Why no AVCHD on iMovie?

[act1980]

I have a Panasonic camcorder and in order to upload my footage to my Mac I have to first convert the files into a format that iMovie recognises.

I personally think this is ridiculous. What are the chances of a software update with this capability?

Come on Apple, you can do better than this!!!!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Maybe iLife '13 will have that feature, but Final Cut Pro X will be able to do it.
The reason why it wasn't available, was the stress playing such highly compressed format inside an editing application is on the CPU, as AVCHD is not an editing codec.

 

[AdrianK]

Exactly what simsaladimbamba said. Anyway, if you convert it to a lossless format (eg w/ MPEGStreamclip) you wont lose any quality at all.

 

[act1980]

Does anyone have any good conversion freeware they would recommend?

What formats can I convert to where I won't lose quality?

Thanks.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Does anyone have any good conversion freeware they would recommend?

What formats can I convert to where I won't lose quality?

Thanks.

MPEG Streamclip
.mov (QuickTime) container with Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) for video & Uncompressed for Sound

But iMovie does the same if you import the footage from an AVCHD camcorder.

 

[act1980]

MPEG Streamclip
.mov (QuickTime) container with Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) for video & Uncompressed for Sound

But iMovie does the same if you import the footage from an AVCHD camcorder.

Thanks!

iMovie wont let me import the footage. It won't recognise it

 

[act1980]

Also, I know I can record in iFrame which is a format iMovie recognises. Anyone know if the quality is reduced though?

Thanks!