I'm doing an initial rough edit on about 25 hours of AVCHD material for a documentary. Initially I'm cutting clips using Smart Cutter by FameRing, and logging them into an Excel spreadsheet.

However the editors must use the resultant AVCHD clips, which SpeedEdit doesn't support.

What is the best way to batch transcode hundreds or thousands of AVCHD clips? I have Premiere Pro CS5 and various other video converter utilities.

Cineform's NeoScene will do that.

Joe
You are trying to transcode AVCHD into what format??
It's not clear to me what you are trying to do exactly.

Our main editors use SpeedEdit, which does not support native AVCHD editing.

I can quickly sub-clip the original material without reencoding, but those sub-clips must then be dragged into a timeline and edited.

After creating the AVCHD sub-clips (which stay in AVCHD format during that process) it appears I'll need to batch transcode them to AVI or some other format which SpeedEdit supports.

My question was what's the best utility and procedure for batch transcoding from AVCHD to (let's say) AVI?

I second Neoscene. You can get a good deal on it from Videoguys.com - CineForm NeoScene for PC and Mac (http://www.videoguys.com/Item/CineForm+NeoScene+for+PC+and+Mac/54E4543435F454E4.aspx)

I second Neoscene. You can get a good deal on it from Videoguys.com - CineForm NeoScene for PC and Mac (http://www.videoguys.com/Item/CineForm+NeoScene+for+PC+and+Mac/54E4543435F454E4.aspx)

Absolutely
The Cineform HD avi codec is bulletproof & if your editors have the software to decode it, it should work fine.
I edit nearly all of my HD projects as CF regardless of the acquisition codec

in my usual workflow, i batch transcode AVCHD files to Avid DNxHD .mov files with Adobe Media Encoder. Works great.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. The editors downstream from me have now upgraded their software to handle AVCHD directly.

If that doesn't work, after I clip out the rough cut (about 20% of the raw material), I'll transcode that smaller portion from AVCHD to AVI using Media Encoder, CineForm, etc. before passing it to them.

"MainConcept Reference"

is another great option

Just wanna help out, I have scripts, drag n drop EZEncoder, that will convert to prores for windows or most any other format you like all free, EZEncoder An awesome ffmpeg based encoder that does it all (http://hypedphoto.com/ezencoder.cfm)

Batch conversions by the folder...