Import of AVCHD .MTS files

Looking forward to it Tom. One thing I'm noticing when examining the titles on FCPX and Motion is how out-of-date they are. Hence my reluctance to buy, but then again, I'm running out of tutorial videos (MacProVideo, etc.), and find most of the videos tend to leave out a lot of essential information. E,g,, the whole matter of dealing with AVCHD in the discussion we're having...

I don't know, Russ, I'm not seeing the stand-alone mts files listed when I'm in Motion, just the general AVCHD library when I open my SD card. For the time being, I'll probably just export the clips I want to work on in Motion from FCPX. If you know of a better solution, I'll be happy to hear it.

Dealing with AVCHD has always been pretty straight forward and is now even better. There is much in this very long and very old thread that is long obsolete.

Your AVCHD files should be accessible from the BDMV folder if you first right click on AVCHD Content and choose Show Package Contents.Depending on how complete the card structure is, you may have to do this at a couple of levels.Then copy the mts files from STREAM to a folder on your HD where Motion can see them.

What Tom said…the situation has changed quite a bit over the course of this thread and much of the information in it simply doesn't apply in recent OS and app versions.

Russ

Great, Russ. I think I found what I'm looking for, though I didn't see a BDMV folder. Thanks.

Actually, with FCPX 10.1.1, I regularly import single .MTS files. They import flawlessly with no discernible loss of video or audio quality -- and are then transcoded to ProRes for editing. Prior to 10.1, I simply used an inexpensive program called Clipwrap to transcode the individual .MTS files to ProRes prior to importing them into Final Cut. There may be good reasons to import the entire folder structure -- and actually, I would love to find out what those reason are -- but for my purposes, importing individual .MTS files directly into FCPX works beautifully.

delete

No question at all. Just a comment disputing other posters who reported that FCPX can't import individual .MTS files. It can.

If you save the entire folder structure, you can import directly into FCP without ClipWrap. You could always do that from the first version of the application. The advantage of direct import to FCP from the folder structure is that with QuickTime rewrapping the MPEG, the files works much more efficiently in FCP and are much more robust when the media is processed. I would not use the original .mts files, unless I absoluetly had to. You would of course also want a back up archive of the original media, which is best done with the whole folder structure and all the metadata the camera provides.

I am able to import .MTS files directly into FCPX 10.1.1 without using ClipWrap at all. FCPX then transcodes the files as it would any others. The resulting video shows no discernible loss in audio or video quality. So I don't really understand your comment at all.

My comment was based on this:

" Prior to 10.1, I simply used an inexpensive program called Clipwrap to transcode the individual .MTS files to ProRes prior to importing them into Final Cut."

I said you could do this prior to 10.1. You have been able to do it since 2011 if you had the whole folder structure. I presume you're archiving your media. If you are, it's better to do it with the whole folder structure. For most users there is no great benefit in transcoding H.264 to ProRes, unless of course you're importing the native .mts file. I just do not see any benefit whatsoever in not archiving the folder structure, not importing rewrapped in QuickTime, and importing the .mts files directly. What does importing the .mts files do for you, when there is a perfectly good system to import your media and work with it efficiently in FCP using the native codec?

Unless I'm mistaken, when you selected "Optimized Media", Final Cut Pro itself transcodes video from the camera's native format into ProRes when video is imported, so your suggestion that there is no benefit in transcoding to ProRes should probably be shared with Apple's developers. The only thing I still haven't heard is any reason to preserve the card's entire file structure when video is archived.

"so your suggestion that there is no benefit in transcoding to ProRes should probably be shared with Apple's developers."

The developers know this perfectly well. Optimization is available in every import window for non-I-frame media, and has been since the beginning. I don't think they should remove it. It's valuable in some instances. The fact is the vast majority of users working in H.264 do not have a need to nor do they optimize because their computers are perfectly capable of handling this GOP structure codec. The output file goes to ProRes, but you're wasting a huge amount of drive space converting all your original media. The folder structure holds the metadata about the camera, without it there is no manufacturer, no camera ID, no camera type. As cameras have gotten more sophisticated using AVCHD or its variants, other metadata that can be included like GPS, aperture, shutter speed, is all lost. I haven't heard a single reason not to preserve the folder sturcture. It isn't as if this folder structure is taking a huge amount of space, probably something like few megs for all the media content. What are you trying to achive by not saving the folder structure if you're archiving your original production recordings? Why are you bothering to dig out the .mts file, which is getting increasing cumbersome to do with each new version of the OS? Why not just archive the card? One step. Done. Import from archive. Done.

OK, help me understand your workflow, Tom. You import your AVCHD video from the archived card structure -- what settings do you use for importing? Leave files in place? No transcoding? I'd like to try a test project per your recommended workflow and methodology and evaluate the results for myself. If I am understanding you correctly, you are saying there is no benefit to editing in ProRes -- and that FCPX is capable of editing files without it. When you say that the output file goes to ProRes, you are losing me -- because when I output for 1080p devices, the resulting output file is not a huge ProRes file.

You can't leave the file in place. You don't want to. You want to keep the file as a separate archive on a separate drive in case of the inevitable failure. All drives are a failure waiting to happen. The question isn't if, but when, which is why the archive is saved independently of the production media, which a lot of faciliuty archive as well at the end of production.

I import without optimization and copy to an external folder outside of the library, a separate folder for each production. If there are files that will need heavy effects work or a lot of grading I'll optimize those from the Browser as needed, just the shots that need a lot of work and are actually in the project.

I always export a master file in ProRes and compress from that. The master file is saved with all the project data, If you don't want to, you can export directly to whatever device or site you want.