My new TM700 to a iMAC

[Dino Santarossa]

I am new to anything video edit. I created a short vid with footage on hand but now I am looking at bigger things. I shot video of my daughters graduation and the time to load it on the iMAC into iMovieis 1:24 hrs. Is there a better or faster way to do this. My eventual use for the camera is outdoor\nature shoots. I did a search and did not find what I was looking for, I may have posed my querry wrong. Does the ElGato Turbo do the import faster of just the share.

Please help, Dino

[Les Wilson]

It's impossible to say if the 1:24 is reasonable or not. Doesn't the length of the recording matter in how long it takes to ingest?

I use Clipwrap and have it transcode to prores. Then do the import into iMovie. I don't kno what iMovie is doing under the covers so it's hard to say if there's a problem or not.

After you do the transcode to prores, the files are big but your mac will edit them like butter. It's a fact of life with AVC-HD right now that you have to transcode..

[Dino Santarossa]

Thanks Les, the time of footage shot is 1:20-1:30 hrs. Just wondering if the time frame is realistic.

Dino

[Rob Neville]

Dino I have a TM900 (this year's version of the TM700 I think). I've not shot anything quite that long yet, but it sounds like you may have iMovie '11 or thereabouts. The issue is that your camera records in AVCHD, which sort of is / sort of isn't "supported" directly in iMovie. I had the same shock the first time when I tried to import a 5 min clip and it took 14 minutes to import...having just upgraded from mini DV I was, needless to say, not a happy camper. So if you're transcoding into iMovie, those kinds of import times are not unheard of.

What iMovie is doing is transcoding (i.e. translating) your footage into another format (AIC I think) before it'll let you play with it in iMovie - so it's an extra step that takes more time (also makes the file sizes more bloated).

You have a few options though. Not sure about the TM700, but on mine, I can change the recording option to what panasonic calls 'iFrame' which is 960x540 instead of 1920x1080 HD..that pulls into iMovie like butter....but you lose the HD so that sucks.

You can "wrap" the files coming out of your camera using some software (clipwrap I think it's called). What this does is wrap your movie files into .mov files that iMovie will know how to deal with without transcoding. I've personally not done this as I was turned off by reports of poor performance once you've gotten the wrapped file into iMovie, but many others have talked about it on these forums if you want to go that route.

Lastly, you can ditch iMovie for Adobe Premier Pro Essentials ($99 version of their behemoth) which will natively import and work with .mts files (AVCHD) directly from your camera. This is what I'm doing now. Works really well and you retain the benefit of the smaller file size. Or you could go with any number of other editors (I think even the much maligned new version of FCP X is supposed to work with AVCHD but I've not personally tried that yet).

[Dino Santarossa]

Thanks so much, I posted on another thread here with the same basic question and your on the money. I was led to believe if you are doing video or artistic work MAC is the only way to go................maybe not. This is a huge learning curve for this 50 year old guy but I say never stop learning. I cut the video I shot and was able to fit it on to a 4.2 GB disc. For the 116:42 min video (more footage than I thought) Original burn time was 1 1/2 hrs. The next 6 were 12 min. each.

Dino