Re: Can you "re-digitize" from AVCHD to Prores and maintain timecode?

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Hi Isaac

I did a quick test, loaded a few shots from AVCHD as Prores (regular) and cut them into a timeline. Then I media managed the sequence to create an offline sequence with handles as Prores HQ. I opened log and transfer and changed the preferences to transcode as Prores HQ , then I selected the offline sequence and asked it to batch capture. The clips all transferred and transcoded properly to HQ with handles.

So if FCP can do all that, I don't know why it would have any issues in recapturing offline clips from the original AVCHD files.

You also asked about converting files with some other software. I wouldn't do that as FCP wouldn't know how those files were made. IF FCP can do all this by itself, there's no reason to use other software.

Also, regarding codecs for FCP, your best off to stick with Prores. It's optimized to work well with FCP on just about any mac FCP can run on. AIC is what iMovie uses and isn't nearly as good as Prores. AVCintra is a great codec, superior to P2 which it's designed to replace, but I'd still stick with Prores for the ease of playback on FCP.

One caveat, I copy the cards to an external USB drive as backup. The folder name that the card files are copied into becomes the reel name. So the folder MYVIDEO with the PRIVATE folder from the SDHC card copied into it becomes reel MYVIDEO in FCP. I'm not sure if FCP needs this info to re-capture or not, but it's a good file management practice with AVCHD to copy all the files to a hard drive before importing to FCP.

Hope this answers all your questions. One of the things I love about My HMC 150 is that my capture VTR is a $10 card reader and my HD screening machine is a Playstation 3. I'm not sure about the new PS3 thin model, but the older one I have has an SD slot and plays back AVCHD cards beautifully. You can also convert h.264 files to play on PS3, so I can have all my finished projects on my PS3 as well, but i'm going a little off topic here.

Happy New Year.

John C