AVCHD suported in full paid version?

[Thronsen]

Im currently using the full trial  version, and I noticed that there still wasnt any support for AVCHD  files. Could someone with a paid version confirm whether or not LR can  see and play AVCHD in a paid for version?

It would really cripple the  usefulness of LR video if one of the most popular formats for videos  taken in cameras was not supported even in the paid version.

[SeanMcCormack]

Those files are where the metadata comes from, and that is revelant.

You should probably note that Julie says 'is' a puzzle, which I don't

interpret as a done and dusted thing.

[Thronsen]

Hi Sean-

Thanks for your reply. But what metadata are you concerned with? Ive uploaded a bunch of old videos into Lightroom, and it doesnt seem to import any real metadata for the formats it does support.

And if I had a choice between having some missing metadata, and not being able to import or organize the file at all, I think the former is what most people would choose.

As others have mentioned, I also dont see the issue with folder structure. The file importer included for free in Windows 7 finds the video file just fine, even in cameras released after Windows 7 was released.

[SeanMcCormack]

You may not care, but others do. And your lack of interest is obviously different to Julie's, as expressed here. Windows 7 is only one of the OS versions that Lightroom supports. A solution needs to care for the broadest range of users and platforms.

[Thronsen]

I think you may have misread my post.

As far as I can see, Lightroom doesnt support really any metadata for videos. Heck its 'Capture Date' is the day you last copied the file (Date Created), not the day you actually took the video (unless it still has the original 'Date Created').

Is there some metadata that Lightroom is getting from the video it can now import, that it doesnt from the AVCHD?

As far as your point about Windows 7. First of all, Adobe releases things that work on only certain systems and computers, such as Premiere CS5 which will only work on 64 bit machines. But whatever.

Secondly and most importantly, as far as I am aware, and Julie sort of confirmed, Lightroom isnt doing much to help anyone watch the videos they currently allow into Lightroom. Its just using the computers own player.

As Ive said before I dont think anyone is expecting Lightroom to play files they otherwise couldnt play on their computer. And Im just going to guess, but I suspect most people who take AVCHD videos have a computer that can play AVCHD videos already. So its not like this is some sort of restriction to Windows 7 only, Vista and XP (with a bit of work, which presumably people who take AVCHD videos have already done) can play AVCHD as well.

[SeanMcCormack]

Actually for my 5DII .mov files, it does give metadata.

[ISeward]

Actually for my 5DII .mov files, it does give metadata.

Hi Sean

A couple of questions.

Do you download from the card or copy the movie file from the card to the HD and then import?  If you do the latter do you still get metadata?

[SeanMcCormack]

It comes from the THM file.

[ISeward]

Actually for my 5DII .mov files, it does give metadata.

Thanks, if I understand you correctly the meta data for the 5DII is in the file.

It looks like the meta data for the AVCHD files is stored in side car files (like xmp) with the video clip .MTS file in the "stream folder" and the meta data in the .CPI file in the "clip information" folder.

This would mean that to get meta data information it would be necessary to access the corresponding .MTS and .CLI file (like the .THM for Canon.  That does not look too difficult and Adobe must be very conversant with the AVCHD format as Premier Pro supports them.  Maybe with huge organisations like Adobe the different project teams don't get to talk to each other

Of course, as has been mentioned many people do not copy the .CPI files just the movie files .MTS, this would mean that meta data would not be available - users choice.  I suspect most users will just be grateful to "see" their files and play them (third party software) and export to a project folder along with converted raw's for further processing e.g. slide show creation in Premier.

[SeanMcCormack]

The other issue is that sidecars usually have the poster frame, which is used for the preview.

It's lovely to imagine that they all sit down together or coffee, but that doesn't happen in the real world

I don't even want to speculate on that... not to mention that they're not all working in the offices all the time, or that there's more than one Adobe location..

I think this is only a temporary thing. Time will prove this right or wrong. As with Lens Profiles and Tethered Shooting, support has to start somewhere. After that you can add to what's there.

[ISeward]

>>The other issue is that sidecars  usually have the poster frame, which is used for the preview.

It's lovely  to imagine that they all sit down together or coffee, but that doesn't  happen in the real world

I don't even want to speculate on  that... not to mention that they're not all working in the offices all  the time, or that there's more than one Adobe location..

I think this  is only a temporary thing. Time will prove this right or wrong. As with  Lens Profiles and Tethered Shooting, support has to start somewhere.  After that you can add to what's there.>>

Hi Sean

Thanks for the responses.  I think I have it clear now, LR3 simply reads the THM file from video formats that produce them which gives it the thumb for preview to display and metadata info.  The associated video file is then just passed to the default player for viewing. 

That’s seems fine, I just hope the LR team will do the same for AVCHD as soon as possible. I think many would be happy to accept a simple blank rectangle saying video just to see that the file is there and be able to import and view / export, metadata can wait.  As you say better support can come later, the improvement over nothing to being able to know that there is a video file there is 1,000%

[Julie Kmoch]

Thanks all for the input. We realize AVCHD is of growing importance, but as Sean indicates, it has to work across all of the platforms we support. Most people won't be understanding of a format that we kind of catalog but can't pull a thumbnail for and can't play. We have to do it right.

[Thronsen]

'Thanks all for the input. We realize AVCHD is of growing importance, but  as Sean indicates, it has to work across all of the platforms we  support. Most people won't be understanding of a format that we kind of  catalog but can't pull a thumbnail for and can't play. We have to do it  right.' - Julie Kmoch

Thanks again Julie for helping us understand a bit more what is going on with this very important format.

