Panasonic TM700 1080/60p 28mbps files

[ruzun]

The newest panasonic camcorder, the TM700 records video at 1080/60p in an MPEG-4 format.  Can CS5 import these files, and if so, what would the logical output format be?  720/60p perhaps, or can you output 1920x1080/60hz progressive?  I believe the files have an MTS extension but since AVCHD doesn't allow 60p it's a sort of non-standard format.

According to camcorderinfo.com few editors will accept the Panasonic files, but the quality of the footage is significantly better than the cameras 1920x1080/60i AVCHD mode.

I'm wondering if you could include clips from this camcorder in a CS5 project, and if so what output resolution/framerate would make the most sense (for computer playback I imagine, I don't think Blu-Ray or AVCHD discs support 1080/60p data).

Seems like a great new camera feature, but it's not clear to me how you would distribute the final edited file in such a way as to take advantage of the 60hz progressive nature of the original footage.

[Harm_Millaard]

how best to copy to blu-ray in 1080 60p ?

Not possible, it does not conform to the BR specs. EOS.

[ruzun]

As mentioned earlier, 1080/60p is not supported on BD or AVCHD media in any way.  I would say if you are interested in the motion characteristics of 60p then export everything as 720/60p, that will give you the best motion results.

Otherwise you are stuck with 1080/60i basically, I do not believe 1080/30p is supported on BD or AVCHD media either.

The main reason I would want a TMC700 would be for 1080/60p capture of fast moving birds etc.  In that case I would deliver everything as 720/60p since almost all deliverable formats and Pc's support that fine.

If I were just doing regular scenic video etc, I would shoot the material in 1080/60i and use that across the board in editing/delivery.  The TMC700 is still a great 1080/60i camcorder that has the bonus of being able to shoot in 1080/60p if you choose to.

-Roger

[ddhir]

Roger & Harm,,,thanks for the quick inputs.

If footage is shot in 1080 60p and delivered in 720 60p, I will still not be able to capture it on blu ray as it does not support 60p, correct ?

Is there any other media that can store/playback 60p ?

Also, the editing software (HD Writer AE 2.1) that came alongwith TM700 can edit and deliver in 1080 60p, but it seems that only the TM700 can playback the footage as it will be 60p............or can it be played back via a fast PC (what would be the minimum configuration) ?

[Harm_Millaard]

720/60P is perfectly acceptable for BRD, as is 1080/30P and 1080/60i.

[Gio_Willis]

I tried to play a 1080/60p on my mac pro with no problems . However I think that one of the Blu Ray settings provided by CS5 is more than enough. These camcoders take advantage of filming in 1080/50(or 60p) and the progressive gives a sort of film-grain effect to the movie. When exporting I personally think it is quite irrelevant if1080/25i or 24p is more than enough and preserves the actual quality of the original footage, what I am trying to say is that it is not visible to the human eye. As far as playback is concerned on a computer, the result depends on many factors, including graphic card.

[kisshoma]

Is Adobe Premiere CS5 for Mac able to import MTS files from the Panasonic TM700 in the 1080p60 format?

I have tried this with the trial version and the Premiere CS5 says that the format is not supported...

I also tried in a Windows 7 virtual machine with the Adobe Premiere CS5, and it is working. What is going on?

A bug on CS5 for Mac software?

Have anyone tried this on a mac?

[Gio_Willis]

There is absolutely no problem in Adobe CS5 Premiere Pro, note that the trial version has only some codecs and limitations on tapless formats, I am importing those files with no problems in the purchased version.To have all the features you will have to buy the products. I am using it in mac environment with all the advantages of outputting to Blu Ray : Remember that when you output to Blu Ray the supported formats are 1080i25 or 1080i30 for players compatibility reason, whether it is progressive or interlaced is based on the original footage.

[kisshoma]

Yes, I know the HD standards, and I know this is not it. I just had problems importing the files on the trial mac version. Thank you for the feedback. Is there any other "good" program out there that you know (besides premiere) that can work with those files on mac? I'm just trying to explore all possibilities before buying something.

[Gio_Willis]

Not on a mac. Final Cut does not support these files . Some people convert them using ClipWarp or Videopier HD . The only suitable solution is Premiere Pro CS5.

