I really would like to purchase Final Cut Pro X but I would like to check one thing. I need to know if Final Cut Pro X will import .MTS AVCHD files. These were recorded on a Panasonic 1080p Camcorder. I also have 1080i footage. I understand the methods of importing into Final Cut but I don't know if FC will work with these files. I would like to import then edit and then output to bluray.
Many thanks in advance.
Steven
Mac OS X (10.6.7)
Hi,again.
To sum it up:
When working with AVCHD you have two options.
1. You can import directly from the SD Card — go to import from camera for that.
2. You can copy the full — with all folders, exactly everything that is on the card — contents of the SD card to a folder on your hard drive an archive it that way. If you want to import an archived SD card later on you can go to import from camera and then go for the open archive button, then point to the folder where you keep the back up of that specific card.
It is not possible to import .mts files on their own.
AVCHD on Final Cut needs camera data that is included in the other folders of the SD card.
That's why it's called "Import from camera", even if you only insert the card directly.
If you only backed up the .mts files and that's all you have you will have to convert them outside of Final Cut beforehand. I recommend to make the best of the situation and just download the free tool called "Handbrake".
With Handbrake simply convert the .mts files to mp4 with the same bitrate. You won't lose that much quality. It's really no big deal.
So, if your camera records with AVCHD 17 Mbit for example, convert to mp4 with 17 Mbits. And then import to Final Cut.
In the future be more careful of what you do: read the documentation before you delete something and try to keep a full backup of your cards. I always have a card backup in the project folder, because AVCHD doesn't need that much space anyway.
Hope that helps.
Could it be that you are trying to do too much, umm, pre-processing? You don't need to remove the mts files from the AVCHD file structure that the cameras put it in. That structure is pretty vital for correctly discerning the clip structure. If you leave the files in the camera file structure, FCP will transparently pull the audio/video out and combine them into logical clips (when you actually pressed Record as opposed to just a 4GB clip). Unless you specify so in the settings, it will NOT transcode the material - merely remove the H264/AAC streams from the .mts wrappers, combine them into your actual clips, and put them in a .mov wrapper.
Can you be more specific about the issues you are having? What camera are you using? Are you actually using FCP, or just on a general rant about .mts files? I will wholeheartedly agree that .mts files are a pain if you want to, say, combine them all together and make a file for Compressor without going through FCP. But that's not this thread or forum. FCPX handles teh AVCHD file structure and underlying mts files wonderfully.
Hi!
The mistake was to remove the MTS files from the file structure. AVCHD is a stream, and the filestructure on the memory card is a part of the format. Always backup every card with the complete file / folder structure.
But don't worry! Just use "5d2RGB" to convert them to ProRes. You won't lose any quality. Actually 5D2RGB is said to be able to improve the video quality though higher quality decoding.
Give it a try, don't worry and remember to backup the complete SD card next time – minus the foto file folders of course, if you don't need fotos.
Every project I do, the first thing I do is copy the contents of all SD cards to the project, each in its own directory,with the name of the camera and maybe timecode as the folder name.
After that I import with FCPX from these folders. So the source files are always save.
So glad I google-found this thread!
I too, like others, have ran into the green screen/FCPX hang up issues with my Sony .MTS rewrapped files, within FCP10.0.7. I did a bunch of little tests in the last couple of nights and I have a success story to share.
I'm on OSX 10.7.5.
Just upgraded from FCP 10.0.7 to 10.0.9.
Got a copy of ClipWrap ver.2.6.1.
Rewrapped an .MTS file (which took a meare 15 seconds!)
Imported the rewrapped .MOV file into FCPX....
NO GREEN SCREEN OR SPINNING BEACH BALL OF DEATH!!!!!!!
Loads up the preview and I can scrub fwd & back on the video perfectly fine with out any lag out or green screen flicker/hang up!
Now I haven't tried editing the footage yet, haven't got that far, but I have a good feeling it'll be fine.
I'm bummed I didnt get to try a before and after ClipWrapped video on FCP 10.0.7 then on 10.0.9 to see if the FCP updater had anything to do with this......but i'm f**king stoked out of my gord right now!
They're both MPEG-4 based formats, so there isn't enough information there. MPEG-4 can be a lot of things, as so can AVCHD, which you can see from the many available specs in most cameras. There probably isn't much real difference except what FCP does with the AVCHD file. When imported from the archive or the card, the file is rewrapped to QuickTime and the audio converted from compress AC3 to uncompressed AIFF, which is much better to work with. If you import MPEG-4 I don't think FCP goes through the same process, and the media probably should be optimzied.
Use ClipWrap to rewrap the media, then import and edit in a project that matches the frame rate of your media.
nfoo wrote:
I'm pretty certain that final Cut will support 60p, although it is not officially supported in the AVCHD standard s of yet.
FCPX does support 1080p60, it plays H.264 and ProRes files just fine. It's the import that's not supported. The AC3 audio codec does not seem to be supported either (no audio), so for those who shoot 1080p60 in surround it is a no-go without tools like ClipWrap.
When I hooked my HF100 up, it was pretty slow in gathering the clips into the Import Window to show me what I could import, but I did try importing a short clip and it was fine. I also have an HF20, and the performance was much faster with that camera, no sluggishness.
Several people keeps saying that you can't import mts files because the other data on the card is 'necessary', and to 'read the instructions' before you delete anything. Seems we are stupid or incompentent for not knowing ahead of time that Apple would put an artifical restrictionon these types of files.
I can tell that all of the other editing software I have used could handle the individual .mts files just fine. Some of us saved the individual .mts files without retaining all of the other folder data, even renaming the files to have descriptive file names before ever using any of Apple's software, since all that was needed to edit/use the files was the individual .mts files.
