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How to edit AVCHD footage on Mac OSX? Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 and Voltaic to the rescue!

I’ve written a few times recently about the difficulties people have had editing video footage in the AVCHD format that is used by the new generation of Disc-based HD Cameras such as Sony’s HDR-SR7 and HDR-SR8. The main issue when I first wrote about it was that there wasn’t really *any* software available to edit the footage regardless of whether you were using a Mac OSX or Windows based system. Although the cameras had been out since mid 2006 the first fully capable software for editing the footage only became available with the recent release of Sony’s Vegas 7 editing software for Windows.

Ok, so you can edit AVCHD on Windows, but how do you edit AVCHD on Mac OSX?

So things were looking up at least for the Windows using owners of AVCHD capable camcorders, things weren’t looking nearly so bright for those of us wanting to edit AVCHD footage on Apple Mac OSX. Fortunately there are at least a couple of options now for Mac OSX systems. The first option was a bit of a surprise, albeit a very pleasant one!

Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 update adds AVCHD transfer capabilities

Apple’s own Final Cut Studio 2 suite had a minor update for Final Cut Pro to version 6.0.1 which added the capability to transfer the AVCHD footage. The reason why this update was a little bit of a surprise is that Apple were not listed on the Official AVCHD Consortium website, at least not until recently. The transfer process converts the AVCHD footage into either Apple’s new ProRes 422 codec or the Apple Intermediate codec. One very important point to keep in mind here though is that the AVCHD transfer on Mac OSX only works on Intel processor based Macs!

Apple has posted a few technote articles regarding working with AVCHD in Final Cut Pro which are worth reading, here’s a few key points to keep in mind:

  • AVCHD support is available only on Intel-based Macintosh computers.
  • DVD-based AVCHD camcorders are not currently supported in Mac OS X.
  • Standard definition video recorded with AVCHD camcorders cannot be accessed in the Log and Transfer window.
  • AVCHD footage is transcoded to the Apple ProRes 422 codec or Apple Intermediate Codec.
  • When you choose to transfer AVCHD audio in the Logging area, audio is automatically mixed down to stereo.
  • AVCHD files are transfered as entire files from beginning to end.

You can find further information in the following Apple technote, Technote 305997: About transferring AVCHD footage.

VoltaicHD from Shedworx.com

Final Cut Studio is a great solution for editing AVCHD footage on Mac OSX, however, if you don’t have Final Cut Studio and can’t afford the £849 to buy it, or if you’ve got Final Cut Studio but you’re using a PowerPC based system (in case you missed the two references above, AVCHD support in FCP is only available on Intel processor based machines!) then there is an alternative – VoltaicHD.

VoltaicHD is a $30 utility that converts AVCHD footage into HDV 1080i Apple Intermediate Codec format Quicktime movies. The Voltaic website sums up it’s purpose clearly: "VoltaicHD converts your HD movie clips into a Mac-friendly format, ready for editing in iMovie HD and Final Cut Express HD". This shouldn’t be taken as a limitation, the converted footage can be used on any video editing application.

The purchase price of $34.99 is a lot less than the cost of Final Cut Pro and the advantage of working with both Intel and PowerPC based Macs is also pretty awesome. It’s a pretty new application but it is at least past the version 1.0 mark and is fairly stable, although the Voltaic FAQ page does list a few common technical issues that they are working on.

It’s worth reading through the VoltaicHD FAQ as they answer quite a lot of common questions about the issues encountered converting AVCHD footage using Voltaic. Some of the questions answered are:

  • How long does the conversion take?
  • How big are the output files?
  • What is the output format
  • Is there any quality loss in the conversion?

The VoltaicHD development blog is well worth reading as it gives the background to the past and future development of VoltaicHD. There are also some screencasts which are very useful, and finally there is a demo version of Voltaic available to download so you can try it out before paying any money for a licence. The only limitations in the demo are that it will only convert a single file less than 20mb and a limit of up to 10 conversions. However, for $35 buying a licence isn’t going to break the bank!

So which is best, Final Cut Pro or Voltaic?

Well, at the moment I can’t say, I haven’t tried either of these options at the time of writing. I have just purchased Final Cut Studio so I am now in a position to do a bit of a comparision between these two applications, I’ve had a fair bit of footage sitting waiting for the time that I would be able to edit it without having to resort to a Windows PC running Vegas 7! ;)

I’ll hopefully post a bit of a comparison once I get a chance to try both applications out.

But what about Adobe Premiere Pro CS3? Doesn’t it edit AVCHD?