[AANNBBAA]

Some of you may be on this thread already but just in case you havn't seen it yet, theirs a computer playback discussion going on at around the bottom of this page:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1225613&page=75

[paulbenn099]

Looks like Panasonic is protecting their AG-HMC40 by cutting off the TM700 AVCHD at 17Mbps, then teasing us with this 28Mbps 60p mts that we can't do anything with. Curse you Panasonic marketing strategists!

Dear Panasonic: If you add 24Mbps AVCHD to the TM700, with 30p and 24p, you will put Canon and Sony out of this prosumer business, you corner the market. Just a thought. And you could do it with a firmware upgrade I bet. Then just figure out some other way to differentiate the HMC40.

Interestingly the camcorderinfo.com review of the TM700 is much better than their review of the HMC40. They didn't like the HMC40 at all.

I've tried using CS4 Media Encoder (MainConcepts) to convert the mts to 1080 30p h264 and I see noticeable blur on movement. 720 60p looks pretty good. 1080 60p is an option also but playback is very jerky.

I'd like to try a 1080 60i output, but MainConcepts doesn't offer that. Why? Just curious.

In general, is there a way to convert 60p to 30p or 24p with minimal loss of quality? I.e. if I could turn the TM700 mts into ProRes 422, even if the 422 file was huge, would that just leave me with the same problem in a different source format? I.e. losing too much quality going to 30p or 24p?

At this point I'm leaning toward the Canon HF S20 because it has the best usable image (24Mbps AVCHD), albeit with crappy low light performance, because I'm not seeing any solutions to this 60p problem.

Paul

[SymbioticIC]

Just a different thought on an alternative workflow for Final Cut as some people here have referred to and asked about: transcoding the 60p .mts to ProRes422 shows (to my eye) absolutely no loss of quality.  (even ProRes LT works well)  In FCP going to 30p or 60i is a no-brainer, as you simply drop whole frames or every-other line, and editing in ProRes is very nice and not so CPU demanding.  Encoding your final output using x264, with its multitude of quality options to play with, gives great output.  (arguably better than MainConcept's H.264)   I need to do further tests, but the consensus is that choosing an output bit rate say >= 30Mbps makes it virtually indistinguishable from the original .mts.

Although I haven't tried yet, I understand using Cinetools (part of FCP) you can also get a well-interpolated 24p if desired from 60p.  (of course this may not have that "film look" that so many desire, but that is caused by other factors as well)

Eventually I'd like to compare to the Premiere workflow, which is attractive for not requiring 2 conversions.  But I must honestly say I'm surprised I don't see a generational loss using Final Cut like I expected - ProRes really works.  And the TM700 gives just beautiful footage at 60p!

[paulbenn099]

Ok, that sounds like a solution. I was thinking 60p -> 60i would be a minimal loss of quality, but I don't see any option for that in Adobe/MainConcepts. Right now I'm a PC Adobe guy and not sure I want to make the investment in time and $ to go to the Mac FCP world.

Either way it looks like a lot of transcoding so probably will go to a Core i7 Nvidia box as Adobe's CUDA support makes a large difference there. And that setup is a LOT cheaper on PC (also it's a good excuse for a decent gaming box ;-).

Is there a converter that will do mts to ProRes 422 that utilizes CUDA?

[paulbenn099]

What did you use to convert mts to ProRes 422?

[SymbioticIC]

I tried both Clipwrap and Toast, both of which worked.

[Gio_Willis]

I am not having the above mentioned issues working with cs5 in mac environment , maybe it is the quicktime engine. I work perfectly with footage 1080 50p . Blu ray has some limitaions of its own . If you want to preserve 60 or 30p (NTSC) or 50p 25p (PAL) you will have to render in 720p . The maximum resolution allowed by blu Ray discs as far as concerns european standards, are 1080i24p or 1080i25i

[Guest]

