Hi,

I am considering buying myself a new HD camera and copy of media composer. There is a particular camera that I am interested in but it is a hard disk based camera - I am used to tape and slightly daunted at the thought of spending hours rendering rushes to import them into media composer.

So the camera is a Canon LEGRIA HF S11. I have contacted cannon to ask what file format it shoots and they have said " the video signal is recorded using MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression and the audio signal is recorded in Dolby Digital."

Does anyone know whether I will be able to import this media directly into the avid or will I end up having to transcode everything? I am used to tape workflows and would normally recoil in horror at the idea of shooting data files but I really like the pictures on this camera.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Joe

I don't do a lot of AVCHD but, if you search the forums, you'll find that AVCHD is not a format that is best used in the Avid yet. AVC-i, yes but not AVCHD.

THere are a lot of folks here that can talk more inteligently about the format than I but do a quick search for "AVCHD" and you'll get a lot of info.

To use the AVCHD media in Avid, it must 1st be converted using a free converter from Panasonic. Then one can import the files as P2, and consolidate, etc. My limited experience is that the 1st conversion takes about 1,4x real-time. Also believe Bob Russo has a little how-to vid on this.

The DVCProHD Transcoder will only transcode to thin raster 1080i; not so good if you have full raster 1080 24p/30p.

It is good in that you can then use AMA and mount the virtual P2 card created.

However, there are other options to transcode to full raster HD. A quick search of the forums should reveal the plethora of software available.

HTH

gerbow

That said, there really should be an AVCHD forum under the Files and Formats section.

Since I have to use material from many different cameras (AVCHD, MJPEG, H 264), I bought a Canopus ADVC HD50 HDMI to HDV converter. To play back the SD-cards, I use a WDTV Device that delivers a HDMI signal to the canopus, so I do not block the cameras while capturing. The WD even does a (basic) framerate conversion (I live in PAL germany, but many cheap cameras do only 30 or 60Hz). No problems or quality Issues so far.

Robert

I've just got an Panasonic HMC-151E and was thinking of doing the same thing (ie. use an ADVC HD50). Do you write HDV files to disk to import into Avid? Or, put another way, how do you get the ADVC HD50 output into Avid?

Ashley