Category Archives: Editing

Editing, Techniques

Converting individual .MTS AVCHD files on Mac OS X

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I have deleted much of this original post since it was not that useful.

Until Final Cut Pro X, Apple did not support AVCHD file formats well. Importing an AVCHD file involved a time consuming and file expanding conversion from AVCHD to either Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) or ProRes codec.  The files are often 3 to 5x larger than their originals. The only benefit was the editing was faster than if the files were still in AVCHD format. And you had to import from the original camera folders – the whole package – you could not import individual .mts files.

Since FCP cannot import individual MTS files (not part of the original file folder layout), I came up with some alternatives.

Option 1 – ACCESS to FAST INTERNET – TRIM EDITS

If you have a very fast Internet connection, just drag the .mts file directly from the camera and upload to Youtube.  When the upload is finished and processing at Youtube is finished, you can use Youtube’s new editing tools to trim your video.

Cons

  • Your files are going be encoded (in the camera) at data rates of 17 to 24 Mbps, which means they will be large. If you have a long video or a slow Internet connection, this may not be the preferred method.

Option 2 – Converting to MP4

Use SmartConverter (free version is okay for this) to extract the MP4 video stream that is hidden inside the AVCHD stream.  The conversion will take seconds or tens of seconds – its fast! – and the file will appear in Movies\SmartConverter.  No transcode has taken place – what you have in your MP4 file is the original bits hidden in the AVCHD file. You can edit the MP4 file but rendering is really slow.

Option 3 – Use FCP7 to Log and Transfer

Standard feature of FCP. Requires the original full camera folder layout. Does not work with individual .mts files.

Option 3A – Use iMovie 8 or newer

Import the files and convert them to huge AIC files. Does not work with individual MTS files.

Option 4 – NEED to convert a single MTS file

Use VoltaicHD from Shedworx.com if you need to convert individual MTS files.

Option 4 A:

Use SmartConverter to convert the .mts to a .mp4 or mov file containing h.264.

Open clip in QT7 Pro (doesn’t seem to work in QT X). Trim as needed. Export to ProRes 422 (LT).

Import clip into FCP and add titles, transitions, overlays, etc, as needed.

Export to Elgato Turbo.264 HD device for fastest conversion to an mp4 file for upload.

Option 4B – Use Turbo.264 HD

You can now use the Turbo.264 HD software to import directly from the camera (AVCHD), and you can mark some editing/trim locations. Turbo.264 HD will import, cut as desired, then re-assemble the pieces into your desired .mp4 output file. See the instruction manual for details.

If you do not have a quad core processor and you do a lot of conversions of video to 720p (in particular) or 1080p, Turbo.264 HD is a great product. It really does speed up the conversion process quite a bit. You can also batch up a whole set of files to convert, then walk away while it does all the work. Keep in mind that the maximum mp4 output bit rate is limited 10 Mbps. That’s fine for 720p but not so good for much 1080p video.

Why not use the famous MPEG Streamclip? Every time I tried to output through the Turbo 264 device, the file ended up with the wrong dimensions.

Bottom line – its possible to work with individual .MTS files. Would be nice of Apple and others had direct AVCHD support without doing file conversions or FCP X, which was late to the game. I do not have FCP X and do not plan to install on my notebook as it is not compatible with my FCP7 projects.

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Editing, Technical, Techniques

Excellent movie editing software available for just $14.99

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Magix Movie Edit Pro 17 HD Software – Sets New Video Editing Standards, Transform Recordings With Special Effects at TigerDirect.com.

I have this product and its excellent and can recommend it. I am not normally using it now because it did not fully support 24p. But for 30p, 60p and 60i video, which is what most people are shooting, this is a great product. In one user interface view, Magix Movie Edit provides a simple iMovie-like editor, while in a timeline view, it performs more like Final Cut, Vegas or Adobe Premiere. Plus it comes with a pre-defined set of very nice animated titles, and many other capabilities.

Update: No wonder about the price – version 18 of the software is now out and is said to properly handle 24p now.  I liked version 17 and suspect 18 will be a fine product.

Cameras, Editing, Technical, Techniques

NeatVideo version 3 is available

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NeatVideo.com has introduced version 3 of their fantastic noise reduction application and plug in for various video editing systems.

Version 3 is available as a half price upgrade for most version 1 and 2 users; recent purchases of version 2 in 2011 may be eligible for an even greater discount. Contact them for information if you fall into that latter group.

From my first quick tests version 3, on my quad core editing system, seems to run about 4x faster than version 2. Prior to this upgrade, NeatVideo required almost an hour per minute of HD video. With version 3, this now runs in just over 15 minutes. Of course, for any lengthy video noise clean up, I let the process run overnight.

NeatVideo examines the noise characteristics of your camera (as reflected in a noise sample of the video) and uses that information to produce excellent noise reduction on most scenes. My own experience is that it works best on film-like grain, the very fine bits that dance around and are especially noticeable in dark areas or in broad areas of contant color (like the sky).

