Hi Joe21
You seem very knowledgable on this question and I am not a techie.
Maybe you can help me.
My problem is that Imovie , yes I am on a Mac,does not allow to edit my videos in AVCHD in order to keep the same HD quality.
I do not know if it is at the stage of editing that I loose the HD quality or at the time of burning a DVD with I movie.
This is why I would like to know how I should proceed in order not to loose the HD quality of my video taken with my camera or my Phantom 4 when I put them on a blurry disc.
I know a few things, but wouldn't call myself an expert.
AVCHD is a highly compressed video format. As I recall, video editors do not directly process AVCHD footage. It must be converted to another format for editing.
There are several place where you may be losing quality:
- import into iMovie: you may be converting to a lower quality setting
- export to DVD: again, you may be converting to a lower quality setting
Note that what you see on the screen in iMovie may not reflect actual final quality. Editing programs will often show a low-res version (for lack of a better term) on screen. Always judge by the final output.
When you import your footage into the computer, you are uncompressing the AVCHD file and essentially re-compressing into a different format. This will usually make the saved video files larger than they were in the camera. When you burn to a DVD, you are compressing into another format that the DVD player can read. You would not want to import the DVD files for editing (because they would end up being re-compressed on output and suffer quality issues).
Personally, I save my "raw" video files as backups, in addition to the "final" output.
I am now buying a BluRay burner to put my videos on a BluRay disk.
Do I need a special burning software or editing software not to loose the HD quality?
Where do I loose it at the editing stage or the burning stage?
Another question what should I use to edit my phantom videos on my Mac?
Thanks for any help.
Blu-ray and Mac require some special tools. Blu-ray support is not built into MacOS.
I have a blu-ray burner, although I primarily use it for data backup. A standard blu-ray reader/burner should work just fine with your Mac. I suggest purchasing through a vendor that knows Macs and can confirm compatibility with the model you are buying.
You can burn DATA files to a blu-ray directly from the Mac. To burn MOVIES that will play in a blu-ray player, you will need extra software. There may be others, but I am familiar with "Toast." There are different versions (standard, pro, etc.). Make sure to get the version that has blu-ray support.
Something is telling me that iMovie or Final Cut Pro currently has some option for outputting to blu-ray. Not 100% sure. If so, it would output a file. I believe you would still need something like Toast to create a blu-ray disk that can be read in a player.
There is native OS support for DVDs on a Mac. You cannot, however, play a blu-ray disc on a Mac. There may be third party software to play those movies (using a proper blu-ray drive).
You do not need anything special to read the files from your recording device. You can also use iMovie to edit the footage and maintain full HD quality. You can even output HD files from iMovie to watch on your computer or upload to places like YouTube.
You will only need additional software and hardware if you want to author a blu-ray disc.
The Apple discussions forum is a great place to get some detailed answers. Some real video experts hang around there. Hope the above provides some help.