P: Support the AVCHD video format

"From what I can tell, there is absolutely no reason not to extract the mts files from their folders."

I wouldn't be so sure about that. At the beginning I used to do just that with the lowly Adobe Bridge program, which (unlike LR) is able to import and rename .mts files. Then I noticed that Adobe Premiere Pro did not take too kindly to these imported and renamed files. Apparently, unless the files exist in the original folder structure and with their *original file names*, Premiere Pro will not create an xmp file for them. Which is kind of annoying for a Premiere Pro user. There may be other side effects, too. There are programs out there that try to recreate the folder structure for you. Re-enveloping might solve this issue, but my day only has 24 hours in it. And for every issue solved another one or two are created.

Thanks Photographe - much clearer. I think if I had AVCHD, I'd import them along with my photos using 'RC Importer', which I use anyway. In that case, the folders would go bye-bye and they would receive the same filename treatment as my photos. Then re-envelope them for standard video handling in Lightroom. Although I think I like your solution better (get a new camera ;-}

From what I can tell, there is absolutely no reason not to extract the mts files from their folders. The folders seem to me like excess baggage tagging along because AVCHD is derived from BluRay. I could easily be wrong about this, but from what I know...

In which case, maybe that's what Adobe should do to support AVCHD - discard the folders and rename the files like photos, then re-envelope on-the-fly instead of copying. Any reason that wouldn't work? That would solve a lot of problems, for Adobe *and* their users, but would it create any?

- Cheers, Rob.

Unfortunately the answer is probably "no" for a number of reasons (depending on what you're trying to accomplish).

First, other programs, such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Bridge, don't recognize the jpgs as proxies for video files. So if your goal is to catalogue video files NOW to help you edit them in Premiere, this is a nonstarter.

Second, this doesn't help you find video files since LR thinks they're JPGs. To search for them, you have to search for JPGs. If you can keep that straight day in and day out, ok.

Third, what about the folder structure? Unless you collapse that, the videos will still be separate from your photos, and will have a different naming convention (i.e. no naming convention).

Fourth, if you recall from previous discussions, one of the problems with at least some AVCHD implementations is that the camera does not produce unique file names. This does not help with that problem. Also, the identical file names could confuse Syncomatic (or at least require some thought to get around).

If your only goal is to be able to browse to the files in LR, yeah you can do that, and then you can play them by navigating to some menu item hidden in the plugin menu if I remember correctly. But Bridge can also do that probably more easily.

In short I really didn't find it helpful for me. For a while, I thought of moving over to IDimager, which is a very powerful DAM package. But in the end the solution I chose might surprise you. I got rid of the camera and got one that used a more user-friendly video format.

The re-envelope solution probably works to an extent. You still have the issue of collapsing the folder structure and renaming and copying to the right folder, and I have no idea whether Premiere Pro will like it or not (Premiere Pro will not add metadata if it thinks the file is messed up, even though it might play and edit it.)

Thanks for reporting back to us Photographe. But, can't you just do all those things to the jpg instead? And then when AVCHD video support is finally added, use JB's Syncomatic or something to transfer the metadata from jpg to the video.

Anyway, assuming that's no good, I guess to accomplish your goal you'd have to use the "re-envelope" solution, eh?

I toyed with plugin support to automate the re-envelop solution, but was never able to finish the job - still, a drag-n-drop batch file could do it, no?

I tried Friedl's video plugin. It's a valiant effort at fixing this problem. What it does is create a jpg image from the video file and then adds that jpg to the catalogue. I never use it. Why, you might ask? This is neat trick, and kudos to Jeffrey for doing it, but it really is not a DAM solution....I can't add metadata to the video file, can't search for it by file type or metadata, can't move the file, and so on, because the video file itself is not in the catalogue.

This thread already mostly covers the ideas I've had, namely:
- "re-envelope" mts files to supported format, or
- use John Ellis' AnyFile, or
- use Jeffrey Friedl's video plugin
Some people are using 'RC Importer' just to get the mts files from the card into Lightroom, in conjunction with the above, but you can also just drag-n-drop...

For my most favorite program, Adobe Lightroom, I would really appreciate AVCHD video support in a forthcoming update.

AVCHD info: www.avchd-info.org/format/index.html

OK, video isn’t really my main thing so this is by no means a deal breaker, but once you get used to having all of your camera output in one workspace inside of Lightroom, it becomes really difficult to go without! (Browse for files in an Explorer window? Oh no!)

Any and all feedback, comments, or possible workarounds would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

I just tried a full-fledged digital asset management program called IDimager. It has full support for all video formats. When I pointed it to the main folder where my AVCHD folders reside, in no time at all it had gone through all subfolders, found the .mts files, created a thumbnail for each one and added them to the catalogue, sorted by date and ready for meta-coding. I can't tell you how satisfying that is. Next, I will test for inter-operability with Premiere Pro CS5, but just having all of the files in one space is a great boon to productivity. A 30-day trial is found at www.idimager.com, and I definitely won't commit until I've tested it thoroughly. Any indication from Adobe on future support for AVCHD and other media files would also be helpful.

Thank you.

Lightroom supports .mov file format and h.264 streams, so it probably supports D7000 video, but I don't know for sure. But good idea to find out for sure before buying one... I couldn't find it straight-away in the product info - I'd definitely start a different question thread if I were you...