Over at KFC Radio we are always trying to find a quick transition from filming/recording to editing and eventually publishing. We have our standard podcast setup that consists of some mics, a mixer, and a digital recorder, and that seems to be working pretty well as far as audio goes. The video has been more of an experiment.
We started with a Sony Webbie that I had bought a few years ago. Unfortunately, I no longer have the AC adapter and the battery kept dying on us in the middle of the show. Then we tried using the direct capture feature on iMovie from the built in iSight. That seemed to get the job done, but the exporting took forever.
What I wanted was a quick and direct way to put the video in either ScreenFlow or Final Cut Pro for editing. I figured the easiest way would be to get a new camera and just pull the video off the SD card like I did with the Sony Webbie.
We didn’t go too expensive and got a Sony HDR-CX210. And this is where the AVCHD curveball comes into play.
After recording, I popped the SD card in and looked for the video. First of all, the DCIM folder had nothing but 200+ still shots of the scene we were filiming, so I thought I had some type of setting wrong and all was lost. Turns out, the video is not in a file folder but instead inside some other type of file marked “PRIVATE” with an unusual little icon. From there I could view the two scenes we had shot. Apparently, the Sony cam films in something called AVCHD, which cannot be simply dropped into Screenflow, FCP or iMovie. Instead, it needs to be rendered into something that is editable. I’m not sure if any quality is lost in the rendering and I really didn’t care too much.
Fortunately, after a few google searches, I found that FCP is capable of just such rendering. I simply fired up Final Cut Pro, then plugged in my card reader and clicked Import Selected. Still an extra step, but comparatively, the rendering took a lot less time than other processes we had been doing.
KFC Radio Ep. 12 – Jersey Sports Fan & Playing Sandusky from Barstool New York on Vimeo.
