AVCHD and Apple (The Truth)

Well, Apple does offer a list of the supported cams for iMovie 08:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1014

and I really don't think it is reasonable to expect that folks that make computers and folks that make camcorders will be working together to make everything compatible at the rate that electronics are changing these days.

If your cam is on the list, it should work with iMovie 08. Otherwise, you need to do some homework
before your next purchase. There's even more to iMovie than you may think.

Since you seem to be new to Mac moviemaking, you may also not know that you can get a free download of iMovie HD6, the previous version of iMovie and many will say the last, best iMovie made. It offers greater editing capabilities and a pro style timeline editing format, as opposed to iMovie 08, which is geared towards the You Tube style moviemaker and has a very different workflow.

If you do decide that HD6 offers more of what you want, you must only consider a miniDV cam with firewire, as iMovie HD6 will only capture from that format. Other format cams will require third party software, extra time and loss of quality in your final production, if you need to import non .dv files into HD6. You can have excellent high definition with tape too. It's called an HDV camcorder.

Having a tape cam also allows you to always safely keep your original footage, plus make a tape copy of your finished movie by exporting from iMovie HD6 back to your cam. Tapes are far more reliable long term storage media, if stored properly, than any DVD or hard drive will ever be.

Here's the link to the free HD6 download:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html

Here's a link to a camcorder review website to help you decide which way to go. Bear in mind that salespeople are going to direct you to what their store wants you to buy and with the glut of hard drive, flash memory and DVD cams out there, the best format, miniDV, is not getting its fair shake.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/

If you want to make high def DVD's you'll need to buy a Blu-ray DVD burner and Toast to do that.

EDIT: Just noticed about having the MacBook and I hope it's not the newest one -sans Firewire!! If so, you're hooped, as far as using miniDV goes. Sorry, if that's your situation.

Message was edited by: Forest Mccready

Seems to me your main issue then is the amount of hard drive space consumed by HD video and anyone wanting to edit HD on a laptop will be stymied by the relatively small hard drives they contain. IMO you really need a desktop for this work and at least a 500GB drive.

Welcome to iMovie Discussions.

I think maybe some clarification's needed..

1. AVCHD is a heavily compressed type of video: only one real frame of video in about 15 is actually recorded (on the camcorder's internal hard disc or memory chips, or whatever a particular camcorder uses). The next 14 or so frames of every 15 are just "jottings" of what's changed between frames. So to edit AVCHD frame-accurately (..so that you can position sound and audio exactly where you want them..) the "missing" frames need to be regenerated from the highly compressed video. (..It's like concentrated orange juice or cola syrup needing to have lots of water added back to it to make it drinkable ..that expands just a few ccs of juice back to a proper glassful.)

So Apple -e-x-p-a-n-d-s- the compressed video back to its true file size when all the squashed and missing frames have been reconstituted. That's why the AIC ('Apple Intermediate Codec') file sizes are so large ..because AIC really is proper video, whereas AVCHD is video which looks real enough (..except during rapid movement, when it can appear rather jerky!..) but is temporarily reconstituted in the camcorder for playback. ..Just like playing back a Hollywood-movie DVD ..two hours' worth of action squeezed onto a small disc by compressing the video (using MPEG-2 format) so that 2 hours' play-time can be squeezed onto a 4.7GB disc. The DVD player hardware then uncompresses the video on-the-fly as it plays ..same with AVCHD camcorders.

2. You can thus import AVCHD, or hi-def HDV, into iMovie '08, but so that you can then edit the material, it's expanded back into real video. (..I don't know how PC-based software does it; I'll have a try next week.)

"..You can't even fit a reasonable sized project on 1 DVD, let alone a 10-30 minute one. Is it me or is this unacceptable?.." To burn a movie onto a DVD you don't need to worry about file size! The iDVD program will re-compress the material into MPEG-2 format so that - as with an off-the-shelf movie DVD - two hours' worth of video will fit on a 4.7GB DVD. (..Unless you're referring to copying a movie project onto a data-DVD, so that the half-edited project can be taken from one computer to another. In that case, if you're burning data, rather than final video, then you can fit about 20 mins of data on a 4.7GB disc. But you'd be far better off copying the data onto an external plug-in hard disc for transferring between computers.)

3. "..Am I expecting to much from Canon, one of the best camera companies to offer something in the box to work with Apple? Is it unreasonable to expect Apple to fully support a format that has been out for almost 3 years? I thought Mac "Just Worked"?.."

Canon cameras do "just work" straight out of the box with Macs and iMovie. I use two Canons, and a Panasonic, and numerous Sonys (..see the small print, below). You plug in the camcorder; run iMovie; Import your video; do whatever editing you want; burn the result - up to 2 hrs - onto a DVD using 'iDVD' ..or export to the web, or put the result back onto other media for replay in the camcorder, if the camcorder's capable of that. (..miniDV tape camcorders will accept DV straight back from iMovie HD 6 into the camcorder; hi-def HDV camcorders generally won't; AVCHD memory-chip camcorders should if the material's exported back to a chip in AVCHD format; hard drive camcorders generally don't accept the material back unless it's in the correct format. That usually involves saving the material onto your computer's hard disc, then using another program to convert it into the correct format ..programs like MPEG Streamclip, JES Deinterlacer and several others, like Voltaic, will convert video back and forth into various different formats..)

Apple does support AVCHD ..but the camera manufacturers are really kidding buyers with that squashing and squeezing which fits hours of video onto a small SD chip! That's done by compressing the video so that it seems to have very small file sizes. Its rthr lk wrtng txt wtht vwls. It sms 2 B vry smll. Hwvr, thts cos its cmprssd. 2 trn it in2 prpr wrds nd mk it lgbl it nds 2 hv th vwls nsrtd. ..Turning compressed text - or video! - back into legible language, or editable images, means a temporary -e-x-p-a-n-s-i-o-n- which the camera manufacturers don't prepare you for!

