AVCHD and iMovie 09

Hi David,

Someone had pointed out earlier that native MPEG editing is possible- but it depends on how you look at it. The frames must be created in some many in order to be edited, hence, it's not Long GOP at the edit point. These frames may be written back in their "native" format, which is what I meant by "on the fly". This method presents it's own challenges, horsepower being one of the them. This leads me full circle back to the iLife apps, being consumer applications and meant for ease of use, don't edit MPEG material. And even a proffessional application that does so actually changes the format at the point of edit because you simply cant' edit what isn't there! A lot of iMovie/iDVD users could save themselves a lot of frustration if they simply Googled and learned how MPEG works.

😉

What I'm wondering is if I can do this:

The original AVCHD footage is nice and small. Easily archived and stored without taking up tons of HD space, and can also be easily burned to DVD for archival. If I import my video from my camera and make an archive of the AVCHD, can I delete the event in iMovie '09 once I am done editing (because the AIC footage is too big to store), and then re-import the AVCHD archive in the future - and have iMovie recognize it as the source event for my project - if I need to make changes?

This would give me the option of being able to work on my projects at any point, without having to invest in a 2 TB RAID to hold onto a few hours of AIC footage (I know, it's more than that, but only just a little).

Anyone try this yet?

I tried Imovie 09, and in my opinion, it is still unusable for someone with an AVCHD camcorder. And it is really sad because I like how Imovie is easy to use, and all Imovies features.
I put a lot of hope in this 09, but I will need to wait for 10.
problems:

-Create archive feature, which seems promising, here is how it works:
You can create a complete image of your avchd files and folder structure, but, you can't make a partial image. It means if you forgot to delete the videos in your camcorder from your previous archive creation, your new archive will contain both old imports and new import. And there is no possibility of manipulating the content of the archive.

-You can't delete the imported files after having made your movie, or you lost the link between your movies and the imported files. Once you delete the imported files (which are quite huge compare to the original avchd files, so you can't keep online all your videos), the video thumbnails completely disappear from imovie, and you are left with your avchd archive you cannot view anymore unless you re-import the whole thing.

And last problem, which might just be a bug: after having made my movie using my imported avchd files, the maximum resolution available for export is 960x600. no HD export. (I did a full HD import)

I hope these points to be fixed in the next release to make avchd really usable, avchd camcorder is now the standard, and a mac should help people to easily make movies with an avchd camcorder.

Today, editing avchd movie is easier on a PC with sony vegas studio.