DVD media I have is strictly for either "show", or a last resort backup. The data has already been manipulated and recompressed - although this is probably pretty anal thinking given all the camera phone video people take.

I'll keep moving my full uncompressed files sucked in from my miniDV tapes, along with the raw files from my FH1a along on multiple hard drives (currently have on two local drives, as well as backed up in the cloud). Luckily, my kids are now 11 & 13, so my output has fallen drastically! Hopefully I'll get to it sooner than 20 years. But again, what should someone really do with their files? Should I be editing and pulling the best clips? But then do what with them? Argh!!!

You know, the 8mm film of my father in the 1940's as a kid is still intact. As long as you have a projector and a bulb, it's fully watchable.

Two things:

1. I strongly recommend that you archive your unedited footage to hard drives in the form of .dv files. Don't fool yourself into believe that you only want to keep your edited clips. Footage that you discard are memories lost forever.
2. You have obviously done a very good job of caring for you father's 8 mm film. However, you know very well that film does not last in perpetuity. This is a huge issue for Hollywood where old film has to be painstakingly restored in order for current audiences to see it. Even new film can break, be burned in the projector, or suffer a number of other calamities. I recommend that you make high-quality digital copies of those old reels.

 

[flynz4]

DVD Media? Any DVD media I have is strictly for either "show", or a last resort backup. The data has already been manipulated and recompressed - although this is probably pretty anal thinking given all the camera phone video people take.

I'll keep moving my full uncompressed files sucked in from my miniDV tapes, along with the raw files from my FH1a along on multiple hard drives (currently have on two local drives, as well as backed up in the cloud). Luckily, my kids are now 11 & 13, so my output has fallen drastically! Hopefully I'll get to it sooner than 20 years. But again, what should someone really do with their files? Should I be editing and pulling the best clips? But then do what with them? Argh!!!

You know, the 8mm film of my father in the 1940's as a kid is still intact. As long as you have a projector and a bulb, it's fully watchable.

Digital storage (HDD) has been increasing in size year to year faster than I have been accumulating primary "home generated" media. This includes pictures and camcorder videos in my case. I move this data from computer to computer as I upgrade... and I make sure that my data is double backed up... once locally to TM and secondly to the cloud using CP+. This insures that I can always restore a computer in the event of a drive failure... or replace my computer and restore from the cloud in case of a natural disaster or fire/theft.

I do not really need music and commercial video backed up the cloud. I do currently back it all up, but if I hit a space crunch, then I would eject the video first, and then music second. Both can be replaced (unlike my pics and camcorder videos).

That is my solution.

/Jim

 

[cgbier]

My commercial stuff sits on a server with backup and backup of a backup. My private stuff sits on tapes and external hard drives with backups.
Having problems already with DVDs just a few years old, I don't trust them at all.

 

[martinX]

But again, what should someone really do with their files? Should I be editing and pulling the best clips? But then do what with them? Argh!!!

I think of everything as being part of a project, or event (to use the FCPX parlance).

Birthdays, parties, holidays, get-togethers, montages of rubbish trucks (don't ask...), whatever, everything I pull my video cameras out for is an "event".

Get the footage in. Cut most of it out. Title it. Narrate it. Add music. Export. Chuck the rest. Brutal? Yes. But I am not an archive for the National Library. I find this routine to be especially important now that everything is a digital file. You could get away with keeping a drawer full of tapes for ever, but digital files seem to fill hard drives with relentless speed.

 

[dringkor]

MartinX, I can certainly see where your solution saves time and money down the line, but I just can't bring myself to throw away perfectly good raw footage. Just imaging if you edit, title, narrate, and add music to your footage and then throw away the original, and ten years from now you're watching it and think, wow, I'm way better at editing now and the tools are much more flexible, but I'm stuck with the editing choices I made ten years ago that look so dated.

With the cost of hard drives coming down (Thailand notwithstanding) it is getting very inexpensive to store vast amounts of digital data.

What's important for me is having a refined workflow: delete anything that's obviously not usable, like if I was walking around with the camera recording the inside of my pocket, but then keep all the rest archived in a well-defined way, like your "events." The most insignificant detail about some clip that you might throw away today may prove invaluable years down the road for some reason you can't imagine yet.

 

[Wobbel]

Hey all, something that is really bugging me at the moment.

So I make a recording on my digital camera, AVCHD in full HD and 50i

I have a good eye for quality and can not really notice much of a difference, but the videos are important to me and I dont want to lose any quality!

Any help?

In theory...
I was planning to buy for my panasonic HD SD800:
http://www.aunsoft.com/final-mate-mac/
It has some very attractive options.

• Editing before importing in iMovie 11 (fast, no rendering!)
• 1080p in iDVD
• Several lossles codecs
• etc.

Anyone?

 

[martinX]

MartinX, I can certainly see where your solution saves time and money down the line, but I just can't bring myself to throw away perfectly good raw footage. Just imaging if you edit, title, narrate, and add music to your footage and then throw away the original, and ten years from now you're watching it and think, wow, I'm way better at editing now and the tools are much more flexible, but I'm stuck with the editing choices I made ten years ago that look so dated.

Fair point. Editing is about decisions. I've looked at some of my home movies from a few years ago and thought "gak, what was I thinking" but then again, the camera was old and the image was average, so even if I did get all that footage and re-edit, I can't go back and reshoot.

It's easy to spend hours and hours on this stuff (as you no doubt know), but I feel like I have to shoot it, cut it (while fresh) and get it out just so I can spend time with the Fam doing Fam stuff rather than in my batcave cutting, rolling, rippling, cutting, rolling, rippling.

My work stuff has to be tight and have a story line. My family stuff just has to have everyone in it

 

[dante.martins]

import AVCHD to Imovie.

cgbier and MisterMe,

After reading your explanation on codecs and compression and your own needs on talking care of media. It's was a very good explanation and thanks for sharing it with us.

I'm facing a similar problem and I have decided to keep my .dv video on external hard drives with backup of backup using Raid 1.

My problems expanded after I got a Sony CX-160 which used .mts format 1080/60p. I manage to import to Imovie using Brorsoft MTS converter. I have used a Brorsoft flag "import as original" in another words keeping 60 frames and 18000kbps bit rate. For my surprise the file size came from 228MB to 1.8GB. Do you guys know if is expected expand to 9x of the original size or I have done something wrong?
This is 1 minute movie 1080/60p ac3 audio and original size 228MB.