Hi- I'm shooting a documentary at the moment, and we plant to use a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT1 for some key underwater footage. The camera records 720p HD footage, in the new 'AVCHD Lite' codec/format (and it's waterproof to 10ft).The footage looks gret, but our tests ingesting the footage have raised some concerns. The AVCHD Lite format plays back fine on the Vista machine it's captured on (yes, even in Windows Media Player) but CS4 on my XP edit suite won't play ball. I capture it on the Vista machine using the 'Aquire' function of the provided Panasonic PhotoFun Studio software, which appears to extract the combination of four files each AVCHD Lite clip requires, effectively disposing of the folder structure which is deemed so important by the AVCHD format in other circumstances.
I've tried a few 3rd party transcoding options, including the one provided by Panasonic specifically for AVCHD files (sadly it doesn't work with the 'Lite' variant), a 3rd party program called Handbrake... and no success as yet. I'm still scratching my head on this one.
I read in the Premiere Elements forum that one user had success importing the footage into Sony Vegas 9, but I'm not too eager to go down that path... there must be another option..?
Has anyone had any success processing AVCHD Lite footage yet in CS4, with or without prior transcoding?
Also, can someone from Adobe let us know if this format will be supported in a coming CS4 upgrade, and when this is likely to come to fruit?