Final Cut Pro X - Import AVCHD?

My head is beginning to hurt. Clearly, FCP X does not work with 1080/50p (60p) MTS files. That said, it will upload Panasonic AVCHD 'HA' quality files - it just takes time. The quality 'appears' to be much better than IFrame - however, when I export both types of file to BluRay and play them back on my PS3 at 1080p, I can see no discernible difference in image quality. For my part, I intend to adopt the 'KISS' principle and record in 'HA' until either Panasonic or Apple come up with a free 50p MTS importer.

I also like FCP X - but then I am climbing up the editing ladder not sliding down the greasy pole.

Hi Chris,

Just to be clear, my reference to RevolverHD related to the post by Sanctanox. This will not help to get 60p (saw your post later - I don't mean 30p or 60i) video into a format that works with FCPX. Even if your posts are long, they are very useful. I have to uncheck "create optimized files" to get the ClipWrapped 50p/60p files (in Europe we use 50p) into FCPX. I was wondering why it wasn't working. I also like the suggestion of creating a Master ProRes file with FCPX using the imported ClipWrapped MTS files. I will try that when burning Blu-Rays, for example, and see if there is a difference in quality to alternative workflows. As far as getting 50p/60p files into FCPX is concerned, I've been using Toast (VoltaicHD crashes on attempting this) to transcode my 1080p50 files to ProRes so that I can import them into FCPX. On the subject of Blu-Rays, I haven't burned any with FCPX, yet, but had done so with FCE, again, using Toast and a Master AIC file created from the natively imported MTS files with good results.

Thanks to all for your posts.

Photo Ninja,

Great Short Video! Did you use a polorized lens for the shots at the beach?

Overall, this is exactly the "look" I'm wanting with my 60p footage from my TM900. I realize I'm limited to playing the files on my Mac or HTPC, but I don't care. I'd rather do an elaborate workflow than shoot in 60i and bring my footage to half the frame size to keep smoothness.

I've got oodles of footage I've stock piled since I bought the TM700 a year ago and have been "waiting" for Apple and FCPX to deliver. They didn't (yet), but I dig your solution. I've been experimenting with Clipwrap the past few days and have been getting good results with re-wrapping the files to ProRes LT w/ 5.1 LPCM, imporing to FCPX, editing (with mild stutter, I have an Xeon MacPro Octo) and then exporting as H.264.

Could you provide me with the settings you used in Media Converter (maybe a screen shot)? I downloaded it and can't get my head around which settings to use. I'd prefer to not transcode the Video, but I understand that might be required to put less pressure on my CPU and Graphics Card. I only have a 512MB DDR3 ATI card in my MacPro.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

Chris,

I've intrigued by your most recent post.

Could you take a minute to help. I'm starting to get desperate. I currently have a Panasonic TM900 and Canon HFG10 (each companies latest and greatest) to see which one is "better". I LOVE the look the Panasonic has when shooting in 60p and I LOVE it's 5.1. It's 60i is a bit crap, but doable. When shooting 60i on both cams, the Canon is a clear winner on image detail, but it's only 2channel audio. After hearing the results of the Panasonic 5.1, there is no comparison. It seems I have to jump through some hoops to get the 60p footage to work in FCPX and it's nothing for the Canon to ingest. It's all native. Do you get my conundrum?

The Canon can shoot is 30p.

This is what I need as an end result.

- Relatively eacy ingest workflow. I prefer not to transcode, but will if needed.

- Smooth motion playback on a Mac, HTPC or Disk Image (DVD or BDR) that looks like it was shot in 60p. I have a 2 year old and she's always on the move!

Your most recent seems to suggest you've achived the 2 goals above..

If so, can you give me a basic workflow from initial ingest to RevolverHD all the way to File Export (including prefered exported format)?

I just replied to photo ninja's 60p post. I've created a tolorable 60p work flow with Clipwrap, but interested in yours.

I'm willing to dump 5.1 and keep the Canon if it means I have capture in 30p and just bring everything in, edit and export with less steps.

I'm completely over playing around with all this stuff and just want to get to editing the 18 months of footage I've piled up and get things easier moveing forward. Yes, I want my cake and eat it to.

Thanks!

Lots of questions. I can't give all the answers, and I expect it will be trial and error for each of us!

First up, an MTS file is a container for an H264 video stream and one or more audio streams. MTS files can be played directly by VLC and a few other apps. VLC can tell you the fomat and number of the media streams inside the MTS container. These streams can be re-encapsulated into a quicktime movie or m4v container by re-wrappers like ClipWrap . There is no change to the underlying data when re-wrapping.

