AVCHD > DV conversion?

[John M. Robertson]

Hi folks,
I have looked through most of the archived threads here and don't find a reference to this problem, yet I can't believe I'm the only one to ever experience this issue:

I'm working in Adobe Premiere Pro CS/3 (yes, it's stone age, but it's what's available). I shoot with a Canon GL2 (also elderly but works great and takes very pretty pictures). So my products are in .avi format, conventional digital video, 29.97 fps 720X480 video. Works very well on DVD and uploads to YouTube easily. It's not the cutting edge, but it's workable.

Unfortunately I now have several AVCHD .mts files shot with a Vixia HFS21 that MUST be incorporated into a project I'm working on. They are full 1080i at 60fps. Needless to say this is NOT supported by my existing system.

I've tried several conversion programs (AnyVideoConverter, Aiseesoft, Wondershare, etc) but they seem to all do the same thing to the files - they appear to convert the video to .avi and slow it to 29.97 but not the actual frame rate of the clip...hence the result is a clip that plays the picture in slow motion but audio at normal speed...which makes the resultant clip WAY out of sync - the sound plays normally but the picture comes out twice as long as the original clip and appears to be in slow motion. I've been back and forth with what AnyVideoConverter laughingly calls their support department, and in the end their response has been..."yep, that's a problem all right...we'll keep it in mind for our future versions". Some support.

So I guess what I'm asking is "am I just screwed here?" Can anyone PLEASE suggest some other software (that actually WORKS for this sitch, but doesn't COST your left nut?) or some settings/techniques, prayer to heathen dieties or SOME solution?

Please don't respond with "the solution is to upgrade your editing software" as I AM WELL AWARE that would probably help, but I don't have the megafunds for that at this time. I don't mind paying for conversion software if it will work, but the funding to update the whole system just isn't available at this time. I just want to get this project done and move on.

Thanks for any help, it's very appreciated!

[Chris Barcellos]

Try the free download version of Cineform from GoPro. It may conform the footage to what you need. Its distributed for GoPro AVCHD but works with most other.

http://gopro.com/3d-cineform-studio-software-download/

[Battle Vaughan]

Have you tried the "interpret footage" function? Tutorial here: Interpreting Footage | Video Clips Out of Control? How to Get Organized in Premiere Pro CS3 | Peachpit

I believe this will help...at least for the frame rate problem. You have to decide if you are going to shrink the 1080 to 720 or expand the 720 (with a loss of quality) to 1080, or perhaps one of the conversion programs would handle the dv conversion and you can fix the frame rate probem in interpret footage...haven't been able to test this, so it's off the top of me head.....

Addendum: as far as conversion programs go, i"ve had great luck with SUPER(c) from erightsoft.com, excellent freeware; and Prism Video Converter from NCH software.com (free download, reasonable price to engage all features)

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

http://www.nchsoftware.com/prism/index.html

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by John M. Robertson

Please don't respond with "the solution is to upgrade your editing software" as I AM WELL AWARE that would probably help, but I don't have the megafunds for that at this time.

Upgrading your editing software would involve replacing your computer as well. You can convert AVCHD to DV AVI format using ffmpeg.

ffmpeg -i 00011.mts -r 30000/1001 -acodec pcm_s16le -vcodec dvvideo -deinterlace -pix_fmt yuv411p -s 720x480 -aspect 16:9 -y 00011.avi

Note that ffmpeg is free and available on Windows, OS/X and most Unix operating systems.

FFmpeg