I have been doing some extensive testing this week, after reading all the posts in this and other forums.Editing TM-700 video files:
I have tried the demos for Adobe Premiere CS5, Vego Pro 9, Vegas Movie Studio HD, Corel Videostudio Pro X3, Pinnacle, PowerDirector, and Edius 5.5.
I shot some basic footage at full 1080/60p.
I used files converted with HD writer to .m2ts vs just copying the .MTS files directly to hard disk.
Most programs will open both types of files, and allow editing. However, to save and reencode the files was a problem.Only Premiere and Vegas (both versions) had the ability to change custom settings to 1920x1080 59.94 (or 60)p. Premiere was via the H.264 preset, and Vegas was via the Sony AVC preset and Mainconcept mpeg2 presets.Premiere - I could not hear any sound when importing and previewing files (it said there were no audio tracks). Also, the only template available is H.264, and only creates .mp4 files. There is no option to keep the video in the same format at the original .m2ts or .MTS. It encoded the video, but the result had no sound. I'm not sure if these file choices or sound problems are a limitation of the trial version.Vegas - Although it appeared promising that I could select 59.94 frames per second as a custom option, in both the Sony AVC preset and Mainconcept mpeg2 presets, neither would encode. Encoding would not begin, and reported "An Error occured while creating the media file. The reason for the error could not be determined."
Encoding to any other preset worked fine.Videostudio Pro X3 was also able to edit the original video, and burn to blu-ray. Unfortunately, the video was reduced to 1080i. Video files could only be saved at 1920x1080 29i (24 p not even an option)The included HD Writer software is very basic, but will do the job.
If you simply want to trim your videos, add some basic transitions, and save the file in original format, this is still the simplest option. It is an awkward program, and to trim video, you don't actually mark in and out points, you "delete" unwanted pieces of video. You select the opposite - what you don't want, as opposed to what you want.Playback of 1080/60p on computer:
I have tried Windows Media Player and PowerDVD 10 Ultra. I also tried with and without DivX installed. I also turned off Windows Aero, and as many programs running in the background as possible.
Initially, I thought that PowerDVD was the best, with fewest skipped frames. But it was still not perfect.
Then I downloaded Splash lite. Wow. So far, perfectly smooth playback of both .MTS and .M2TS files from the camera. Not bad for a free program!So for playback, Splash lite works the best for me.
For editing, HD Writer is a basic fix for now.
Premiere CS5 and Vegas are promising, but I need some questions answered:Can anyone who has full versions of Vegas or Premiere confirm if
1) In Premiere - is the audio present when previewing video, and is it present after reencoding clips?
2) In Premiere - can you encode to anything other than .mp4 and keep 1080/60p?
3) In Vegas - has anyone been able to encode files without the error at 1080/60p? What are the detailed settings used?

I discovered another interesting thing about playing 1080/60p video...
With both PowerDVD Ultra, and Splash lite, I disabled hardware acceleration in the options of each program - and voila!! Perfectly smooth playback!!
Strange, that with hardware accerleration on, video plays worse.Something for others to try - disable hardware acceleration in your video players for smoother playback!

[ddhir]

dptempid,

Thanks for sharing some really good insights and information.

For 1080 60p video, I too found HD Writer to be basic but it works well......and your suggestion on Splash Lite was great...........the playback of 1080 60p video is really smooth even on my PC that has a Pentium 4 dual-core processor.

Now if only Blu-ray could include 1080 60p in the standards......then we won't have to downgrade the 1080 60p to 720 60p or 1080 60i to record on Blu ray discs, which can be shared easily !

[kisshoma]

I found Vegas to be confused on many things... so I dropped it.

Premiere however is able to encode in many formats.

H264 is indeed the one I used for keeping the same format, but it can also do flash in the same 1080/60p, however is using the same codec. You can create other custom solutions for encoding (presets). It is normal that H264 to be used for 60p. Not many codecs will know the framerate.

No problems with the sound, from tm700 it gets it in 5.1 - a master track. You can do anything in premiere after that.

[Guest]

Thanks for the information.

However, the closest output format I can see is .mp4 (via the H.264 encoding option).

This is different than the native .MTS (from the camera) or .m2ts format (once imported to the computer from the camera using HD Writer).

Is there any difference in the end between .mp4 and .MTS or .m2ts?

Could you outline your steps for setting up your project settings in Premeire for TM 700 files?

Also, I would appreciate knowing what settings you chose for encoding to keep the files in native format.

[kisshoma]

MTS, MP4, AVI and so on are nothing but a barrel of holding video information (containers). The codec you are using can be different.

