AVCHD/DTS Capture

Hi All,

I apologise if this has been covered, i have seen a lot of posts about AVCHD capture however still have questions.

I have the Sony HDR11 (think that's the model) and would like to capture the HD video and DTS sound from my cam. Looking at the posts and paying around with FCE it seems that this product converts from AVCHD into Apple format. Is it a safe assumption that this down conversion is done at a cost to the video/sound quality? I have captured hours of African safari which i do not want to sacrifice the quality off....

Is there a product for the Mac that will capture AND edit the AVCHD/DTS without converting? If so, what?

I don't know about the sound. The spec page for FCE does not mention 5.1 surround sound. The FCP (Studio) page does. This may be a pro level thing.

The video conversion is to a very high quality, so you wouldn't likely notice loss in quality. Don't think of it as a down conversion. It is only a conversion, in this case, to AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec), which will create large files.

The only conversions that do not suffer from loss are when converting from one lossless format to another. This is unusual even in the pro world.

If you post that African safari footage to a public site, please let us know about it.

Finally, when you mention your camera model, don't think that is the model, look at the camera which should have it printed somewhere. I had to guess to look up some information on it.

Xtep, thanks for your input. I've been doing some research and understand that this conversion will consume a large amount of disk space, as such i've bought an external scratch disk to use.

It seems that in Pro (like Express) it will take a 5.1 source from the Cam and downmix it to stereo, which is REALLY annoying as i can't see an easy method for extracting both video/audio and have it sync correctly in the one app (not keen on the idea of having to use a seperate app to extract the 5.1 and then overlap with the video later....this seems like a backward step).

Does anyone know of an app that will retain the 5.1 audio? Provided there is no notable difference to the HD video i don't mind having to convert the AVCHD prior to editing, but not at a cost of a downmixed stereo track.

Yes you are correct, it is the HDR-SR11 ;-)

I have one more question on the import. If i copy the files directly from the Cam, would i maintain the 5.1 audio or would PCE/P downmix to stereo when i try to open them??