Quick question for you though, are you concerned that ALL computers can play AVCHD, or just the ones that are likely to have AVCHD files to play? For example, there may be 100m machines in the world running XP, of which 20m already have been made to run AVCHD (Im just using those numbers to illustrate a point, they are not accurate). The people who have AVCHD cameras will all be clustered in the 20m who have computers that already play AVCHD, so there is no problem there.

I just dont think there are a huge number of people who are taking AVCHD footage, buying Lightroom, yet dont have a computer that can play AVCHD, even if XP doesnt support it out of the box.

For what its worth, I dont think XP can support .MOV files out of the box either. You have to download QT, or QTA or a codec. A pretty similar situation to AVCHD on XP. And of course Windows 7 is no problem, and is already 20% of the market.

I come from the photo side, so even if LR doesnt support the video format I use, I can still think about buying an upgrade because the NR features in LR3 might be better or worse then LR2 and Topaz. But there are a huge number of people coming into the camera market now from the video side, one of the biggest drivers of growth. And while they are increasingly interested in the pictures they are taking along with their video, LR3 is a tough sell when it doesnt support one of the most common formats.

Thanks again for posting and helping us out.

[Julie Kmoch]

Thronsen, fair point that some users will also have to install extensions like QuickTime on Windows to play even crusty old .MOV files. That seemed like a safe bet since it's such established technology. The judgement call we had to make was: are there a huge number of people taking AVCHD and buying Lightroom? We focused on the formats that are coming from DSLRs.

So AVCHD had 3 strikes when we evaluated it: not common from DSLRs (yet), limited OS support, and a complex file structure. So let me ask a question on that point: I've got a sample AVCHD folder from a Panasonic GF1 that has five .mts files in it. Would you expect that to show up as one entry in our Grid view, or five?

[ISeward]

So AVCHD had 3 strikes when we evaluated it: not common from DSLRs (yet), limited OS support, and a complex file structure. So let me ask a question on that point: I've got a sample AVCHD folder from a Panasonic GF1 that has five .mts files in it. Would you expect that to show up as one entry in our Grid view, or five?

Hi Julie,

I don't know if I have understood you correctly as it seems a strange question, but each .mts file is a seperate clip or movie so you would expect to see 5 entries in the grid view, one for each movie.  This as the same for any other movie file e.g. you would expect to see 5 .mov files if you had 5 .mov movies.

[Julie Kmoch]

Good, that was my assumption. But if you, say, delete one of those files from within Lightroom, there are other files in the folder structure that need to be modified, I presume? Such as files in the CLIPINF folder? Certainly doable, just more complex.

[jfpearson]

People posting here show a breath-taking lack of knowledge of anything video. What is so strange to me is that Photoshop ELEMENTS' organizer does the data management of both pictures and video just fine, including being able to generate a thumbnail, change some of the metadata info on the video file catalog, just as the date captured, etc. That leads to be believe that the Lightroom crew at Adobe don't speak to the video experts at the same company OR there is a licensing issue on the format.

[kwdaves-WfiRTh]

jfpearson wrote:

People posting here show a breath-taking lack of knowledge of anything video. What is so strange to me is that Photoshop ELEMENTS' organizer does the data management of both pictures and video just fine, including being able to generate a thumbnail, change some of the metadata info on the video file catalog, just as the date captured, etc. That leads to be believe that the Lightroom crew at Adobe don't speak to the video experts at the same company OR there is a licensing issue on the format.

Which version of PSE do you have? The organizer for PSE7 on Windows 7 does not recognize AVCHD files.

[jfpearson]

Elements Organizer Version 8 is now a common shared component to Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements. That is of course the current technology from Adobe and was released long before LR3.

[kwdaves-WfiRTh]

Okay, then when you import an AVCHD file into the Elements 8 organizer, what metadata shows up? Also, does a thumbnail show up or is it just the generic video icon?

[jfpearson]

You get the thumbnail. Under Properties, you can see file type, frame rate, video standard (eg, NTSC), relevant dates (ie, created, modified), file size, resolution, duration, etc. And you can tag keywords (called tags), like the photos, although it would appear that those keywords are written into the Elements catalog and not the file. Click the thumbnail and the file launches to view in the default player.

[kwdaves-WfiRTh]

I have .wmv, Mpeg1, Mpeg2, DV .avi, H.264 and AVCHD video files on my Windows 7 machine. Of those only the .wmv files have file properties that can be edited/written to.

I understand that Lightroom's design is limiting its adaptation to video and that they are using the .thm thumbnail sidecar for thumbnail creation for .mov MP4 files, but for Sony's AVCHD files at least there are two sidecar files neither of which is obviously a thumbnail.

[Thronsen]

Not sure if I correctly understood your post, but LR can generate thumbnails for .mp4s that are imported wihout a sidecar file. As indeed Elements has been able to do for 4 years, and Windows 7 does for free since its pre-release 18 months ago.

I believe even Friedl's plug in was doing this for LR2. There really isnt any trouble generating thumbnails for files that dont have them.

There really isnt that much metadata lost in those manufacturer sidecars. I personally never copy them off my camera, and have never really missed them.Woud it be nice? Sure.

But not supporting one of the most popular video formats at all is a huge blow to the useability of Lightroom for many people who shoot video on their cameras.

[kwdaves-WfiRTh]

I'll put that down to a faulty memory of some posts in the LR3 beta forum on my part then.

[Thronsen]

Nikon likely to be using the AVCHD in its upcoming DSLR releases.

So in addition to a huge market share amongst compacts, and all the top camcorders, AVCHD is likely to be used by one of the top 2 DSLR makers.

http://nikonrumors.com/2010/07/15/meet-the-new-nikon-d3100.aspx#comments

[Butch_M]

Yeah ... but seriously ... aren't their too few Nikon users to even be concerned about it?