H264 streams come in many flavours with bazillions of options. Not all can be displayed or used by FCPX. Transcoding an h264 stream to ProRes422 converts the video data to a larger, less compressed, simpler and more standardised video stream format that FCPX will just about always work with. During transcoding, some image quality loss may occur, on how well the h264 stream was decoded. FCPX is much more likely to be able to import a ProRes422 stream than an h264 stream, so if the h264 stream can't be imported, but it can externally be transcoded to ProRes422, then FCPX will much more likely be able to work with them.

An AVCHD file is actually a folder structure that somewhere inside it has one or more MTS files. 60p is not a formally accepted AVCHD file format, so FCPX may not actually import an MTS file properly if it is shot at 60p, even if it is able to import 60i video from the same camera archive.

So where does this leave us?

If we have a supported camera or card and have the MTS files within an AVCHD folder structure, FCPX should import the video within the MTS file within that folder structure using import from camera > open camera archive. It may not however open all AVCHD formats, in particular 60p. It may have difficulty if there is a mix of formats on the card, ie if you've shot 60i and 60p on the same card. So if you're having trouble with 60p, but can directly import 60i (30fps) video directly from the camera into FCPX, try erasing the card and shooting just one brief 60p clip on it and then try importing that.

RevolverHD is neither a rewrapper nor a transcoder. It is just a tool for getting isolated MTS files - those without an associated AVCHD folder structure - into an AVCHD folder structure that FCPX can import (using import from camera > camera archive). It does this brilliantly. It may be useful at this point if:

- you have a bunch of MTS files that you took out of their folder structure some time ago, and threw away the enclosing folders.

- you have a camera that FCPX does not recognise, and you can get the MTS files off it, and they play inVLC, but you can't import them to FCPX.

RevolverHD is therefore intended to facilitate the direct import into FCPX of the MTS files. It does not even re-wrap them. The MTS files themselves are completely unchanged, and the import routines are those internal to FCPX. If FCPX can actually import the video, I would imagine this would give the best quality.

Now this assumes that the actual MTS file can actually be used by FCPX. Some 60p MTS files cannot. In this case, Revolver will make it so that the MTS file can be seen by FCPX in the import dialog, and can be imported, but then you find that it isn't possible to actually play it back in FCPX.

The only solution to this problem is to use a utility that can convert the MTS file to ProRes, or alternatively re-wrap the h264 and audio from within the MTS file to a QuickTime movie that can then be converted to ProRes and Then (phew!) imported and used in FCPX.

There are a number of rewrapping options. They include ClipWrap ($50), ReWrap2M4V, and Media Converter (both free). One may work better with your camera than another.

Media Converter http://media-converter.sourceforge.net/index.html is a free ffmpg based video transcoder. It has a downloadable preset http://media-converter.sourceforge.net/presets.html that takes the h264 within an MTS file and puts it into a standard quicktime Mov container. This is playable in QuickTime, and can be directly opened in FCPX. Again, however, you may find with 60p video that you can get it into FCPX but not play it back.

However, now the video is in a quicktime movie container, rather than an MTS container, you can use one of many applications for converting quicktime to ProRes (eg mpeg streamclip, quicktime7, JES Deinterlacer, etc etc). Suddenly you have a lot more options.

ClipWrap can just re-wrap what's inside an MTS into an M4V file, or, when 'create optimized files' is checked, get the contents of the MTS, convert it to ProRes, and put that into a quicktime mov file. But as has been noted by a number of people, it also doesn't work all the time for all cameras. Being commercial, the developers will probably fix anything that doesn't work if they are told about it.

The good thing is that anyone can try ClipWrap, RevolverHD, MediaConverter, etc etc for free, and figure out what works for them.

This post doesn't answer anything directly but I hope it clarifies some options that might be useful.

I'll do another post answering as best I can the more specific queries as above.

Chris.

I appreciate the clarity Chris. Some I knew, some I didn't.

If I've read your previous posts correctly, what I'm really after is your workflow of recording in 60i (or 30p), ingest and than output that gives a very smooth motion which (ideally) retains original frame size and audio channel numbers.

Photo Ninja's export of H.264 60p w/ 5.1 AAC is awesome and has a reasonably low file size. I have been able to repeat this.

