AVCHD Final Cut Pro Workflow
I’ve been shooting and editing AVCHD with Final Cut Pro and a Panasonic HMC-150 for just over a year now. I’ve worked out a pretty good workflow that has caused me no problems at all. Here’s how it goes:
- Shoot directly to SD card. I have 4 8GB cards that I rotate through, and get about 52 minutes per card.
- Immediately copy cards to an external USB HDD upon return to the office.
- I create a new folder, numbered in my archive system on the archive drive, numbered 09-100, 09-101, etc.
- AVCHD folder and all contents are copied to the archive drive.
- Carbon Copy Cloner is set to back up the external drive to another external USB HDD (from a different manufacturer) each night.
- Archive drives can be USB, because active editing is not done from them. Archive only.
- Final Cut Pro’s scratch disks are set to an internal 2-drive RAID.
- Log & Transfer the footage to ProRes 422.
- Edit.
- Export.
- I keep all folders in the Log & Transfer list, which makes Re-Batch Capturing a very quick and simple process.
Great! I’ve seen and appreciated many of your posts over at the Apple FCP forum (I made my way over here from Shane’s blog).
After about 6 months of messing with my AVCHD .mts Canon camcorder files and trying to find the “best” workflow in FCP 7, I think I’ve finally got the plan from shoot to archive. (It all seemed so much easier a few years back with FCP 5 and DV.)
I just realized last night that after I transcode the files to Apple ProRes 422 and edit and export and finish the project, I don’t have to keep the transcoded APR files. What a storage relief!
Now, I’m trying to to make the final decision as to whether to keep the SD card file structure intact and use Log and Transfer (and re-batch capture down the line when needed as you mentioned) or use Clipwrap 2 and pre-rename the .mts files and file them in a more user-friendly kinda fashion. (I’ll likely wrestle with this for another day or two and then pick one and go.)
Anyway, I also enjoyed your “Log & Transfer Clip Naming” article.
Thanks,
Dave