Although Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 has now returned to the Mac platform neither the Mac or Windows versions supports the AVCHD format. There were quite a few rumours and unofficial statements by Adobe employees that indicated that it may have support for AVCHD but I have had it confirmed that there is definitely no support for it in Premiere Pro CS3, although it does look likely that it wil be in the next version. Perhaps there will be an incremental update to bring some kind of compatibility there in the way that Apple have added it to Final Cut Pro? Until that happens Voltaic is the best option for Premiere Pro CS3 Mac users.

Update #1 – Sony HDR-SR1 / SR7 Apple Tech Support Article

Someone posted a link in a comment below to an Apple tech Support article called “iMovie ?08 and Sony HDR-SR1 and HDR-SR7 compatibility” which is worth reading if you’re using one of those cameras, especially if you’re using a G5 processor based system rather than an Intel processor. It just goes to show that Voltaic is definitely a very useful application for those on non-intel, older machines who want to work with AVCHD footage.

Update #2 – VoltaicHD now on Windows! Convert AVCHD for use in Windows Movie Maker

You can now get VoltaicHD for Windows, so if you’re a PC user looking for an easy way to edit AVCHD footage and use it in Windows Movie Maker then go check out VoltaicHD for PC or read my more recent post Budget AVCHD editing in Windows: VoltaicHD for PC & Windows Movie Maker!

Update #3 – Burn Blu-ray compatible and AVCHD DVDs using RevolverHD for Mac

Once you’ve edited your HD footage then what do you do with it? Well, if you want to put it onto an blu-ray compatible DVD then now there’s an easy way! Find out more about RevolverHD.

Update #4 – VoltaicHD 2 released in October 2009

Shedworx have released version 2 of VoltaicHD adding new features such as preview of AVCHD / AVCHD Lite clips, native editing of AVCHD video and the ability to upload video to YouTube. I’ve written a post with an overview of VoltaicHD 2.

~Rick

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Free phones, now free computers, why not free TVs?

If you’re in the UK reading this then you’ve quite probably seen the TV adverts for PCWorld which offer Laptops for free (or a discount of £300 on other laptops) if you sign up for a 2 year Orange broadband contract.

I’d heard about Orange in France offering some kind of deal like this but it’s interesting to see it happening here now. The fact that they are doing this raises a few issues, or points of interest anyway.

PC’s are now a commodity

This is kind of a sweeping statement but mainly I mean that PCs, and laptops especially, have become much cheaper. To the point that they are cheap enough to offered for free upon signing up for a 2 year contract for internet access!

Mobile phones are already a commodity

That whole model is pretty familiar, sign up with any mobile phone company for 12 months, 18 months or even better 24 months and they’ll offer you an increasingly better range of free mobile phones to choose from. Interestingly though, a lot of these phones are worth a lot more than a £300 laptop!

Seeing the parallel between these two business models it’s making me wonder why the cable and satellite TV companies don’t do the same?

Calling Sky & Virgin, where’s my free HD TV?

In as much as phones and laptops have become something of a commodity High Definition HD TVs are quickly following suit. PC World list 26" HD Ready LCD TVs for about £350, if a TV costs only this much then why not offer a good deal on televisions when signing up for a contract with you local cable or satellite TV company?

The costs of all these products is fairly similar, I can’t see any reason why this couldn’t be done? One added benefit is that it would greatly increase the uptake in viewing HD television and help bring more momentum behind the HD format It’s really common to change mobile phones every year or so (at least on pay monthly contracts in the UK it is anyway!) and people often upgrade computers on average between 2 – 4 years of usage. But Televisions have always had a much longer shelf life, it’s not uncommon for people to have TVs that are at least 5 years old but possibly over 10 years old!

Many people’s timescale for buying a new TV will be several years away, but they will likely switch between cable or satellite TV providers several times within the lifetime of that TV, so why not offer free TVs in exchange for signing up for a fixed contract?

Well, I do have one reason why not…

Just to balance this whole argument I have one reason why this would be a bad thing, it’s basically why the frequent offering of free mobile phone and now free computers is a bad thing – the environmental impact.

I’ve written above that phones (and computers now) are a commodity, there’s something about that I don’t like. People’s attitudes towards technology increasingly becomes far more throw away. A recent upgrade for my mobile phone landed me a shiny new Nokia N95 for free in exchange for an 18 month contract, the reality is that this device sells on Amazon at the time of writing for about £450. There’s no way I would ever have spent that kind of money on a phone, despite how smart a gadget it is. It’s easy to see how the true cost of these devices is lost on people, they’re just seen as free phones1.

