Well, I have switched from my good old DV camera's to shooting HD footage using Panasonic HDC-HS60 camera.
On the DV format (SD) I used Premiere to capture the tapes and on the timeline cutting the clips, joining clips etc etc. No fancy effects or transitions.
Then I export the DV sequence to disc in the DV avi format.
This is to create a library/archive of my video's in the DV format.
Exporting from Premiere does no transcoding. And a very important thing to mention: the exported DV avi contains the original datecode.
Then after exporting I use several tools to extract the datecode from the exported DV clips and create .sub or .srt files.
So when playing the footage on PC, I can show the datetime of the footage as sublitles.
And more important, when using the exported DV clips and create a DVD, I use the .srt files as subtitles in Encore so the final result is a nice collection of clips on DVD where you can show the date/time of the footage. This way all info (the clips and the date/time it was shot) is retained and as collection of DVD's.
But now the HD footage shot with my Panasonic.
First issue was how to create .srt files from .mts files. After many searches I found there is (not yet) a simple way to extract the datetiume code from a .mts file. So I'm in the process of creating a tool which actually does this and it works. I can extract the datetime code from the original .mts files and save it as .srt files. It is not finished yet, but right now I can actually do the same with HD .mts files as I did with the old DV files.
Problem is how to retain the datetime code of the .mts files when cut in Premiere CS5.
When I drop a .mts file on the sequence and without any editing want to export it to another file, it is unclear to me which output format to choose.
Premiere should not transcode the video, there is no change to the footage. So it should actually save to the new file as .mts without touching it.
The formats I used (keep sequence settings) when exporting create a mpeg file and not a .mts file. But the file extension does not bother me, it is the datetime code which is. I need to export the mts footage to a file which retains this info. So I can use the srt creation tool to extract the datetime code from the exported files.
So first question. How to instruct Premiere to use the same settings as the source .mts file and do no transcoding and keep the datecode intact ?
Is it possible to create other formats which will "copy" this info from the original files to the according info streams of the detination format?
Most new formats have these internal info streams, so how to use it in Premiere?