Mac AVCHD encoder

[bertoa]

A month ago I bought a Panasonic HDC-SD5 high definition camcorder. After some problems getting
the AVCHD material to my Imac I found out that the convertor in Toast 9 was doing the job well.
Now I want to go in the other direction from the Imac to the Camcorder or better, from Final Cut Pro6
to the camcorder. Is there any possibility to convert Quicktime compatible High def video material
(say) HDV to AVCHD? I want to bring back my HD mastervideo to the camcorder and use this small
device as a HD videoplayer. I want to take with me the edited versions from FCP and put this back to
the 16GB SDHC card and show this via the component or HDMI on any flatscreen or beamer.
Who did this, or who can give me advice? I don't want to buy a HD mediaplayer when my camcorder
can do the job.
Thanx

[philg08]

Hi,

You might want to try RevolverHD http://shedworx.com/?q=revolverhdmac available from ShedWorx. It takes your FC files and converts them to an MTS file (AVCHD) file.

[SCDVD]

One thing to keep in mind is there are variations with AVCHD files depending on the camera it came from. AVCHD is still a work in progress and as a result, there are significant variations in AVCHD files from one brand of camera to another. Not only that, but succeeding models from any given manufacturer have variations in the AVCHD files as well. As a result, some of these AVCHD variations don't work in some software tools.

There are various problems such as motion artifacts that the camera manufactures are trying to deal with. Since it's a competitive market, the various camera manufacturers aren't too eager to help their competition with their latest and greatest enhancements.

One of the problems is insufficient bit rate to adequately support AVCHD. I suspect there are hardware constraints in the cameras to keep the cost down. AVCHD takes a lot of processing power and processing power equals cost. I suspect there is a lot of debate going on within the camcorder manufactures about how to balance this with one camp saying "speed up the camcorder hardware" and the other camp saying, "Make a better CODEC."

Just be mindful that AVCHD is not all of the way there yet and there are some land mines and bear traps that can be frustrating when using AVCHD files. Since there is no "one" standard AVCHD format, you may have a problem with your objective of importing an AVCHD file into your camcorder - The camera may not recognize the particular variant of AVCHD that you import.

[bertoa]

Thanx Philg08. I downloaded RevolverHD for Mac but I could do no settings in the demo mode.
And they don't explain anything special about the advantages of this program.
SCDVD- you got a point with your reaction on this AVCHD "standard".
I try with my Mac to write back AVCHD files to this specific Panasonic camera.
So I have to encode my FCP files to the format I show below (MediaInfo Mac):

*** MediaInfo Mac // Plain text file report
2008-06-23 13:46:29 +0200
Information for File: 00002.MTS

General / Container Stream # 1
Total Video Streams for this File -> 1
Total Audio Streams for this File -> 1
Video Codecs Used -> AVC
Audio Codecs Used -> AC3
File Format -> BluRay Video
Total File Size -> 16.1 MiB
Video Stream # 1
Codec -> AVC
Codec (Human Name) -> Advanced Video Codec
Codec Profile -> High@L4.0
Frame Width -> 1920 pixels
Frame Height -> 1080 pixels
Frame Rate -> 25.000 fps
Display Aspect Ratio -> 16/9
Interlacement -> Top Field First
Codec Settings (Summary) -> CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Codec Settings (CABAC) -> Yes
Audio Stream # 1
Codec -> AC3
Audio Stream BitRate -> 256 Kbps
Audio Stream BitRate Mode -> CBR
Number of Audio Channels -> 2
Audio Channel's Positions -> L R
Sampling Rate -> 48.0 KHz
Audio Stream Delay -> 2s 316ms

Special is the CABAC codec with 2 Ref Frames
The other settings are no problem; I can manage that.
Question is: What program can handel the CABAC codec?