It’s a little bit of a scary thought to see computers go that way and perhaps be even worse to see TVs be viewed that way. The environmental impact could be pretty huge. Not that the impact of these devices isn’t huge already of course! I appreciate that this kind of technology fills landfills regardless but at least when you pay for something you are likely to value it more than if it is just given to you. Wow, that sounds like a life lesson a parent would teach their child!2

~Rick

  1. This is a purposeful decision by Apple in regards to the cost of the iPhone, it is not sold as a subsidised device but rather at it’s full market cost. Apple products tend to buck the trend of being ‘commodity’ items but rather as desirable objects.
  2. Well, I am a parent and I will teach my child that lesson ;)

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Don’t mess with the Basra Badgers!

There was an interesting post on the BBC News website today entitled "British blamed for Basra badgers" which starts of with the following paragraphs:

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic.

In the interest of public safety I thought I would post a few links to help educate people about Badgers:

Top Ten Badger Facts

  1. Badgers don’t dance in formation
  2. Badgers have clear likes and dislikes food wise
  3. Badgers don’t actually play football
  4. Len Badger did play football though
  5. The collective name for a group of badgers is a cete
  6. Badgers were planned to replace British Troops leaving Iraq in order to maintain the overall strength of British deployment in Iraq
  7. Ruth Badger had nothing to do with the Basra attacks
  8. Badger is a place in Shropshire, UK.
  9. A Breezy Badger may be installed on your computer

Picture of Honey badger
This Honey Badger was unavailable for comment.

~Rick

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Not 118-118 but 1-18-08…

There’s an interesting trailer for a new movie by JJ Abrams of Lost fame, it’s currently only titled as “1-18-08” but apparently is codenamed “Cloverfield”.

There’s a trailer for it on the Apple Quicktime Trailers site but I did manage to find a version on YouTube:

It looks very intriguing, hard to say exactly what the films about, although it appears to be some kind of monster. In true “Lost” tradition there are some clue sites around on the web:

~Rick

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Nokia N95, more thoughts, token iPhone reference ;)

Well, I’ve had a week or so to play around with my Nokia N95 now although I haven’t really made use of the music or video playing aspect of it other than to record a little bit of video myself. But here’s a few more thoughts about my experience with it so far.

Get a case

On my old Nokia N80 I used to find it sometimes slid open whilst in my pocket, although I don’t think I ever called anyone by accident fortunately. But with the N95 sliding open both upwards and downwards I find this happens way more easily. I’m going to buy myself another Crumpler PP90 neoprene case to, hopefully, keep it from opening up. On the plus side though with the N95, it will auto-lock itself whether it has been slid open or not if the keys are not touched. So if it does get unlocked accidentally it will at least lock itself again.

Use the camera in good lighting

Despite the fact that there is a 5 megapixel camera in the N95 I’ve found that it still likes reasonably light environments to take good shots. Although a couple of test photos and video that I shot at home definitely performed better than my N80 would have done, so there is an improvement there and a lot closer to performing like a regular digital still camera worth it’s salt would do. You do need to give the autofocus / image stabilising time to kick in before you can take a shot so it’s not great if you need a snap in a hurry. I also like that there is a lense cover so you can stop dust getting into it, although I keep forgetting to close it!

Here’s a couple of sample shots, one taken with my N95 and one with my N80 for comparison.

Photo taken with Nokia N95
Picture taken with Nokia N95 – Click image to view full size image


Photo taken with Nokia N80
Picture taken with Nokia N80 – Click image to view full size image


WIFI Connection much easier to use

Connecting to wifi with the N95 is much easier than the N80, using the N80 you could browse for open WIFI networks using Connection Manager (Connect->Conn. mgr->Availab. WLAN) but when you tried to use ‘Options->Define access point it basically redirected you to go into ‘Connection Settings’ and do it there instead. A total wild goose chase and very unuser-friendly. I don’t know if that is just on the Orange firmware or not, maybe that works for some people?

On the N95 you can simply click browse for a WIFI network and simply select and join it by providing the appropriate password etc. Much better.

It’s available in the UK, unlike the iPhone

Unlike an iPhone you can get it here and now in the UK! I really don’t intend to compare the N95 with Apple’s iPhone as I don’t think it’s right to compare them feature by feature. Also the fact that I don’t have an iPhone means I can personally do it! My friend Alyn in Toronto has gotten his hands on one though (and has managed to activate it!), Alyn has written a pretty good overview of his experiences with it so far, minus the phone calling part, although he’s going to test that out on a visit to the US very soon.

I got Alyn to send over a couple of photos of it with Suburbia in the browser just so I could see he wasn’t faking it ;)

Suburbia.org.uk on the iPhone!