If I can achieve an exported file with similar motion smoothness recording in cam at 60i or 30p, than I'm up for it. It would allow me more play source options (ATV2@720, HTPC, other mac).

Does what I'm asking make sense or am I confusing you?

In reply to Gene,

OK, so the Canon HFG10 can do 60i or 30p, and only stereo sound, but its camera card can be seen by FCPX and the footage directly and easily imported. You've also got a Panasonic TM900, and you love the 5.1 sound and its 60p footage, but these have proven difficult to get into FCPX.

Smooth motion with fast-moving subjects really does need 60 fps (fields or frames), I agree, so you want to get 60p output.

First up, with the Canon, that's reasonably easy. Take a short clip and import it at 60i into FCPX. Make sure the project settings are 1080i 29.97 fps (aka1080i60). Do a few test edits, nothing complex, then go Export Movie. You'll end up with a 1080i60 ProRes422 quicktime movie with stereo sound. You can check the format details by opening in VLC. Download JES Deinterlacer. Drag the ProRes file to the input area. Under Project choose Deinterlace, both fields, and if you like tick Local and Filter Chroma. Under output choose Direct and ProRes 422. Click OK. Open this in QuickTime and you'll have a 1080i60 movie with very smooth motion. The level of detail will not be as great as a 60p original because there is a loss of horizontal resolution. But it still will be very, very good. You can compress this 60p ProRes file to any other format you like in Compressor (or in JES Deinterlacer you can directly specify a different Export format using whatever QuickTime movie settings you like).

You will have some challenges delivering 1080p60 video. Most computers will choke on playback if it is h264 encoded. You could alternately check 'half height' in the JES Deinterlacer Project settings, and get a 960x540 version, and save using x264Encoder - in my hands this gives great output quality that plays back really well on lots of things.

For the Panasonic, you'll not need the JES Deinterlacer thing at the end, because it's already 60p; the challenge will be getting the 60p into FCPX.

If FCPX cannot 'see' the MTS files within the AVCDH folder structure (even when you go import from camera > open camera archive'), then you'll need to get each MTS clip out of the folders and then either:

- use something like RevolverHD to put them into an AVCHD folder structure than can be opened as a camera archive, or

- use ClipWrap or MediaConverter to re-wrap into an M4V or other quicktime movie format.

You should then be able to confirm in VLC that you actually do have a 60p file and confirm the audio format before going further.

The most tedious bit would be copying all the MTS files.... :-) Otherwise this should be OK. Note that MediaConverter will change the audio to 16 bit PCM, and I don't know what that would do to the 5.1 surround sound.

If you then find that, even after rewrapping, FCPX will import them but can't use the video, then try converting them to ProRes with MPEG Streamclip or QuickTime7 or any other converter you like until you get it to work. Compressor4 might even work!

Over to you, and hope this helps.

Sure can waste hours and hours on this stuff, eh! :-)

Chris

Assuming you have a 60p workflow up and running, then distribution of the output is the next challenge.

Apple's H264 is quite a good export format, with AAC audio. But at 1080p60 with 5.1 sound the data rate is massive.

It's much more important that it plays back smoothly than anything else, and that kind of movie just won't be smooth on most computers, and certainly would result in huge files that would fill up your iPhone or iPad.

I've found that I can get the same video quality using x264Encoder at half the bitrate of Apple's H264. I just use an iPhone default setting, set the HD primaries, use 2-pass vbr encoding, auto key frames, and medium-high quality. Typically I'll encode at 960x540, using for example the JES Deinterlacing half size option, or by setting FCPX's project settings to 960x540 prior to export. This still looks good (though not stunning) and really makes a huge difference to data rates, so that they will play back on iPads and iPhones and still look good on most laptops. I use AAC audio vbr stereo mostly, but that's because most playback things I'm encoding for are just stereo, so I don't know about 5.1 sound.

What I do is influenced a bit by having either 720p60 or 1080i60 formats, and no 1080p60, on the GH2 - so 1080p60 is not something I'd often do.

I have no experience with BluRay disks to distribute video with, though I note RevolverHD is intended to facilitate the creation of DVD disks that can play on BluRay players. Toast has some tools for managing MTS to BluRay workflows but I have no experience with that.

Hope this helps.

Chris.

Awesome Chris! I'll gonna run with this and see where I get.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but Photo Ninja's data rate was only just over 30mbps which included 60fps and 5.1 AAC.

Do you still think that's too high of a bit rate?

