Canon C100 AVCHD "Package"

Anyone have any clue how to extract the video files from a C100 AVCHD "package"? I've done the Show Package Contents, and I don't see any plain video files. Or am I missing something?

BenB wrote: Anyone have any clue how to extract the video files from a C100 AVCHD "package"? I've done the Show Package Contents, and I don't see any plain video files. Or am I missing something?

ahh, what honroable guest, Welcome Mr Balser in the amateur* department.... scnr!!

General advice: don't orphan the mts well contained in an AVCHD pkg.
FCPX should notice the AVCHD.pkg as a 'camera' and opens it automatically, allowing you to selectivly import parts of clips.


When you strip-off the wrapper (avchd.pkg>>BDMV.pkg>>Folder 'Stream'>>list of mts), you could run into difficulties, most famous: the green flash, when a recording is spanned upon two/many mts.

The mts is vanilla h.264, could be handled by FCPX (again: I would strongly suggest NOT to orphanize the 'video'), or, could be rewrapped to mp4/mov in a second with approbiate tools.

The 'other' files&folders in that AVCHD.pkg don't eat too much disk-space, so best routine, on my behalve, is copying the whole card into some folder on some harddrive => backup; then import just the parts needed (only copy/not stay in place) => that reduces litter...




* and yes, for sure, a c100 isn't amateurish…

This is not about FCPX recognizing the package, but about not having FCPX force me to duplicate media. Simply isn't an option on this production. MTS is flakey on Macs at the moment, even in El Capitan, but we don't have a choice on this production. I will transcode the MTS files if needed. But a drone pilot on our crew just showed me where in the package the MTS files are.

And yes, I'm very aware of why one should maintain the retarded AVCHD card structure. Camera cards should just give us video files, and hide the rest. It, from a programing/technical stand point, is easy to do. But, they all want to show off how superior they are, and thus do fancy stuff that only gets in the way. When will camera makers grow up and created codecs and camera card formats that are "helpful" and "useful" to NLE's, rather than cause us to jump through more hoops. Simply, technically, unnecessary. Pisses me off the fireguard they have for post-production.

Anyway, this is not an amateur move, this is very much an advanced production move, and must be done, there's no choice in our unique situation on this professional production for the Discovery Channel. Doing my best to not let the producer go to PPro or MC, and stick with FCPX.

BenB wrote: … will transcode the MTS files if needed. ….

fast, simple, batch mode
REMUX
www.macupdate.com/app/mac/35968/remux

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When you import from card, you don't duplicate media.... you copy from card to your harddrive/Library... what's wrong with that? .... You do that with ANY camera material, mov, mp4, r3d, whatever....

And when your DIT first copies the cards material to some drive, this is most likely not a working drive for the NLE....

… anyhow, you're 'busy'.
… when the show is a wrap, we virtually drink a beer or two and talk about AVCHD …

"When you import from card, you don't duplicate media.... you copy from card to your harddrive/Library... what's wrong with that? "

Lot's wrong, as this is not true in our situation. The DIT only has one main RAID, and a backup RAID, limited space, limited budget. He (I) am copying cards to a folder structure for organization, as fast as possible, then returning those cards to the camera crew as fast as possible. Very fast, hectic reality TV show workflow. There is no space for duplicating media.

I'm also trying to set up FCPX Libraries for the producer to start doing string-outs as soon as we wrap shooting this weekend. Keeping all media external works, duplicating it into a Library, well, until it hits our post-production facility, physically, there is not enough drive space. I didn't set this up, the producer did, limited budget, limited drive space.

In a perfect scenario, yes Karsten, what you say is how it "should" work. But this is real life, for Discover Channel, and things are far from perfect, or ideal, or reasonable. We have to be realistic with our limitations. That's what my OP was about, working with reality, not theoretical, ideal circumstances. I think I previous made this clear.

When my crew wraps (producer/director had family emergency, I'm in charge now), we will all sleep for a week. THEY will go celebrate. I have to immediately hire my post crew and get our asses to serious post work on an unreasonable deadline. Reality TV, if the producer wasn't a friend-in-need, I'd be doing other things.