Suburbia.org.uk portrait mode in Safari on iPhone

I also got Alyn to send over a picture of it next to some of his other devices just for size comparison.

Dell Axim, iPhone, 5G iPod, Motorola phone
Left to right: Dell Axim 51v, Apple iPhone, 5G iPod with video and Motorola L7 SLVR

That’s all for now, I will probably write some more about the N95, I still need to properly put the video camera through it’s paces and see how the claims of DVD quality footage live up.

~Rick

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Apple publishes ‘Optimizing Web Applications and Content for iPhone’

Apple published Guidelines for developing web content for the iPhone over at http://developer.apple.com/iphone/. It’s good to see a focus on standards based development being encouraged there, it makes sense given that the Safari browser on the iPhone has great support for XHTML and CSS, particularly CSS 3 properties – of which the iPhone makes particular use of, more of that in a moment.

Quick overview of the Guidelines…

The guidelines are split into several sections:

  • Understand User-iPhone Interaction
  • Use Standards and Tried-and-True Design Practices
  • Integrate with Phone, Mail, and Maps
  • Optimize for Page Readability
  • Ensure a Great Audio and Video Experience
  • Know What Safari Supports on iPhone
  • Connect With Web Developers

Understand User-iPhone Interaction

This section introduces you to the whole concept of interacting with the iPhone, mainly that the input device is not a mouse but your hand so it’s not as precise as a mouse so web interfaces for the iPhone need larger click targets to interact with. As has been pointed out on various blogs there is no copy and paste, but there is also no drag and drop or text selection either so this is another factor to keep in mind.

Safari on iPhone doesn’t have windows that can be moved around or have scroll bars like a conventional browser, content is resized intelligently to fit the viewing area, it is recommended to avoid wide blocks of text. Double-tapping is used to zoom in to content.

Use Standards and Tried-and-True Design Practices

This section really reinforces the use of web standards for designing pages for the iPhone. Makes the point that Safari on iPhone uses a ‘real’ browser in that it doesn’t use stylesheets targeted towards handheld devices, it’s intended to give a rich browsing experience by supporting HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, CSS 2.1, partial CSS 3.xx, JavaScript 1.4, DOM support, AJAX, XMLHTTPRequest.

It encourages the use of separate HTML, CSS and Javascript as well as using valid HTML, and also optimised images and script content to keep sites running smoothly.

Apple published Guidelines for developing web content for the iPhone over at http://developer.apple.com/iphone/. It’s good to see a focus on standards based development being encouraged there, it makes sense given that the Safari browser on the iPhone has great support for XHTML and CSS, particularly CSS 3 properties – of which the iPhone makes particular use of, more of that in a moment.

Quick overview of the Guidelines…

The guidelines are split into several sections:

  • Understand User-iPhone Interaction
  • Use Standards and Tried-and-True Design Practices
  • Integrate with Phone, Mail, and Maps
  • Optimize for Page Readability
  • Ensure a Great Audio and Video Experience
  • Know What Safari Supports on iPhone
  • Connect With Web Developers

Understand User-iPhone Interaction

This section introduces you to the whole concept of interacting with the iPhone, mainly that the input device is not a mouse but your hand so it’s not as precise as a mouse so web interfaces for the iPhone need larger click targets to interact with. As has been pointed out on various blogs there is no copy and paste, but there is also no drag and drop or text selection either so this is another factor to keep in mind.

Safari on iPhone doesn’t have windows that can be moved around or have scroll bars like a conventional browser, content is resized intelligently to fit the viewing area, it is recommended to avoid wide blocks of text. Double-tapping is used to zoom in to content.

Use Standards and Tried-and-True Design Practices

This section really reinforces the use of web standards for designing pages for the iPhone. Makes the point that Safari on iPhone uses a ‘real’ browser in that it doesn’t use stylesheets targeted towards handheld devices, it’s intended to give a rich browsing experience by supporting HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, CSS 2.1, partial CSS 3.xx, JavaScript 1.4, DOM support, AJAX, XMLHTTPRequest.

It encourages the use of separate HTML, CSS and Javascript as well as using valid HTML, and also optimised images and script content to keep sites running smoothly.

Integrate with Phone, Mail, and Maps

This section starts to get to more of the iPhone specific code examples that hook into the dedicated apps on the iPhone. You can click on Telephone numbers in Safari and the number will be automatically dialled, Safari will automatically convert numbers that look like phone numbers into telephone links. However you can format a telephone link on purpose:

<a href="tel:1-408-555-5555">1-408-555-5555</a>

Email links are in the standard format and open up Mail in order to send an email., links to Google maps take the standard link format also but these are opened up into the dedicated Google Maps application on the phone. I believe that links to YouTube movies do something similar but there is no mention of this in this section.