Also, if you're doing half size....why wouldn't you do 720p? Isn't the aspect ratio the same or am I missing something where the video would be scaled or something like that?

Yeah, the Ninja's video looked amazing. But 30mbps is a LOT of data. That's a gigabyte for 5 minutes!

Most of the data rate is in the video, not the audio. Even so I drop the audio to 24kHz as most of us can't hear that well above 12kHz.

I did a kids party recently in 720p60 recently, and compresed it to 720p30 using x264 as the encoder. The data rate was 6.5mbps, or 200 MB for 4:18, which is OK I think, considering that it was all hand held with lots of action.

In contrast, 960x540 at 30p with x264 encoding and a still camera with relatively little movement will compress to only 3.2 mpbs and still look quite good even if doubled up (1080p30). That's 1/10th the size of ninja's video, and will play on iPads and iPhones very smoothly.

Of course, in 10 years time our wrist watches will probably play 1080p60, it will be considered lo-fi then! :-)

Anyhow now I've basically standardised on 720p60. It's very easy to ingest into FCPX, and can be saved as 60p or 30p when compressing to the final output depending on how small I want the file size to be.

The only problem with 720p is that half-size is really very small, so it's kind of not that versatile.

At least with 1080i60, I can output half-size (960x540) at 30p or 60p fairly easily if I want to keep the file size down, or deinterlace to 1080p30 without too much trouble if the image quality is good and there's not much movement.

I'm hoping the GH2 firmware will be hacked or updated to permit 1080p60. The sensor does it quite happily, but for some reason panasonic don't support p60 at this time.

Cheers,

Chris.

Chris,

How did you compress your 720p60 to p30? Couldn't I theoretically do the same process with my p60 footage?

I've come up with a tentative workflow BTW. It keeps file sizes low, plays in FCPX very very well and exports how I want. I can change my project settings to 720p60 and it looks very very good after export.

Here's the workflow:

1) Use Clipwrap to re-wrap not touching the video and transcoding 5.1 audio to LPCM (this process is super fast)

2) Ingest that footage and ticking "Create Proxy Material". This makes a 960x540 file for playback and editing, but doesn't touch original file.

3) I set my playback preferences to "Use Proxy Material". Setting it to "optimized still stutters". If I use clipwrap to wrap in ProResLT, it will not stutter, but the files sizes are huge compared to proxy.

4) I can either set my project settings to 720p60 or go ahead will full frame size and shrink it afterwards. The resulting data rate for the 720p60 w/ 5.1 AAC is 14.5mbps

I hope this workflow helps others!

I'm curious how you got your p60 footage to p30 though. Is your name David Copperfield?

A reply to tuffmac about the Canon HF-s10 footage. Gosh the HF_S10 is fiddly!

Using RevolverHD worked well, and the MTS then went straight into FCPX. It showed up as a 1080i60 (30fps) video stream of 1440x1080 size. The video movement was smooth and there were no interlacing artefacts at all. As with ClipWrap the implication is that the original data was 1080p30. In fact if I changed the project to 1080p30, the frames all looked identical to the 1080i60 version, so you might as well edit this video in 1080p30 in FCPX. RevolverHD would be a good option with this camera if direct import didn't work.

Using MediaConverter I was able to directly rewrap the video from the MTS into a quicktime movie. The resulting movie would play in QuickTime, and import into FCPX, but unfortunately FCPX could not display the video, unless I took one more step of transcoding to ProRes (I used MPEG Streamclip to do this, but there are many other options).

What was fascinating was that the output file via Media Converter was 60p! In previous workflows using clipwrap etc, the result on import into FCPX was always 30 frames per second. But this was 60 progressive frames per second!

However there was something very strange about this workflow with this video stream. If I step through the movie, frame by frame, in FCPX, movement is NOT smooth. Every second or third frame (somewhat randomly) is a duplicate of a preceding frame! Additionally, occasional frames, roughly one frame in every three or four, shows obvious interlacing / combing artefacts!. These should NOT occur in a 60p file, and yet they remain in the frame even if I set the display option to not show both fields.

So I really can't make head or tail of why it looks like this. Camcorderinfo.com says this is a 60i camera that wraps 30p into 60i. Maybe this was shot at 24p into 60i? I wonder.

Anyhow the main thing is that one gets very different results depending on the import workflow, and so we need to play around a bit to find one that works.

Chris.

Hi Gene

It's great that you can ingest it into FCPX without problems after clipwrapping.