Dissapointed to see the FCPX STILL can't handle opening stand alone files when even the lowly Adobe Premier Elements can.
Yes ... artifacts .... no idea. I know 1080p50 / 1080p60 footage from sony and from pana 700 / 707 are fine when rewrapped with "remux" or "Media Converter".
Remux does audio in aac, but keeps the time/date tag in the movie file.
Media Converter looses the time/date tag, but it does audio in pcm.
Both do batch rewrapping.
I for myself will use remux, as I want to keep the time stamp for better media organisation in fcpx, the audio part will be converted to pcm by fcpx in anyway.
I am very frustrated to with the poor result of importing my Panasonic HDC-TM900 1080/60p footage. With the rewrapped to mov files i got the same green flickering or the weird jumpy artefacts. More weird: After restarting FCPX the green flicker could now be an artefact or wise versa. In 60p footage there is a green frame on every frame 23/24 and 53/54. Or on frame 22/23 and 52/53, which means every 30 frames there are to defect frames.
After converting the rewrapped files into ProRes, the movie seems to be red&black. No more other colors. If I convert the originals MTS files with FCPX into ProRes I have the same jumping artefacts - but now hardcoded in the ProRes files - as I import the rewrapped files directly. But at this point it shows "only" the artefacts, not the green frames blinking.
Otherwise iMovie plays and edit the rewrapped files and the Prores files just fine. No artefacts, no green frame blinking.
I have rewrapped the files with the current command line version of ffmeg v0.8. The pcm_s16be preserves the 5.1 audio channels, which got lost in my test with ClipWrap:
ffmpeg -i inputfile.mts -vcodec copy -acodec pcm_s16be outputfile.mov
With the rewrapped file I got many Console messages like:
Final Cut Pro[1660] -[FFCodecOperation main]: Error -12350 from VTDecompressionSessionDecodeFrame for sb 0x134700d70, refCon 0x123319ae0 (dts=10.527183(631631/60000), pts=10.527183(631631/60000)) (attachments array follows)
and
Final Cut Pro[1660] FFImageRepFigSchedFrame - decompression error (no image) err=-12350
and
Final Cut Pro[1660] FigProvider - got back a nil CVImageBufferRef in decompressionCallback when it wanted the output, how did that happen (status = -12350, flags=0x0)
Perhaps this could be caused due to the updated Open CL components and graphics drivers in Mac OS X 10.6.8. As FCPX uses much more of the Open CL acceleration possibilities, there is possibly a bug in the H.264 decoding components.
Maybe the announced Panasonic AVCHD import filter for FCPX comes soon this summer and helps to get rid of that problem. Maybe Apple will publish an very neccessary update sooner. Let's cross fingers.
This is even more worse, as this green flicker / artefacts problem is not just shown in movie preview. It is still existing in any edited and exported footage. For me, this is not acceptable.
I updated Clipwrap to 2.4.2, surprisingly everything worked, video and audio. Interesting, what they use to process h264. I could not make a workable h264 file at 1080/60p with ffmpeg and libx264, no matter how hard I tried. But I was able to make bluray-compatible and editable in FCPX files with lower resolution.
I have a Panasonic SD600 and shoot at 60fps, 1080p. When I first got FCPX it let me directly import the .MTS files from my SD card, but one day it just stopped. I'm gutted obviously, but HandBrake does the trick now - just set up a queue of .MTS files and convert them to MP4, similar bitrate, and the their is no loss in quality to the naked eye.
FCPX then accepts the MP4 files easily, although performance still sluggish.
I convert everything 60p to ProRes with ClipWrap and it works in FCPX, sluggish but works. I don't recall if it's any faster in Premiere at the same frame rate, besides I hate the Adobe new interface. FCPX seems to slow down considerably at anything 60p.
Dick, it sounds like you have a good workflow for your type of editing. It seems to work. I have an older elgato and it's pretty good, but I don't have the HD version just yet.
That said, One2dive, if you look at the archiving video of final cut, I follow that workflow:
connect my camcorder and make an archive, usually dropping it to a different hard drive (then copying it onto another because it's usually our family stuff so I like the backups 🙂
I either edit right then or, I'll go back later. FCX has no issue recognizing the files again and then will start converting as I choose the clips.
The only issue with this workflow is that there are what I call the dummy clips - clips with no value whatsoever. They're still part of the overall 'archive'. I'm going to look at making a note of their clip # then going back into the archive and deleting them.
It'll be more work for sure, but over time, it'll save hard drive space. The archives can add up. Thankfully, hard drives are cheap! I'm also looking at burning to blu ray as well, but I use a CompressHD card from Matrox to create AppleTV files and at 1920x1080, it looks fantastic!
Oh, then I back the ATV files up to another hard drive as well.
Cheers,
Keebler
It is a pain, but not that difficult to get to the AVCHD MTS files on a Mac. For some dumb reason, they quit letting us open these files in their folder. They exist in a package file. If you open the camera folder on your desktop, hightlight the AVCHD folder, go to ACTION on the top menu bar, click SHOW PACKAGE CONTENTS, that will show the package folder. (On the Sony, it's DBMV). Highlight that and SHOW PACKAGE CONTENTS again and then click on the STREAM folder to open. That will reveal all the MTS files, which you can identify by date and copy to a different place. There are several free utilities for viewing and encoding the MTS files to Quicktime MP4. I like MPlayerX to view them and the Elgato Turbo264HD to convert them. There is a software only version of the Elgato application which is slower than the hardware USB device, but works as well.
Import of AVCHD .MTS files