Though some codecs are used more with some formats than others (some even trade marks), you can, in theory, use anything with anything.

The fact that Panasonic uses MTS means nothing, it could have been AVI as well. It is still coded hardware by the camera with AVCHD codec. AVCHD codec is not very good at encoding video files so they are not small (like divx for example which is much better).

DVDs, Blurays and so on, each have specs, because of the hardware used when you insert the disk into them. They have to be all the same so they can play on any hardware device that supports them.

Now, if you take Bluray, the codec will be H.264, so you can tweet the settings of that codec for better quality or less space. I like this better then others as it gets you to bluray compatibility and you can choose to encode the sound as per bluray specs (AIC is one codec).

You don't need a special program (like the knee made HD Writer) to transform the container of the video information from MTS to M2TS. Premiere can handle most containers. It's enough if you plug your camera with an usb cable and copy the files by hand, then import them in Premiere.

Project settings in premiere, must be custom, as the 60p format is not an usual format, so you need to choose resolution of 1920x1080 with 59.9 fps. The pixel must be square (1x1) with Panasonic. Sound it will probably be a 5.1.

When you export the video files, it very much depends on the codec you will want. Some of the codecs predefined in Premiere will let you custom them to 1920x1080 and 59p: Flash, H264, and some others. Flash (flv) is still a container, proprietary to flash, and is nothing but a flavor of H264. You will see some differences in the codec it uses for sound as well. You can do anything you want really, it just takes you a while to get all the settings you want right.

I personally use H264 for exporting, and I do two of them: 720/59.9 fps for preserving the motion, and 1080/59.9 for keeping it for posterity. But when exporting, you can change the frame rate or anything else, and get it to bluray specs for example.

[Guest]

Thanks for the helpful information.

Just to clarify, there only appears to be 1 option in Premeire where I can encode 1920x1080 progressive at 60 fps with a high bit rate like 25,000 or greater.  This is via the H.264 template (which saves as .mp4).  Is this exactly the same format and quality as the originial .MTS files from the camera, just in a "different package" as you mention?

I can't seem to find an option to output files in Premiere in .MTS or .m2ts if I wanted to keep the files exactly the same package.

My goal is to trim some clips, add some transitions, and make some home movies.  I would like to view this primarily on my computer or on my HDTV which can display 1080/60p, and I would like to preserve the original 1080/60p quality.  I will eventually also make blu-rays, or upload some movies to you tube, but I would like to keep the original trimmed video files for archival purposes in the original format.  I realize the files would need to be reencoded then to meet blu-ray specs.

[kisshoma]

Yes, you can modify the H264 to be whatever you want for output.

One thing you must understand is that it cannot be exactly the same, just because it is a different codec. The .MTS extension doesn't really matter. It is only about the codecs. So, TM700 encodes with AVCHD. If you want exactly the same, you would need to encode with that codec, or to choose to not compress the source (which is somehow impossible if you modified at least a transition or added something...). I'm not at my computer right now, and I don't remember seeing the AVCHD codec. It might be there somewhere in Premiere.

Now, for H264, if you want a similar rendering experience with the original, you need to create a H264 template, choose same 1920x1080 resolution, same fps as the camera (59.9), same pixel rate (1x1) (actually that is from the project if I remember correctly) and then it all depends on the Mb per second rate. I would suggest 2 pass encoding, as that would get you to a slightly better quality. You will also choose to encode the audio.

So, the best possible quality you can achieve with H264 I would say it is around 50Mbps, however that would get you to very high file dimensions.

I believe, that 20-30 is a very good compromise. I don't think you will notice the difference.

One must understand the the MbPS rate does not mean the same thing with two different codecs, just because one will encode better the same information, so the fact that it displays it at a certain rate doesn't mean the same thing. Try 20 and 50 and if you can see the difference, than you can choose.

[kisshoma]

Rectification: I just checked. H264 and AVCHD (from panasonic and sony) are at the same codec specs, so you can use 28Mbps for output. I was under the impression that it is a flavor of it. A well...

[Jeff Bellune]

AVCHD is a specific subset of H.264.  So, all AVCHD is H.264, but not all H.264 is AVCHD.

-Jeff