Any Apple Mac video editing experts here before I burn my MAcbook Pro

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chriswt

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When I bought my Macbook Pro I used to be able to import videos in AVCHD format into iMovie, edit them films and then burn them to a DVD.

Now for some strange reason that can only be explained as 21st century progress I've lost that function as I 'updated' my Mac with the latest software.

Has anyone else come across this and found a solution or is it off to PC World to by a windows laptop next weekend? :crazy:

I thought I'd ask on this forum as I can't think of anything worse than engaging with computer geeks on a Mac forum :devil:
 
A quick perusal of AVCHD format gave this

In 2011 the AVCHD specification was amended to include 1080-line 50-frame/s and 60-frame/s modes (AVCHD Progressive) and stereoscopic video (AVCHD 3D). The new modes also allow higher system data rate than existing modes.

There is a known incompatibility within the Panasonic brand. The original HD Writer importing and editing software, which shipped from 2006 to 2008, cannot recognize the current 1080i format or the newer formats like 1080p50 or 1080p60. The newer HD Writer AE can read the newer 1080i format and versions 2 and higher can read 1080p (in both frame rates).

and this from WIKIPEDIA

Editors

The following video-editing software features support for the AVCHD format:

Adobe Premiere Pro (from version CS4 onwards).
Adobe Premiere Elements (version 7 through 9 only support import, no AVCHD output), version 10 supports AVCHD output.
Apple Final Cut Pro X natively supports AVCHD through Import From Camera.
Apple Final Cut Pro for Mac OS X. The latest version of Final Cut Pro 7 claims better integration with Apple's other professional applications and improved codec support for editing HD, DV and SD video formats, including encoding presets for devices such as iPod, Apple TV, and Blu-ray Discs.
Apple Final Cut Express 4, Final Cut Pro 6.0.1, and iMovie '08-'09 (iMovie is bundled with all new Apple computers; Final Cut Express and Pro are sold separately) do not support editing of AVCHD clips directly. Imported AVCHD clips are automatically converted into the Apple Intermediate Codec format, which requires more hard disk space (40GB per hour as opposed to 13.5GB per hour for Standard Definition DV), a more powerful machine (an Intel-based Mac), and a more recent OS (Mac OS X 10.5). Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 "logs and transfers" the footage from AVCHD to AppleProRes by default and also gives the option of converting to the Apple Intermediate Codec. It does not allow native transferring of the *.m2ts clips nor directly editing them. The latest release of Apple's iLife suite (specifically, iMovie) has added support for AVCHD Lite cameras and camcorders.[75][76] It automatically imports AVCHD files when attaching a supported camera to the computer, and it can import older MTS or M2TS files that have been rewrapped (see above) e.g. as m4v.

Avid Media Composer (version 5.x and later) supports AVCHD via transcode import. AMA linking is available in Avid Media Composer 6 when a special AMA plugin is downloaded from the Avid download center.
AVS Video Editor supports videos from HD-cameras(HD Video (inc. AVCHD, MPEG-2 HD and WMV HD), TOD, MOD, M2TS.) Burn AVCHD video to CD-R/RW, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, DVD-RAM, Double/Dual Layer on Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 7 (no Mac OS/Linux support).
Blender supports the AVCHD format by using an FFmpeg decoder. Blender has a little-known, video editing system that integrates with its 3D editing tools. It supports proxy editing at down to 25% scaling, which helps when editing AVCHD video, which is slow. [1]
Corel VideoStudio supports importing, rendering and burning of AVCHD format in Windows system.
Cyberlink PowerDirector 7 is capable of editing AVCHD natively, without transcoding, intermediate formats or proxy files. Using a patented technique (SVRT), AVCHD clips can be edited and output losslessly to AVCHD or Blu-ray Disc. PowerDirector also supports GPU encoding acceleration on both ATI and NVidia graphics platforms. PowerDirector can output the finished movie to a variety of video formats, DVD, AVCHD on DVD, or Blu-ray Disc. UPDATE: Aug 2012. PowerDirector version 10 is now available. This version is capable of importing AVCHD (M2T) files, and exporting directly to AVCHD files and other HD and 3D formats. It also supports burning AVCHD discs and AVCHD 3D discs.
Dayang Montage Extreme [ME] 1.2
Elecard AVC HD Editor AVC HD Editor affords reordering, trimming and merging of AVCHD clips without the need for transcoding.
Grass Valley Edius 5.5 and Edius Neo 2
Kdenlive for Linux and BSD platforms
Microsoft Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 (part of the Windows Live Essentials package) converts to lower resolution for editing and playback, but is capable of exporting in HD.
Nero Ultra Edition Enhanced (from version 7 onwards) includes the Nero Vision editor and the Nero Showtime player, which both support AVCHD files. NeroVision can author DVDs in the AVCHD format.
Openshot Video editor for Linux
Pinnacle Studio Plus (from version 11 onwards)
Sony Vegas 7.0e
Sony Vegas Pro (from version 8 onwards)
Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum (from version 8 onwards)

My guess is that the latest upgrade may have removed some functionality in favour of performance but I'm not an expert in things APPLE.:eek:

AVCHD - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Is it the importing that's a problem or the burn to DVD .. The latest iMovie doesn't burn to DVD , bizarrely , and you need IDVD which is no longer part of it .. But you can get iDVD back ..long convoluted process but I managed it after searching through the Apple Forums... It is free but Apple stopped bundling it about 3 IOS versions ago I think...
 
Is it the importing that's a problem or the burn to DVD .. The latest iMovie doesn't burn to DVD , bizarrely , and you need IDVD which is no longer part of it .. But you can get iDVD back ..long convoluted process but I managed it after searching through the Apple Forums... It is free but Apple stopped bundling it about 3 IOS versions ago I think...

Basically my HD camcorder writes the movie files in .MTS/AVCHD format and originally I just stuck the SD card into my laptop and exported the movies into iMovie.

Suddenly it stopped reading MTS files and so I thought I'd upgrade the OS to Mountain Lion and now it reads the movies in Quicktime but I can't actually export them of do anything other than watch thim via Quicktime.

Its very annoying because in theroy if I'd kept with the old operating system I could have taken the MTS files and converted with with some free software into a MOV format which the Mac would read in iMovie.
 

Cheers for your help Grober, you’ve been a good deal of help .

I did download several free file converting applications but I couldn't drag the 'Quicktime' icon on the SD card into the convertor applications for conversion into a .MOV format.

However, upon speaking to Apple (I sensibly bought a 3yr Apple care plan with the laptop) I discovered that if I right click on the ‘Quicktime’ icon you can then click ‘Show package contents’ which digs deeper into the folder and eventually I found the original .MTS files which could be dragged into the conversion software.

My problem was that I assumed that the ‘Quicktime’ icon was a file and not a folder but the problem has now been solved.
 
Your persistence paid off -{ with a little help from Apple} well done.
 

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