Optimize for Page Readability

This section gets more interesting and links back to my initial mention of CSS 3 properties. If you want to provide a particular window size for a page to be viewed on the iPhone you can set an iPhone specific stylesheet by using a CSS 3 media query like so:

<link media="only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)"
href="iPhone.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />

There are more guidelines for laying content out for the iPhone viewport such as a recommended width of 320px so that the layout doesn’t change between portrait and landscape modes. It also details some webkit specific CSS properties to help control text sizing. Image formats supported are JPG, PNG, GIF and TIFF.

Ensure a Great Audio and Video Experience

Formats and bitrate advice is provided here to help optimise video for WIFI and EDGE network capacities. Maximum video dimensions of 480 x 360px are recommended. Formats supported are H.264, MPEG-4, AAC-LC, .mov, .mp4, .m4v, .3gp file format, video or audio that can play on an iPod.

There is advice for the server side of providing audio and video for use on the iPhone too, interestingly the RTSP protocol is not supported but apparently only video via HTTP streaming.

Know What Safari Supports on iPhone

This set of guidelines covers the resource capacity of Safari on the iPhone. Downloaded resources such as CSS, HTML, Javascript, images or other non-streamed media must be less than 10Mb. Javascript execution is limited to 5 seconds before it times out, this will really mean people having to review their use of the various javascript libraries available and make sure that only the bare essentials are present. Interesting to see how Adobe’s Spry library stands up on the iPhone.

Other information covers support for files including the various mime types, PDF is supported but not (as has been widely covered on various blogs!) Flash or Java. I think various browser testing scripts for detecting Flash will need to be updated to factor in the iPhone’s lack of flash support. I wonder how long it will be before we see Flash on the iPhone? It surely must be coming, seems like a missing piece of a puzzle to me? It also covers the Security support of Safari such as SSL and RSA.

Connect With Web Developers

It ends with some useful web development links including W3C, WHAT-WG and Web Kit project site.

There’s a real push throughout about the fact that web standards and associated best practices are an integral part of creating successful sites that work well on the iPhone safari browser.

When I’ve got a moment I’ll try out a the iPhone specific code, especially now that my friend Alyn seems to have successfully gotten his iPhone activated, more about that on his blog I’m sure.

~Rick

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Nokia N95 first thoughts – my iPhone substitute!

Picture of Nokia N95I just got a Nokia N95 today, I’m pretty stoked to get this phone especially as I got it for free, although on condition of an 18 month contract with Orange. I notice that Amazon list the N95 without sim card for £459 so I’m happy with the deal I got from Orange.

iPhone substitute?

The phone is pretty slick, it’s a slider phone but it opens up both ways, one way for keyboard, the other for media player controls.

Although not quite as easy as simply rotating the device like the iPhone it is very easy to toggle from portrait to landscape view in most applications. This is especially good for web browsing I’ve found.

This is a rough list of features of the N95:

  • 5 megapixel camera, Carl Zeiss optics
  • DVD-like video, 640×480 pixel MP4/AAC
  • WIFI
  • Integral GPS & mapping functionality
  • 2.6" display 320×240 pixels
  • 160mb internal memory, Micro SD card slot
  • Symbian S60 Series 3.1 OS

I’m beginning to play around with it so I’ll write some more once I’ve gotten into it. I’m interested to see how the still images and video footage works out, the little I’ve used them so far is indoors with fairly low-light conditions and it’s definitely an improvement over my old Nokia N80 for still images.

Snappy interface

One thing I did notice is that it felt very responsive when navigating around the various applications. I read a few reviews of the N95 which criticised the N95 for being sluggish, I found the total opposite, maybe there was an earlier version of the firmware which didn’t work so well for the people who wrote these reviews. It’s certainly a lot better than any other Symbian based phone I’ve had.

Symbian Applications

One of the reasons I love the Symbian OS is the various applications that are available, not just commercial apps but various freeware / open source apps.

I’m going to have a good look for some interesting applications that really make use of all the hardware thats packed into the N95. One application I came across already is Movino:

Movino is a collection of applications for streaming and broadcasting live video from smartphones. The main applications are the following:

  • A client for S60 smartphones
  • A smartphone client for J2ME
  • A gui application and a QuickTime component for OS X
  • A video server for linux
  • A drupal web front end

Basically it lets you use the phone as a webcam source for things like Skype chats etc. I’m going to have to try this on my G5 tower at work and see how it goes, it sounds pretty cool though.

I’ll write more once I’ve used it a bit more.

~Rick