Sunday 5 January 2014

Importing AVCHD video from a Sony NEX-6 for Final Cut Pro X

My previous camera the Canon 600D gave me the video files as individual files that could be grabbed from the correct folder off the camera and had dragged straight in to be used and edited in Final Cut Pro X. With the Sony NEX-6 there is a folder which looks like a file that is called AVCHD and as you shoot more video the clips get added to that single file. It seems like it would be a more difficult thing to do, to get video from the camera into Final Cut Pro X, but it is not really much more difficult than before. In this video I show you three different ways of getting the video clips from the AVCHD file into your video editing software.

Import AVCHD video into Final Cut Pro X

The simplest way to do this process is to use the keyboard shortcut Command I to bring up the import window. You can then choose the AVCHD file which you might do directly from the camera or you might have copied the file from the camera to your hard drive first. I have found that it isn't any slower to do this on the camera and when you are ready to delete the file it is better to do it from the camera menu system anyway.
I found that the database of the movies in the camera can get a bit messed up if you delete from the computer rather than the camera. I also know that sometimes with a SD card I can be a could idea to format it using the camera software from time to time also. The size of the file is reasonable using this method and for most people it will be the way to go for now.
You will see within the import window all of the video clips that you have on your camera and you can choose to bring in just one of them, some of them or all of them. In the video I selected just one of the video clips and it doesn't take long for the video to be ingested into the Final Cut Pro video editing system.

Using specialised software to import AVCHD into Final Cut Pro X

I found on the Mac App Store some free software that is actually called free AVCHD to MOV. The application is very easy to use and it also has a number of presets to make it even easier. Drag-and-drop the AVCHD file into the application window and it will then show you the video clips with the details, so that you can choose which ones you want. In the video I bring in the same file that I imported in directly so that we can compare the differences between the import methods.
The conversion that I chose to use with this software is a preset specifically for Final Cut Pro X or other high end video editing applications. This is the Apple ProRes codec 422 and there is much more information contained within the resulting file. Because there is more information contained within, the size of file is therefore rather large, in fact you might say it is completely massive, enormous or huge. In this case the file which started out as about 140 MB grew to very nearly 2 GB in size. For many of us there is no advantage to using a file of this size and in fact it slows us down because of having to do the conversion in the first place. It could even be that you need to have a larger amount of memory on your computer to be able to work with these files efficiently. Certainly, for me using these type of converted files is rather like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Using QuickTime to convert from AVCHD to h.264

There is talk that the QuickTime format is on the way out and to be superseded by other video formats, but I think it will take some time before that happens completely. You can use the application QuickTime To convert your video from AVCHD to individual video clips that you can use and edit in Final Cut Pro X. You only have to go to the file menu and click on open and choose the AVCHD file. Up pops a window which will give you the option to choose whichever of the files you want to convert or open.
So you have the video clip open in QuickTime and you can do one of two things. First of all you could use the File And Save menu option to save the file out in the correct format or what you can do is to use the share option on the menus. There you have a number of preset choices and the one that I used to convert the video clips was the 1080p which converts it to the h.264 codec. It is a simple process to get the files into the Final Cut Pro X application either using the import window or just by doing a drag and drop.

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