AVCHD Files and Hard-Drives and Deleting MTS Files Question

[Scott Goldberg]

Hey all, so my question is: The SD card that records all of the files, I know that all of the content from the card needs to be transferred (folders, sub-folders, etc). With that said...

I have a question on the following:

Let's say I record 100 clips, and I like 10 of them. Can I delete the other 90 and not have it effect the storage and movement of those 10 clips that I want? As long as I put all of the media from the folders, including all folders, onto the hard-drive?

I ask because I've been doing test shoots and some of the test shoots are not ones I want to keep since a lot of them were test shots. 

Any idea on this?

[powderbanks]

you can selectively copy/transfer files from the sd card to your hard drive, or just copy everything, then delete later. as long as you format your card before you start a new shoot, you shouldn't have any problems on the sd card. you don't need the folder structure of the sd card, but you can sort them into folders as you'd like. i generally copy everything, then delete later if need be. i find a surprising amount of usable b-roll footage from what i initially think are trash clips.

[Axel]

These questions have already been answered. You mentioned your NLE was FCP X. This needs an intact SD-card-folder structure, at least until the import procedure is done. Importing is where you choose and reject. Once imported (as an 'optimized media' copy in ProRes or original AVCHD wrapped as movs, a copy also), you can format the card.

[Scott Goldberg]

What I'd like to do is put the folder contents of the 10 files into a folder on my hard-drive that says: Day One Shoot - Clips Final    and not have 90 other clips like there are.... If I delete the MTS files by clicking and dragging to my trash folder on my Mac, and if the #'s are then 0001, 0003, 0008, 0009, will that mess up anything?

[Axel]

FCP X is a good tool to organize your media, you don't seem to have understood that. No need to 'keep' unusable clips after you picked the good ones by previewing them, importing them (which, as mentioned, will make an independent copy). But FCP X will refuse to import naked mts-clips. And also orphaned mts-clips. An mts-clip is already orphaned if you manually change anything on the file structure of your original folder. Files can only be deleted in the camera, which will then write a new index reading 'file .00005 is missing' (or so). Or by FCP X. Full stop.

[Scott Goldberg]

Final Question: 

 

So I deleted the files I don't need "in camera" and now I have files named 00012.MTS, 00013.MTS, etc til 00027.MTS then it goes to 00034.MTS, etc and so on. I have "protected" the shots that I'd like, does that help at all with remembering and keeping the file on the disc / exporting into FCP?

Now since I don't have 00001, 00002, 00003, etc and so on all in a row, will this cause issues?

And I completely understand about just having MTS files alone and not other folders being an issue. I am and would be including into a copy of the content on my external drive with the following: AVF_INFO and PRIVATE (I know to copy those, then to put those two folders in a titled folder of my choice). In those folders, lies the following: AVCHD folder, SONY folder, BDMV folder, CLIPINF, PLAYLIST, STREAM and in the STREAM folder there in lies the clips.

Now since I've done the deleting of clips in camera and since they're all not one piled up after another as far as #'s being 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 all the way up to 100 clips, will there be issues?

[Scott Goldberg]

FCP X is a good tool to organize your media, you don't seem to have understood that. No need to 'keep' unusable clips after you picked the good ones by previewing them, importing them (which, as mentioned, will make an independent copy). But FCP X will refuse to import naked mts-clips. And also orphaned mts-clips. An mts-clip is already orphaned if you manually change anything on the file structure of your original folder. Files can only be deleted in the camera, which will then write a new index reading 'file .00005 is missing' (or so). Or by FCP X. Full stop.

 

The whole purpose for me to not have so many files in my card was to make sure that when I put the files onto my external, it didn't fill up so much space. There were a lot of test shoots on the card and off the cusp, we started shooting and now have a full segment done and I'm happy about it and it's perfectly shot and lit and I had deleted the old test shoot clips and have just kept the clips of what I am doing to update. So I just didn't want to feel the excess baggage of all of the clips that were not going to be used...

[Axel]

Those CLIPINFO and PLAYLIST files containt texts that you'd need to understand to edit them in such a way as to enable FCP X to find the corresponding video/audio/timecode/spanned-file-stuff. I couldn't, but I am no hacker.

Look, no matter how many clips you have recorded that you want to delete, just do it after importing. If you copied 2000 CDs into iTunes, you'd better not sort them manually in advance, because iTunes will then not load corresponding infos such as titles, cover images, different kinds of useful tags that let you find one song out of tenthousand within seconds. How much space on your harddrive can be temporarily used to store the originals anyway? Did you know about the clever way to create a 'sparse disc' with disc utility, a volume that grows with it's content and that can either be copied to any external drive or, as I said, deleted after FCP X made it's already consolidated copies?

I turn back to the iTunes analogy: iTunes makes a copy from every song (as AAC, mp3, to your preferences). You can of course eject the originals afterwards (as physical discs or disc images). You can also delete every already imported song from within iTunes, but if you start to mess around with the actual FOLDERS in >users >iTunes, you will experience 'issues'.

The costs for storage space are ridiculous. Since you need the space only for the few minutes before you import, what is there to lament about? Of course, the professional way is to always keep a backup.

I occasionally deleted clips in-camera. There are no problems with this method, but I don't find it smart.

Many other NLEs, as i.e. Premiere, import naked mts-files. But again, you are then forced to do any sorting manually, using folders instead of smart collections or renaming the files. Not smart, not AT ALL. And no option in FCP X.

[Motionmaker]

I realize this is an old thread and you're on FCPX but I thought I'd chime in with one other insight:

 

For Premiere users, Adobe Prelude will let you select certain clips from your AVCHD SD card and copy them to a new AVCHD folder with proper file structure (and will let you rename the project folder and MTS files accordingly!).  I use this with my C100 for the same purpose as you're describing.  I also sometimes shoot multiple projects in a day to the same card and want to archive them to separate AVCHD project folders.  You can also transcode to multiple formats and destinations at the same time.  I used to transcode everything to ProRes because I thought that was the only way to rename and organize my footage before learning this trick.