Error Message with FCP and AVCHD (Intel Mac) - Repair Directory?

[Dylan Nelson]

I bought an HMC-150 and have really enjoyed it so far.

Only problem so far is that ONE card - when trying to log and transfer in FCP - gave me an error message: '"NO NAME" contains unsupported media or has an invalid directory structure. Please choose a folder whose directory structure matches supported media.' Its directory looks exactly the same as the directory for the dozen cards that worked... any ideas what could be wrong? What might have happened to screw it up? What is the correct directory structure for AVCHD? How might I be able to repair it? If one of the files is corrupted - how do I tell which one? And how do I fix it?

I am working on an Intel Mac in Final Cut Pro, current version, and again, the first 10 or 12 cards I offloaded and transcoded worked great! I have downloaded the demo version of VoltaicHD, which seems work at converting the .MTS files to AIC (without the directory)... but I am editing at ProRes 422 and am concerned there will be a loss with transcoding first to AIC. So I'd like to find a way to repair the directory or file to get it into FCP, if possible. Is there some other program I'm not thinking of that converts to ProRes 422?

Thanks!

[Reuben Miller]

Originally Posted by Dylan Nelson

I bought an HMC-150 and have really enjoyed it so far.
I have downloaded the demo version of VoltaicHD, which seems work at converting the .MTS files to AIC (without the directory)... but I am editing at ProRes 422 and am concerned there will be a loss with transcoding first to AIC. So I'd like to find a way to repair the directory or file to get it into FCP, if possible. Is there some other program I'm not thinking of that converts to ProRes 422?

Thanks!

Toast 9 or 10 will let you convert to ProRes422

[Dylan Nelson]

Just the .MTS files? Without directory? Alas, I have only Toast 6.

[Liza Witz]

Originally Posted by Dylan Nelson

Its directory looks exactly the same as the directory for the dozen cards that worked... any ideas what could be wrong? What might have happened to screw it up? What is the correct directory structure for AVCHD? How might I be able to repair it? If one of the files is corrupted - how do I tell which one? And how do I fix it?

This is the kind of stuff that makes me much prefer straight MP4 files over AVCHD.

However, if you're able to read the data off of the card with your computer, you can probably recover your footage. What you're looking for is a bunch of files that end in .MTS

There's a tool: VoltaicHD | ShedWorx
and the manual process I used:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/avchd-for...-software.html

[TingSern Wong]

If you have access to a PC, you can try to recover it from there, instead of using Mac OS.

[Scott Silverman]

Just thought I would add in my $.02 as well. I am having the EXACT same problem, but after about 6 hours of troubleshooting last night, I think I figured something out... First, a little about my setup.

I'm shooting on a Panasonic HMC-150 at 1080p 24 frames to a 16GB SDHC card. My editing machine is a unibody MacBook Pro 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of RAM. It's running Mac OS X 10.5.6 and Final Cut Pro 6.0.5.

When I plug in the camera, the AVCHD directory is seen in the Finder but Final Cut L&T will not see any of my footage! However, I have no problems transcoding the AVCHD video to ProRes422 using Roxio Toast 10. But every time I do the transcode using Toast, my audio becomes slightly out of sync with my video. It's very annoying.

So, last night I got a second, 8GB SDHC card, completely formatted it using the HMC-150, and then recorded about 20 seconds of fresh footage using the same settings. I then plugged the camera into my computer, opened the L&T window in FCP and guess what? There was my footage I just shot! I imported the ~20 seconds (by transcoding to ProRes422) and the audio was perfectly in sync and everything was great!

So unfortunately it's not a solution to anyone's problem, but it leads me to believe that the problem lies somewhere in a file on the SD card. Perhaps something is getting corrupted or moved around in the AVCHD directory, and that's preventing Final Cut L&T from recognizing it properly? This would also explain why there seems to be no solution to this problem, because the files themselves are actually being corrupted.

So anyways, for anyone else having issues with AVCHD in FCP, I would be interested to know if reformatting your SD card and shooting some fresh footage allows you to use the L&T window?

[Jordan Berry]

I always reformat a SDHC card before I use it. I haven't had any structure problems.

Any time anything is altered on the SDHC card (by your computer) the entire thing needs to be reformatted. Otherwise you will get files that point to things that don't exist, etc.

Toast 10 has the audio synce problem, however Toast 9 doesn't. At least that is what I remember. Uninstall 10 and install 9. Then try again.

WARNING: My knowledge of this is basic and based upon a lot of assumptions... Don't be surprised if someone corrects me ;)

[Scott Silverman]

So I thought I had solved all my problems with a magic reformat of my SD card...

But it turns out I was wrong. I reformatted my card the other day and went out for a second day of shooting. When I came back home and plugged in my camera, trying to use the Log and Transfer window in FCP, the same issues occured. I ended up having to use Toast for the transcode again. So it looks like the issue really does reside somewhere in FCP or on my machine. Very funky.

Thanks for the tip on Toast 9, Jordan. I'll have to give that a shot...

[Mike Petrucco]

I know that FCO is very picky about what folder in the card structure you pick for L&T. I generally copy my SD card to one drive (as original backup) and then L&T from that drive. Look at this copy of a post I made in the following thread and see if it solves your problem:

from: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/panasonic...sfer-help.html

Brian- I just checked some clips. I have a directory on on HDD that is called "Raw Footage". Inside of that I have folders that have the date that I copied the card contents. So for example, I have a folder inside of "Raw Footage" that is called "2009.03.29". I copied the card contents to that directory, so the only folder inside of "2009.03.29" is called "Private", which in turn has all of the folders and files that were on the card. If I select the folder named "2009.03.29" in Log &Transfer, I had no trouble, but if I selected "Raw Footage" or "Private", I get the same error.