So, as Forest suggests above, an external hard disc is useful for holding the larger file sizes of AIC video.

Note than Canon FireWire-based (miniDV and HDV) camcorders like to be the only FireWire device in the circuit, and generally won't work properly with an external FireWire hard disc attached to the Mac. Canon USB camcorders don't seem to mind.

Oh; and for editing video material that's on an external disc, it should be a FireWire-connected disc; USB 2.0 (..supposedly a faster standard..) is generally too slow to handle the continuous file-transfer speeds necessary for smooth editing. (..Yes; no FireWire on the new "late-2008" MacBooks, but earlier models do have FireWire.)

Also, before using any external hard disc, plug it into your Mac and then go to Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility, select the external disc and click on the 'Erase' tab, and reformat the disc as 'Mac OS Extended' (..'Journaled', too, if you like). That erases the disc, but makes it more compatible with iMovie ..but it then won't be compatible with a PC, for transferring files back and forth.

Having reformatted it - it only takes a few seconds - then go to System Preferences>Spotlight, click the 'Privacy' tab, and drag the external disc's icon into that empty square "well" space. That stops your Mac indexing the material that's on the external disc, so that it doesn't slow down video transfers back and forth.

Welcome to movie editing on a Mac!

David,
I like your explanation. I have been editing my AVCHD video with both iMovie 08 and HD. Seems to work pretty well for me. The step below is totally new info for me.

"Having reformatted it - it only takes a few seconds - then go to System Preferences>Spotlight, click the 'Privacy' tab, and drag the external disc's icon into that empty square "well" space. That stops your Mac indexing the material that's on the external disc, so that it doesn't slow down video transfers back and forth."

Could you expand on this step a little and can it be done after the fact (as in several GB of video already on the drive) ?
thanks,
Tom

Sure.

By default OS X 10.5 "indexes" almost everything which you put onto your Mac's internal hard disc ..and everything which you put onto any external disc. It builds a hidden database which lists just about everything that's on your Mac, so that you can quickly find anything, even if you can't remember what it's called. If I'm trying to find some document which has "egocentric" in it - or "daft" or "Canon XLH1 camcorder" - in it, I just click on the magnifying glass at top-right of the screen..



..and type one of those words or phrases into the box which appears, and my Mac will find everything that's relevant.

To find these things instantly, it has to have previously indexed everything, which it does in the background, usually when there's not much else happening, in "idle" moments.

If you're storing video on an external disc, that's mainly used for video, there's no point in indexing it all, as you'll be unlikely to find what you want by searching afterwards for "Clip 1" or "Clip 11/23" or "Extracted Audio 22". You'd probably hunt for clips by going directly to the relevant Project.

And when editing video, you don't want the editing process to be held up, or slowed down, by your Mac searching the external disc, and hunting through to find what you've just put on it, and jotting that down (on your internal disc) along with where on the external it starts and ends, and how it can be found via the external's file directory ..it's a waste of time and resources ..and you don't want that kind of "housekeeping" process to interrupt iMovie's access to your external disc.

That's why I suggested turning OFF Spotlight's indexing of any external disc - by dragging the disc's icon into the 'Privacy' pane of Spotlight's preferences.

"..can it be done after the fact (as in several GB of video already on the drive) ?.." ..Sure; OS X will then simply abandon indexing that disc ever afterwards (..though you could re-instate indexing later, if you wanted to, by removing the external disc's icon from that square 'pane' or "well" in preferences).

By cutting down on unnecessary system accesses and other disc "housekeeping", you'll let iMovie have simpler and faster access to your external disc(s).

Thanks for the info David. I can see that as I keep adding GB to the external disk things can start to bog down. I am off to turn off spotlight on my external drive.

Tom

You probably don't need Spotlight to index all the clips in your Movies folder on the internal disc, either.

Just deselect the appropriate tick-box, here:

I am all over it. My 2.0 GHz iMac needs all of the help it can get for working with these movie files. Thanks for the tips.
Tom

Message was edited by: Michigan One Fly

Thanks for that explanation, David. After iMovie uncompresses the AVCHD file, and you perform the desired editing, is it possible to transfer it back onto an SD card in a compressed format, such as the original .mts file? My HDTV plays plays my Canon HF100's AVCHD or .mts files directly from an SD card so I would like to be able to reduce the size after editing to the original format. Even if so, will the edited quality be the same as, or close to, the original?

Great response, biggblokk.

You say "..Your editing software needs to export/render/share as a AVCHD with a .mts or .mt2s file extension. Unfortunately that leaves Apple software out of the picture for now..."

I'm not at my machine (Mac mini) which I use for AVCHD right now. But even if a Mac can't deliver the .mts or .mt2s file extensions, have you tried creating an AVCHD file and just giving it an .mts or .mt2s file extension..?

AVCHD, as used for Blu-Ray, is - I believe - just a variant of H.264 under a different name. So have you tried creating, or exporting, an H.264 file..



..and then just changing its file extension to .mts or .mt2s..? Simply changing a file extension to the one that's required by a particular program, or device, will often get that file recognised so that it'll be correctly handled. Not always ..but fairly often.

Why not give it a try..?

Exporting it as H.264, or similar, should shrink the file size back down again.

Your observations are similar to mine and many other Mac users who have tried different software to play and edit AVCHD videos on the Macs.

I have a simple blog on my SR11 and included observations on using Apple and Sony software on my iMac: http://www.alyudesign.com/sony_sr11.html (in the middle of the page)