final cut pro 7 vs adobe premiere pro cs6

Yes, it will work natively with AVCHD so you can use without conversion.

If you are familiar with FCP then it should be pretty straight forward.

There are lots of tutorials posted, when you get stuck, you can Google for the solution solution.

If you are new to editing in general then take one of the on-line courses - it will be money well spent.

MtD

It's funny - the Panasonic tech support person told me I had to use iframe - avchd won't work with Mac! I was pretty sure they were wrong. I have used Final cut so I htink I will like Premiere - especially sin ce I am already paying the $50 per month!

Hey Meg, what's your real world experience working with AVCHD files directly in Premiere? I gotta say that playing around in Avid Media Composer, although you could kind of work with the files directly, it was not a pleasant experience. And in FCP7, I can't say I like working directly with XDCAM material. Scrubbing, Rendering, and Exporting are no where near as smooth compared to working with ProRes material.

I have worked some with h264 material in Premiere 5.5. Kinda felt the same way. I know converting material to a more robust format takes time and drive space, but...

It is fairly seamless. I don't really notice much difference in behavior except that since it so CPU/GPU intensive, the fans on my older MacBook Pro run full blast while editing with AVCHD material.

MtD

Meg - do you mind if I pick your brain a bit more? Or anyone that would like to respond... I have a new Panasonic camcorder. I'm not used to working with these files. When I plug it in, it goes right to iPhoto to import. Is that the best way to import the files? Or is there a better way? The AVCHD files themselves don't show up in the finder. Just one file that I guess contains all of them. I haven't figured out any other way to see the individual clips. Then once they are in iPhoto, I can't find them from Premiere to import. Any advice much appreciated.

Do not import the files into iPhoto.

Plug in the camera. When it mounts to the desktop, copy the entire camera media to one of your disc drives, leaving the entire flle structure intact (drag the camera media to one of your drives).

Launch Premiere, create your project, and then go to the menu File > Import and navigate the top level of the media you just copied and click on the button "Import". This will load all you flies into Premiere Pro. You will likely get a warning box listing a whole bunch of files it could not import - that is OK - those are just the metadata files that are in the file structure of the camera media. Dismiss that, and you should be good to go.

If you want to work with only one of just a few of the files on the camera media, open the camera media and double click on the AVCHD icon. A small window will open with thumbnails of all the video files. When you find the file you want to use in the thumbnails, click on it to select it and click the Open button.

When the file opens in QuickTime, go to the menu File > Export and Export the file to the location you want in the Movie format.

Then you can either use the Import function of Premiere to ingest it or just drag it into Premiere.

MtD

Thank you! I have seen that window with all the avchd files - such an odd way to manage files.....

Normally you don't want to be drilling down beyond the AVCHD icon. AVCHD video is highly, highly compressed. Think of an elaborate jig sway puzzle. If you break it all up, you can store the pieces it in a much smaller box than when it is put together. AVCHD does this to video, and includes separate metadata files that give instructions to the software you are using to reassemble the puzzle and play out the video.

This is why you normally do not want to disturb that directory, or if you do, only access it through apps like QuickTime, Premiere, Clipwrap etc. that know how to access the metadata files to handle the video files properly.

MtD

So I only see two files - one called Private which I guess is the AVCHD file and a folder called DCIM - it seems to have the jpegs in it and a bunch of other stuff. Do I import both of those files into my computer? Is it possible to import the files from the camera directly into premiere?

Marty Roberts wrote:

So I only see two files - one called Private which I guess is the AVCHD file and a folder called DCIM

The DCIM folder contains still images that were taken with the camera and any metadata associated with them.

Is it possible to import the files from the camera directly into premiere?

Yes, in Premiere Pro CC go to the menu File > Import and navigate to the top level of the folder containing your media (or the camera card itself) and Premiere Pro CC will import the correct video files, and indicated the other files are not importable.

MtD

THANK YOU for being there! So if I am importing to my hard drive, I just need that one file called Private?

I am in Premiere now - when I clicked import on the Private file, it then showed a whole bunch of other files. I clicked import I think on the top one called Private. Looks like it is importing now - we shall see what happens. I have a whole bunch of stuff in there I don;t want though....

Ack! I am getting an error message - File Format Not Supported!

Best practice is to copy the entire camera media to your hard disk. You then navigate Premiere Pro to the top level of that copy and import the files from there.

"Import" in Premiere Pro or FCP7 does not mean "copy the actual media files somewhere". In Premiere Pro or FCP7 it means "bring in the information to access those files into the application for use".

MtD

Dismiss that message. Your video files should have imported. Do you read my posts? I explained that Premiere Pro wiould indicate that there were files in that folder that are not compatible.

MtD

Oh OK - I just did it again and when I dismissed that window, I saw down at the bottom that it was "conforming" mts files. But I still didn't see any clips. I clicked around and found then in a window that was not open - I expected them to be in the Source window which was open at the top. So I think I have them now. Thanks!