Ingesting AVCHD footage

Report · Apr 18, 2019

Hi there

I am looking at switching our editors over from FCPX to Premiere Pro, and potentially using Prelude for ingest. Much of our footage is shot on JVC studio cameras, which record long takes onto SD cards as AVCHD files. Our goal is to have each recorded clip as a separate file, because it makes it simpler for referencing and archiving.

We work on Macs, and our workflow up til now was to open the AVCHD file directly from the SD card with Quicktime Player, then save each recorded clip individually on our workstations or server. Quicktime saves them as H.264 .mov files. This is quite a messy process though, as you can only save one clip at a time, and you need to re-open the AVCHD file each time you want to save a new clip. Also, our original media is recorded at 50i, and this process automatically converts it to 25fps. There are no options to change encoding settings.

I have been performing some tests on Prelude, since I want a software solution that can allow us to ingest all the clips on a card at the same time, and give us flexible options to transcode. Prelude seems to have these features, but when I try it, it is very slow to respond when I select the folder containing the AVCHD file. It takes about 5 minutes to generate previews of the clips, and builds up about 30GB memory in the process! Also, when I select the option to transcode as H.264, and I check the settings in Media Encoder, the only audio options available are AAC and MPEG! Seems crazy they don't give you the option to save PCM audio as part of the file. I could transcode as ProRes or DNxHD, but we film a LOT of footage and don't have enough storage for these large files. Anyway, the original media is H.264 encoded, so apart from improving editing performance, I don't see the point in creating higher bitrate files. I also tried just copying the media using Prelude and not transcoding, but that just gives me another AVCHD file, which is very impractical.

Also, I would like the option of saving different clips on the same SD card to different folders, and being able to name each clip individually. For example, we have 3 TV shows filmed one after another using the same SD card in each camera. So I would like to save the media to different project folders and name accordingly. Hope that makes sense!

Does anyone have a good workflow they can suggest for ingesting and transcoding AVCHD footage using Prelude or Premiere? I've read some of the other discussions, but so far haven't found a nice simple workflow that gives us the options we need.

Thanks

Marc

Report · Apr 18, 2019

I would recommend Transcoding to Cineform, Quality 3, for editing and archiving.

I don't recommend converting to H.264 for file management purposes, as doing so introduces a generational loss before you even begin editing.

Report · Apr 18, 2019

For your needs, Prelude has many options and as it can do multiple rename/save-to steps, I would think could work.

Another option I know is used by some shops is MediaEncoder watch-folders.

Set up the beeded folders within Me. Then drop media in them, and Me does whatever you've set that specific watch foldercto do including moving the media down to the next folder.

Neil