Important Information for Panasonic AVCCAM Users

Issues with Panasonic AVCHD and Final Cut Pro X 10.2

Apple Support have released the following information:

Resolve black frames issues with Panasonic AVCHD and Final Cut Pro X 10.2

Final Cut Pro X 10.2 might display some video as black frames when working with Panasonic AVCCAM cameras at certain frame rates.

If you’re working with Panasonic AVCHD video files from an AVCCAM device recorded at 25p or 30p, video will occasionally play as black frames. This might occur on systems using Final Cut Pro X 10.2 on some Mac systems, depending on the graphics card. If you are using a Mac Pro (Late 2013) or playing several streams of AVCHD video on a MacBook Pro or iMac, you might see the black frames playback issue.

This issue can be resolved by recording at a frame rate other then 25p or 30p. This includes recording at 50p, 50i, 60p, 60i, or 24p.

You can avoid the black frames issue by transcoding 25p or 30p AVCHD recorded with a Panasonic AVCCAM to another codec like ProRes. ProRes 422 LT and ProRes 422 are excellent intermediate codecs that preserve original image quality. Note: Your new files will take up more hard drive space than the original files.

Follow these steps to transcode:

  1. Locate the AVCHD media which has already been imported into Final Cut Pro X. If your library uses an external media location then this media will be in an external media folder. If your media is managed inside the library, use the Consolidate function to move it to an external folder.
  2. Transcode your media to an intermediate format using Compressor or another transcoding application. If you create a Compressor droplet, you can transcode all of your media as a batch. But if you don’t have Compressor, you can use a wide range of transcoding applications. Be sure to target a folder on a drive that is large enough for all of this new transcoded media.
  3. Identify the specific problematic AVCHD clips in the Final Cut Pro X browser. If you view the library as a list, you can sort by codec and look for H.264 at 25p and 30p. Move these clips to their own event.
  4. If you made optimized or proxy media from these clips, you should delete those files. Select the new event with the h.264 media, go to File > Delete Generated Event Files, and choose to delete Optimized and Proxy media.
  5. With the event still selected, go to File > Relink Files. Choose Relink: All, click Locate All, and navigate to the folder of transcoded media.

If transcoding is not an option, and you already opened an older library with Final Cut Pro X 10.2, you will need to open a back up of that library with Final Cut Pro X 10.1.4. If you backed up a copy of Final Cut X 10.1.4 as described in the instructions, then you should delete Final Cut Pro X 10.2 from your system and restore the compressed Final Cut Pro X 10.1.4. Then launch Final Cut X 10.1.4, navigate to File > Open> From Back Up> Other and open the last library backup that was automatically saved before you upgraded to Final Cut Pro X 10.2.

Important: Information about products not manufactured by Apple is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute Apple’s recommendation or endorsement. Please contact the vendor for additional information.

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