Could your issue be in which directory level (which folder in the folder structure) you selected in Log & Transfer?

I hope your issue is that simple. If not, I don't know what it could be.

I hope this helps.

Mike

[Scott Silverman]

Mike, you're amazing! I've been trying for days to solve this problem and I think you just fixed it with one sentence!

It turns out FCP is looking for the "PRIVATE" folder. I had been directing it to everything BUT that folder (eg, AVCHD, BDMV, STREAM, etc.). All I did was create a folder called "PRIVATE" on my desktop, drop the AVCHD folder from the camera into it, and then point L&T to the PRIVATE folder. All my clips appeared!

I can't even believe how simple that was. What's still a little odd is that sometimes FCP would automatically find my HMC-150 and display all the clips, and other times I have to manually point it to the PRIVATE folder. If I copied the file structure to my hard disk first, I would also have to keep the PRIVATE folder intact and point it there.

So, to sum up, if you're trying to use an HMC-150 with Final Cut Pro's Log and Transfer window, two conditions must apply:

1) You must be running FCP 6.0.5. This version adds specific support for the HMC-150
2) You must point L&T to the "PRIVATE" folder on your SDHC card and not make any modifications to the file structure within. Your file structure (where the raw AVCHD clips live) should look like this:

PRIVATE > AVCHD > BDMV > STREAM > 00001.MTS...etc

Hopefully this helps someone else out too!

[Scott Silverman]

This issue is a little off topic, but I think it's valuable information (especially if you're using a Toast workaround because FCP L&T wont see your files) so read on:

My problem was that FCP (through the Log and Transfer window) would not recognize one of the flash cards in the HMC-150. So instead I was forced to use Toast 10 to convert the raw AVCHD files to ProRes Quicktimes, for import to FCP. I now know that it's Toast 10 that's doing something to my files during conversion that is causing the audio to become ~4 frames off from the video. After a TON of forum hunting, Google searching, and reading, I've finally figured out that it's actually tied to specific versions of Toast! I've now tested Toast versions 10.0, 10.0.2, 9.0.4, 9.0.5, and 9.0.2 to convert the MTS files to a Pro Res QT and the ONLY version that avoids the audio sync problem is 9.0.2.

All this could have been avoided if FCP would have recognized the HMC-150 to begin with, as video imported via FCP from the HMC-150 has perfectly synced audio. But for some reason it didn't like that one flash card, so this whole Toast workaround was needed. I've had no other issues with audio sync--it was all Toast's fault.

So the ideal situation would be if FCP worked every time, but that's not the case, so if you need to, get yourself a copy of Toast 9.0.2 and convert your raw MTS files to Pro Res for import to FCP!

[Randy Panado]

Originally Posted by Mike Petrucco

I know that FCO is very picky about what folder in the card structure you pick for L&T. I generally copy my SD card to one drive (as original backup) and then L&T from that drive. Look at this copy of a post I made in the following thread and see if it solves your problem:

from: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/panasonic...sfer-help.html

Brian- I just checked some clips. I have a directory on on HDD that is called "Raw Footage". Inside of that I have folders that have the date that I copied the card contents. So for example, I have a folder inside of "Raw Footage" that is called "2009.03.29". I copied the card contents to that directory, so the only folder inside of "2009.03.29" is called "Private", which in turn has all of the folders and files that were on the card. If I select the folder named "2009.03.29" in Log &Transfer, I had no trouble, but if I selected "Raw Footage" or "Private", I get the same error.

Could your issue be in which directory level (which folder in the folder structure) you selected in Log & Transfer?

I hope your issue is that simple. If not, I don't know what it could be.

I hope this helps.

Mike

I tossed a private folder into untitled folder and got this error from LT :

"untitled folder" contains unsupported media or has an invalid directory structure. Please choose a folder whose directory structure matches supported media."

Any ideas? I'm thinking maybe some stuff was deleted from the folder.

[Robert Turchick]

FWIW, once on a hard drive the "private" folder can be renamed. I use the date and client as the name so I can keep organized. Been using that without issue since day one.

However...ran into the "unsupported media" issue last night for the first time. 32 gig card with about 180 minutes of footage. I copied the entire card to my edit drive. Ejected the card , opened FCP and got the error. Put the card back in to try L&T directly from card and no luck. Then put the card back in the camera and tried to view clips. 2 clips had red exclamation marks on them. They were fairly long (just over an hour each) when I selected those clips, it went into a repair mode which deleted those clips! Thankfully I had the backup on my computer.

Premier CS4 was able to see the clips so I figured it was an FCP issue. Bought Toast 10 and worked like a charm except for the 8 frame misalignment between audio and video! WTF? Really Roxio?

Today put the same card in the camera, formatted it and let it record for 2 hours straight. Copied the card to my drive and L&T worked fine!

Has anyone got this figured out? What the root cause is?
My thoughts were:
1) Bad card
2) Camera glitch
3) Bad card reader
4) FCP glitch
5) too long of a recorded file
6) ghost in the machine

Problem is, testing the same card/camera/edit system next day with similarly long files produced no issues at all. And why would the camera have a problem reading the files when Toast and Premier worked?
And why does Panasonic's "repair" delete files on the card???!!!!

Very nervous about the 6 hour live event shoot I have next weekend! Need to be shooting 90 minute non stop times 4!