Most noise reduction techniques are primitive in comparison to NeatVideo. Most NR methods just average pixels together within a frame or between frames, which tends to reduce the resolution, turning images to a seemingly plastic look. NeatVideo does not work that way and does a far better job.

I have not used NeatVideo on high ISO (high video gain) images. I know that some use it this way and are pleased with the results. Regardless, if you need to clean up some image noise or, like me, you like clean video whenever possible, I very much recommend use of NeatVideo, with the caveat that for HD, in particular, a multi-core processor (and now supporting GPUs too) and plenty of time is needed for best results.

Usage suggestion: Because NeatVideo takes a lot of time, and editing can require cleaned up video clips to be re-rendered and cleaned up again, I do all my editing first. And then typically apply NeatVideo to the final video just prior to output.

If I only apply NeatVideo to selected short clips, I do not worry about this. But when lengthy clips or an entire video could use some cleanup, I apply NeatVideo as my very last step in the editing workflow, before I produce my output files.

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Cameras, Editing, Technical, Techniques

Reducing image noise in the Canon XH A1

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English: Canon Xh-A1 HDV camcorder
English: Canon Xh-A1 HDV camcorder (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Canon XH A1 is not very old, but it is tape-based, which today seems quaint and dated!

However, the camera shoots excellent images and its 20x zoom lens remains amazing.  Even at 1440×1080 HDV, it shoots sharper and lower noise images than most of the consumer 1920×1080 camcorders.

But when comparing to my Lumix GH-2 in daylight, the XH-A1 has some image noise that resembles film graininess. Some people actually like that – I do not. I like clean and smooth images and prefer clean over sharp.

Some tips that I have discovered may be helpful to others.

If you shoot using the default camera options, the camera applies no noise reduction strategies “out of the box”. Not surprisingly, there will be some image noise.  While each scene is going to be different, I have found that by configuring the custom presets with some noise reduction options, I get very clean imagery.

I am using the following as a starting point:

  • SHP set to -3
  • Sky Detail to set to smooth/soft
  • NR2 set to “Low”.
  • Coring set to +9

Noise reduction can be improved a bit more by setting NR2 to its medium setting, or reducing the sharpness setting a bit more. These modest changes make a very large and noticeable reduction in noise. The NR1 noise reduction option only works on imagery that is not moving or barely moving, otherwise you get “ghost trails” in the video.

You can also manually set the lowest gain setting to -3db (instead of 0 db). For DSLR shooters, the video gain setting on a video camera is the same idea as setting the ISO level. More gain is the same as higher ISO, which also implies, more noise.

I remain unconvinced that the -3db setting makes any difference in noise. It does buy an addition 2x neutral density equivalent, which can be useful in broad daylight.

For maximum sharpness, I have found (as have others) that the sharpest images occur at an aperture of around f/4.0 plus or minus.

I shoot virtually everything in manual modes, usually shutter priority Tv mode, which means I adjust the neutral density filter settings and the shutter speed to get close to around f/4.0. Much above f/5.6 and sharpness starts to degrade.  You can manually set the aperture to f/9.5 and the camera’s automatic features will go as high as f/22! Images at those aperture settings produce garbage! Incredibly soft, grainy and ugly looking – don’t do that! This is the cause of widely reported and unexplained “grainy” footage captured with the XH A1 – using far too high an f-stop for the lens and sensor. The solution is to use ND filters and shutter speed to keep the f-stop in a low range.

Using these tips you can produce some very clean and very sharp video on the XH A1. I recently did some shooting using both the XH A1 and the Lumix GH-2. If you tweak your XH A1 well, it is very difficult to tell the difference between the XH A1 and the GH-2, unless you have a gigantic HDTV. The XH-A1 shoots at 1440×1080 while the GH-2 can shoot at 1920×1080/24p and /30p, or also 1280×720/60p.

  • 1080/24p is 49,766,600 pixels per second.
  • 720/60p is 55,296,000 pixels per second.

Because of how our eyes process images over time, the higher resolution image might not appear as high to our eyes. Weird, huh?

Finally, if you have noisy images already on tape that you would like to clean up, get Neat Video (http://neatvideo.com). This product is fantastic. On my quad core processor, it can take nearly one hour to clean up a minute or two of HD video, but the results are stunning. (I think they just released a new version that may drop the time to 20 to 30 minutes per minute of HD video on my configuration but I have not installed the update yet.)

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Editing, Techniques

The Zombie version of Final Cut Pro 7 lives again

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Gadgetbox – Apple brings back previous Final Cut Pro, sort of.

Well, yeah, sort of.  The new FCP X is incompatible with FCP 7, which it replaced. That created huge headaches for shops that needed to add more FCP 7 workstations to their editing mix – and could not jump on FCP X mid-stream since it was not compatible with existing projects.

I still use FCP 7 but have begun using Sony Vegas because of the uncertainty Apple created with this move. FCP X looked more like a replacement for Final Cut Express – while FCP 7 was dead ended.