Stuttering in FCPX will always be a problem with 1080p60 AVCHD because h264 is very processor intensive to decode, and there are lots of frames to decode.

ProRes is orders of magnitude easier to decompress and edit than AVCHD, so in FCPX it is vastly easier to work with, and will play back without stuttering even in full 1080p60 on most modern macs.

Using the generate proxy command makes half-size 960x540 lo-fi ProRes clips within FCPX. Setting playback to proxy uses these during playback. Edits and transitions will be generated at that size too. Being half-size horizontally and vertically, and being a low-quality codec, the file size and CPU hit will be 1/4 that of a full-size workflow, so that's why it's smooth on playback.

But what happens when you want to export as full-size? Does FCPX work in the background creating full-size ProRes versions all the time, as well as the half-size version you're seeing? Or does it render the full-size ProRes files at export time direct from the originals?

If you got a big hard disk and got FCPX to generate optimised media (full-size ProRes) then you'd see the ProRes stuff that you'll actually export from as it will appear on export. All transitions etc will be previewed at full size when you zoom in so you'll get the best possible idea of the actual image quality. This is probably the best way to go it you want to get the quality you're after. It will also be quick to export because you'll be starting with full-size easily decoded ProRes files that can immediately be exported to any size you like.

So.... be sure, if you do use proxy files, that the exported movie is actually full 1080p60 with all the sharpness of the original, which may require you to set the playback setting to full size rather than proxy. I'd be grateful if you could test if this is necessary to maintain quality. I'm lucky enough that my MacBookPro can (just) work natively with 1080i60 AVCHD files.

Changing a project file from 1080 to 720 will be a lossy size reduction if the original clips are all 1080. The result would be probably just as as sharp and even more compact if you were to shrink from 1920x1080 to 960x540 because this is exactly half size. In contrast, 720 divided by 1080 is 2/3, and that's not going to be a round number so the conversion will be lossy. You'll find the 720 version will just not look really sharp, but the 540 version will. For the conversion to 720, every three consecutive pixels must be squashed into two. Not so easy to do neatly.

If clips are 1080 then it's best that the project is also 1080. To export a smaller version for iPads etc, set the project temporarily to 960x540, and then FCPX will do the de-interlacing for you (use every second vertical line) and the output on export will look great.

As far as converting 720p60 to 720p30, that's easy. Use Export > send to Compressor or > use compressor settings, and make a Compressor preset with a 29.97 frame rate and a 720p image size and whatever audio format you prefer (no point in 5.1 if it's for an iPad).

I like using Compressor with custom presets, rather than the built-in FCPX options. This way I can use the x264encoder rather than Apple's H264 encoder, with any desired video quality, frame size, audio format etc. Additionally the processing can be distributed to other machines while my main machine barely slows down.

Cheers

Chris.

Chris,

Editing in Proxy does output a full pro res 1080p60 file. I just exported and that's what it put out. BUT, when I choose to share w/ Apple Devices, Share Monitor Crashes. If I open the ProRes file in QTX, and share to iTunes or Mac....it's encodes just fine and looks great. Sharing to iTunes makes a 540 pixel file. I'm ok with that for my ATV2.

It's strange that when exporting to a compressed file, only 300% of 800% of my processor is being used. I thought FCPX was 64 bit and uses all cores.

Hi Chris, Hi Gene,

Thanks for all the hard work. This way one can just use your experience. I don't mean to add something completely off the subject here but would like to share one more thing about transcoding into ProRes to ingest the 1080p50/60 MTS files into FCPX. ClipWrapping, unfortunately, does not work for me as FCPX does not ingest the ClipWrapped files properly. Neither does transcoding the ClipWrapped MTS files with MPEG Streamclip work as there is only audio and no video. The ClipWrapped MTS files do look great when played in Quicktime, by the way. So I'm left with the option of using third party software to transcode the bare MTS files first into ProRes and then ingest them into FCPX. I was under the impression that any third party software uses the built-in functionality of Final Cut or Compressor in doing so. So there shouldn't be any quality difference, I thought. Since, as I had already mentioned, VoltaicHD crashes every time (I did send the log to the company), I'm left with Toast but have always been suspicious of its transcoding capabilities. Therefore, I downloaded the trial version of Aunsoft MTS Converter. It transcodes the MTS files directly into ProRes with lots of setting options, and there is a discernible quality difference to the Toast ProRes files. The ProRes files are slightly larger but clearly of better quality. I thought this was important to mention. Chris, if you have time do give it a try. Thanks, again.