Simple 3D Workflow on a MAC ?

[Dominik Muench]

Hi Guys


our production company bought a Panasonic twin lens 3D camera system this week and I have the great pleasure to work it all out.
For PC users this seems to be a fairly straight forward thing. However we run everything on MAC, so I wanted to check if anyone can recommend a good workflow with FinalCut X.
I tried the Cineform Studio Premium trial to convert the stereo images to H264 and import it into FcpX but it wont read any of the files on the cameras SD cards and the software that came with the camera is only for PC....surely there has to be a little gizmothingy out there that I can use on an apple machine ?
The files on the SD cards only give me a single AVCHD container which I cant seem to open with any software.

thanks for the help.

 

[Mark Pavy]

I think you'll find the files off your camera are AVCHD MVC files. As far as I'm aware the only NLE that supports them is VEGAS. To edit them elsewhere (FCPX), you will need to demux the MVC files into separate Left and Right eye files, I'm pretty sure cineform now does this, this feature may be crippled in the trial version, not sure, you can save them as .mov files, then you can remux the .mov files into a cineform 3D file. The workflow for 3D is 6-10 times more time consuming. Have fun.

 

[David Cole]

Unfortunately, the Mac version of GoPro Studio Pro doesn't ingest MVC files. I'm not aware of any Mac-only workflow for MVC-based cameras. We use GoPro Studio Pro on the PC to ingest & MUX into Cineform - then move to the Mac for the remainder of the workflow. The Panny camera utility - or - 3DTV's MVC-to-AVI Converter will probably run under Parallels on the Mac.

 

[Craig Lees]

+1 on running parallels, maybe with Edius 6.5 (fast & solid).
Edius 6.5 is pretty good at editing .r3d files too ; )
Lets you 3D mux all kinds of outputs to feed different screens like a cheaper passive 'line by line' Zalman rather than the more expensive side by side 3DTV's.

But yes, generally S3D on the mac with .mvc files is a bit of a PITA. Parallels is your best bet.

Craig Lees
Scarlet X
3D Stories
UK

 

[Dominik Muench]

Hi Mark

yep thats exactly the issue, the camera does not shoot seperate L+R channel streams. I downloaded the Cineform Pro Trial and unfortunately it did not recognise the AVCHD file from the camera.


thanks guys, looks like I might have to wip out the old windows machine again :/