Moved here from New 1.1 firmware topic:

I've found two good ways to transcode 1080p30 HBR footage on Mac (I'm still using Final Cut Express here.)

1. Using 5DtoRGB, as has been stated here before, works great. (and i don't want to cheat these awesome guys out of their money, but the batch script for the free version can be very easily modified to accept .MOV, .mov or .MTS file extensions - i did it before the paid version came out.)

As pointed out be rsquires, 5DtoRGB does a good job at eliminating red channel nastiness in HBR footage - much better than transcoding using a standard quicktime conversion or JES deinterlacer. The chroma mode setting that eliminates red nastiness the best is Chroma mode "Default" - NOT interlaced, which comes up as default it seems with this footage 1.5.3b. I've been using Decoding Matrix BT-709 because its recommended for HD, but have not tested whether that makes a big difference or which is best for GH2 footage.

Since I'm using FCE, which edits natively in Apple Intermediate Codec only, often I want AIC .mov files not ProRes (though ProRes is OK if necessary because it does not take much extra CPU for it to play them in an AIC timeline) - so here's another method:

2. Install the Panasonic AVCAM importer quicktime component, and use the free JES Deinterlacer to convert the .MTS file with a bare project (no processing) with output set to Quicktime export as whatever codec you want.

JES can do batches and you can tick off if you want to convert to progressive in (for AIC, at least, this produces output files that are marked as progressive and use a somewhat lower bitrate because the encoder is not compensating for the interlacing which I assume takes more bitrate to represent nicely in that codec.) Not sure if this makes a bitrate change in ProRes, but it might make those files better recognized as Progressive to FCP-X or Premiere if checked. Just a thought.

I am personally leaving it as interlaced because it does not matter in FCE - you just need to set field dominance to None if it isn't already set, and you get slightly less quality loss in transcoding (data rate ends up being 69Mbps (progressive) vs. 104Mbps (interlaced) for AIC).

However, bright red things look awful in this footage - so i'm leaning towards using 5DtoRGB for transcode.

Edit: You can make transcodes from .MTS files in JES Deinterlacer look a little better in the red channel (not as good as 5DtoRGB) by checking "Reinterlace Chroma" on input inspector. You must leave input set as interlaced for this to be available (that is default for GH2 HBR footage MTS files in JES).

looks like these .MTS files even work right in FCE's timeline (crappy playback frame rate though of course - but OK after a render)

I´m running a 32bit machine clipwrap wont work...but thx