AVCHD Editting Premiere CS4

[AntAskew]

Hey guys, I'm new here and have been driven up the wall by video editing recently. I used to do alot in the past, on Premiere 6 and AE though my encoding always suffered. I stopped doing it for a while and now I'm back into it. I'm using CS4 at the moment, and still getting to grips with the basics etc. So if anyone knows any good pieces of reading online please don't hesitate to link me.

I am attempting to edit footage from a Lumix TZ10 (AVCHD) the file type is .mts and its causing my trouble already. In a nutshell could you please tell me what project settings I should be using to get the best from this and also what I should be exporting it as. At the moment this footage will only be finding its way to youtube and viimeo. Though I plan on adding some to DVD at a later date.

So guide me in the right direction. Cheers.

No doubt this wont be the first newbie question I ask here.


Thanks people.

Edited = PS, would help if I spelled editing correctly on the topic title
P.P.S , After ahving a trawl through some other posts, I'm going to give Edius Pro a try. Is there any programs you reccommend for putting video to DVD?

[rallymax]

describe your troubles.
AVCHD in MTS or MOV (or other) container should be fine in CS4. Make sure you're fully updated. Many bugs were fixed from the initial releases of Premiere CS4.
Also the AVCHD decoder in Premiere isn't great w.r.t. CPU efficiency* so you'll need at least a Core 2 Quad @ 2GHz. eg. my laptop Core 2 Duo T7800 @ 2.6GHz can't decode AVCHD fast enough for editing.

*BTW, I tried CoreAVC which is probably the most efficient decoder BUT IT DOESN'T WORK ON WINDOWS 7. (despite their claims on their website and VISA Fraud finding them GUILTY when I challenged them for a REFUND and they ignored all communication in addition to having bogus phone numbers).

[svcdmaker]

If your goal is basic editing and then converting to dvd, VideoRedo with h264 support will do the job. I have panasonic ZS7 (which is the TZ10) and it works like a champ with AVCHD.

Karl

[AntAskew]

Thanks guys, I'll take all that into consideration. Though alot more simple Edius is, I'm really having an easy time doing what I wanted. Though on export, what codec would you reccommend me using?

[rallymax]

youtube (and I think Vimeo too) have help pages on what the export settings should be for video that is intended to be uploaded to them.

[edDV]

The Lumix TZ10 uses the new "AVCHD Lite" format variation* which isn't directly supported in CS4 or later.

Use Google to find custom project templates that people have gotten to work. Also search "AVCHD Lite" here for further details.


*AVCHD Lite records 720p frames at 29.97 fps rate inside a 720p/59.94 format. A flag indicates the 29.97 fps frames should be doubled.

[rallymax]

I thought that AVCHD Lite was just AVCHD in 720p30.

I have some "AVCHD Lite" 720p30 (yup not 29.97) in a MOV container and they come in all interlaced with the wrong field order unless you make a Sequence based on "Desktop" and the Field Order set to Lower. Using the preset of AVC-Intra or AVCHD don't work for some wierd reason - probably because the Stream info says that it's 30fps progressive but the stream is actually saved as 60i. Thus in the importer decode it assumes progressive and completely gets out of sorts.

[AntAskew]

Thanks again guys, I'll look into all that. As for Premiere I've had a bit play about. Though still the larger and longer of the files seem to freeze up.