AVCHD Editing Help

[trbrts]

Hi everyone, sorry to be the N00b but I've been scouring the forum and I am having a hard time finding an answer to my problem. Here we go. A while back I bought a Canon Vixia HF10 camcorder with the AVCHD chip. I had always used Premiere Pro CS3 to edit. Well, CS3 did not support the .m2ts file type that comes out of my camera so I was having to take the output files from my camera and convert them to AVI with VoltaicHD. That worked okay, but, took a lot of time and a lot of space and sometimes VoltaicHD crashes or doesn't convert the file.

Anyway, I read that Premiere Pro CS4 now supported AVCHD, so I purchased an upgrade (which isn't working fully because I have the Master Collection and apparently I can only upgrade just premiere if I only had just premiere before that point. The Master Collection serial numbers aren't working for the upgrade, but I installed it as a trial version) but I still can't import the .m2ts files into Premiere CS4. It doesn't see them.

So, what am I missing? Am I going to be able to edit the .m2ts footage in CS4 without converting? Is there a better program for converting than VoltaicHD. What other program can I use besides Premiere? I tried the trial version of Vegas and didn't really like it. I don't need anything too fancy. Should I go with Pinacle? Will that support .m2ts? I'm just making pretty simple videos for the web right now, but, would like something scalable for when I'm no longer a N00b. Anyway, thanks for any help you can provide.

[aedipuss]

since we don't all have that same camera it's hard to say what will work with the files. post a small sample and people will be able to check various apps for you.

i've been reluctant to upgrade to my cs3 to cs4 as i didn't see anything in it worth the cost.

vegas pro is my favorite editor and if it's in your budget it is good.


[edit] never mind the sample. i found on online at open source movie archieve.
http://www.archive.org/details/canon-hf-10-test-2008_09_23a 50mb

[trbrts]

Thanks for finding that sample for me. Yeah, I'm pretty sick of Adobe at this point.

[poisondeathray]

If your goal is uploading web clips, surely you aren't going to upload the full clips at high bitrates (not re-encoded) ? What format is your export goal?

Other options: you can use debugmode frameserver to import into Premiere, makeavis (from ffdshow) also works when you index with DGAVCdec importing into Premiere. I'm using an old version of Premiere still.

If you have simple editing (e.g just cutting) you can do this all with DGAVCdec and avisynth using Trim(), even deinterlace, then encode that to your final format.

Both these suggestions require some basic scripting knowledge of avisynth, but are free.

Even if you could import .mts natively into Premiere properly, you still have to re-encode upon editing and exporting. I don't think it has "smart rendering" for AVCHD, maybe aedipuss knows more?

[trbrts]

I would like to keep everything available at the highest res possible for DVD's. But, mostly things go up on the internet.

[aedipuss]

i broke down and updated to cs4. the new cs4 premiere pro imports the hf10 .mts avchd files directly without any complaint. rendered to widescreen dvd mpeg-2 fine.

[trbrts]

i broke down and updated to cs4. the new cs4 premiere pro imports the hf10 .mts avchd files directly without any complaint. rendered to widescreen dvd mpeg-2 fine.

The output from my camera is .m2ts files and the trial version of CS4 can't even recognize it.

[trbrts]

Yay. Got someone on the horn at Adobe. They allowed me to upgrade Premiere Pro to CS4 with my Master Collection licenses. When I did that, it loaded a bunch more codec's and now it's playing the .m2ts files. Thanks for your help! I'm sure I'll need more and hope to repay the favors some day.

[SCDVD]

i've been reluctant to upgrade to my cs3 to cs4 as i didn't see anything in it worth the cost.

vegas pro is my favorite editor and if it's in your budget it is good.

I prefer Vegas Pro as well but FYI, there is one nice feature in CS4 that may appeal to some people. You can take the timeline straight into Encore from Premiere without rendering. This is handy especially with big HD jobs. Personally, I don't care for the blurry line between the editor and the authoring program but there are some that may prefer the more "blended" work flow.

[poisondeathray]

Thx for being the "guinea pig", aedipuss!

I may upgrade too soon.

[aedipuss]

donations gladly accepted