AVCHD format...has anyone edited it using iMovie or Final Cut?

I'm going to be purchasing an HD camcorder, and i'm leaning towards one of the new Canons that records to an internal HD in AVCHD format.

I have a Black Macbook, 2.0GHz C2D, 2GB RAM. I have iMovie 6, and Final Cut Pro 5.0

I know that iMovie 8 supports AVCHD, and Final Cut will as well. I know that working with AVCHD can be very taxing on the computer...

My questions are:
-Will my machine be able to edit AVCHD efficiently with either of these apps?
-I'm reluctant to 'upgrade' to iMovie 8. Does iMovie 7 support AVCHD, or are there any plugins available for 6 or 7 that will let it support the format?

Thanks in advance.


-Nick

I believe it supports it, but it will be VERY taxing on your computer and EXTREMELY slow.

PowerBookG4 said:

I believe it supports it, but it will be VERY taxing on your computer and EXTREMELY slow.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.

Are you referring to iMovie 7?

Would a C2D MBP fair significantly better with editing AVCHD? Or is it just the nature of the beast due to the state of the technology right now?


-Nick

The computer iteself will be extremely slow, HD on any laptop right now is painfully slow. I am currently editing HD on my macbook pro until my mac pro arrives, and it really hurts trying to edit

I see your waiting for you Mac Pro to arrive so you can edit. I'm thinking about getting a Mac Pro for video editing. I'm currenlty using a PC with Sony Vegas 8.0 Pro. I was wondering what kind of hardware did you order for your Mac Pro. Type of Processor, how much ram, which graphics card, how many hard-drives? Just curious. I never used a Mac before. Do you think the transition from PC to Mac is rough?

I think support of AVCHD is only in iMovie 08, FCE 4, and FCP 6. I also believe that all of them convert it to an internal Apple codec.

I have edited a short sequence of 1080i in iMovie 08 and it is fast, because everything brought into iM08 is re-encoded into a thumbnail for the interface to be fast. This extra step of adding thumbnails to a project takes time and is required.

I exported that sequence into FCP 5.1.4 and the size seems to be wonky. 1440x1080 instead of the 1920x1080. So I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. Anyway, I used the Apple Intermediate Codec and editing seemed find to me. (Note my MBP specs to the right.)

I think I've seen a AVCHD importer/converter by a third party, but can't remember details.

FYI, for future reference...I picked up an HD camcordr (Canon HG10), and had a chance to use it with FCE 4.0.

Final Cut Express 4.0, iMovie 7 (aka imove '08), and Final Cut Studio will all deal with AVCHD.

It's NOT taxing on the computer, however. The Apple software transcodes AVCHD into its own codec (AIC) for editing. Editing is not different from any other format.

The importing and transcoding process, however, is a little lengthy. It's longer than realtime for high quality HD clips.

-Nick