Toast and AVCHD files
I’ve recently started moving from tape based recording to flash based, first purchasing a Panasonic AVCHD camcorder, and now a Canon HF-100. I’ll admit to being nervous; tape is a great archive medium, and - it turns out - much easier to transfer and deal with than AVCHD files. WHAT IS AVCHD? When the first consumer HD tape-based camcorders appeared on the market, most of them used the DV tape format, but used a different compressor (MPEG2) to get the video onto the tape (the tape actually records a digital file.) This format was called HDV. As manufacturers have moved away from tape towards hard drive and flash based cameras, they’ve adopted a new compressor that is much more efficient, and can handle higher resolutions. This compressor is called AVCHD. It takes advantage of more horsepower available, producing files that are much smaller than HDV. The downside is that it’s not a great compressor for online editing. CONVERTING AVCHD ON A MAC Turns out that it’s a little more complicat