Basically, what he is saying is that there are two kinds of AVCHD which are distinguished by the way Premiere CS5.5 and CS6 react to them.  He has christened them Benign PsF and Malignant PsF.

When you drag a Benign PsF clip onto the "New Item" icon in the Premiere project panel, the sequence that is created is the correct format for the clip, in particular the fact that it is progressive is recognised.

When you drag a Malignant PsF clip on the icon, the sequence that is created does not have the correct parameters and is always upper field first.

Progressive clips from both my Canon Legria HF S30, and my Sony V1E (as you know, I am in PAL land) both turn out to be Malignant.  Premiere creates an AVCintra 100 50Hz UFF sequence for my Canon files!  These are AVCHD, progressive (PsF), 25 fps, and around 21 mbps.

Correct recognition is achieved by R clicking on the clip and selecting Modify>Interpret Footage.  Change the  field order to Conform to "No Fields (Progressive)".  An appropriate sequence can then be created.

He reckons from observation that the problem is widespread, affecting most if not all Canon AVCHD cameras, Sony 's AVCHD and NXCAM ranges, and some Panasonic cameras.  He mentions the Panasonic AF100 and AG-HMC40 as producing Benign files.  The problem is not a PAL problem, the writer is based in Florida, and the cameras he quotes are almost all N or S America models.

He argues that correct recognition is possible as Clipwrap can achieve this - unfortunately it is MAC only.  Also Atomos have software called Stripper which can sort this out.  He has had contacts with Adobe - he mentions a conversation with Carl Soule about this.

If this is correct, and these files have a problem with Premiere, then it is possible that the problems being experienced here have their origins in the same place.

What would be really nice is if some one from Adobe could tell us they found / fixed the problem and it will be included in the next maintainace release - when ever that will be. 

We could all then rest easy knowing it's coming instead of looking at each other wondering if Adobe have it fixed or not, or will ever fix it.  It cleary used to work....

Anyone from Adobe care to comment?

Interesting stuff but for me anyway, it doesn't solve the spanned AVCHD multicam issue. I found I had mixed PsF and true progressive but using either just the true progressive or PsF interpreted as progressive CS6 is still unusable for multicam - freezes on a single frame after a few seconds. In any case this doesn't explain why CS5/5.5 can handle ANY AVCHD fine whereas CS6 can't.

So in summary whilst an interesting and valid point it is a bit of a red-herring as far as this topic is concerned.

Reiterating ExactImage's comment, please Adobe, this is a major issue for many of us - what is the status of this problem and when will it be resolved?

I think it's fair to say that some people don't seem to have a problem at all whilst others, like myself, have a problem with all AVCHD spanned footage. I have tried footage from five different sources (3 Panasonic and 2 Sony in 720p/1080p/1080i (all 25fps PAL) and all the spanned footage has shown the same problem.  Adobe have admitted there is a problem (see Greg Baber's post No. 127) - I'm not sure why it is that some people don't seem to be affected although I'm not 100% sure that the people that say it's OK have actually tried several layers or a multi-cam edit with spanned footage i.e. clips comprising more than one MTS file that Premiere is treating as one. I can also confirm that the exact same footage edits absolutely fine on the same hardware in CS5 which implies it is not related to the source or format of the AVCHD.

It's not just a spanned MS file problem as such.  If i use ClipWrap to re-wrap and merge the MTS files in to a single Quicktime file the problem still exists, and even media encode balks at the files.  Run those same files through Media Encoder 5.5 and it's a solid workflow just as before.

So, our current AVCHD workflow consists of:

1) Use ClipWrap to re-wrap and merge the MTS files

2) UseMedia Encoder 5.5 to transcode them to ProRes (choose your own flavour)

3) Ingest in to CS6

It's a pain and slows us down, but it's a work around until Adobe get this right.

There are enough little problems (including the serious error issue and CUDA crashes) that it's going to take a while I think.

We're unlikely to get any advanced notice either

I updated to 6.0.2 today. Unfortuantely the problem of terrible playback performance(media pending, or frozen video with audio playback, or blacked out video) of AVCHD still exists for me. I am using fs100 footage on a new Mac Pro tower 2 x 2.66 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon with 16GB DDR3 ram. Performance should not be an issue at all. I do not have Premiere cs5.5, so I cannot confirm that it worked fine before, but I can say that playback is perfectly smooth in FCPX. I would prefer to edit in premiere though, so I would love for some sort of fix to this completely debilitating bug for ALL of my fs100 footage.

Just to add to the confusion, when I edit at home on a different mac pro, I experience no issues at all when working with AVCHD from the same camera. The mac pro at home is from the same year, but is a 1x 3.33 Ghz 6 core Intel Xeon instead of the 12 cores at 2.66 Ghz. Other than that, the machines are identical. I really would love to be able to edit any of this footage at my office, so I hope adobe will give some sort of indication that they are at least working on sorting this out.

Thanks Greg but I already tried too much times. I think I did every time I received an update. I m sorry I can't anymore. I lost faith in Adobe. I just wanted to have an official answer. At least to recognize the problem. Anyway, I know it is not your fault. And I m pretty sure it is not an easy bug. But obviously it is not important enough for Adobe.

Thanks and bye...

Here is an answer from a third party software (who wraps AVCHD clips) company's tech support dep't about a good work around with (wrapped) AVCHD files:

"One thing I found while working to reverse engineer the adobe-specific quicktime stuff is that if you add your [AVCHD] files to premiere, then quit (Without saving), reboot, and add your files again, the second time they're imported they'll often play much more smoothly."

I've done exactly this, and it works like a charm.

That said, we're still going to be converting-to/working-in ProRes as it looks to be the superior performer in CS6.

You right, It is possible I do that but it is also too long wihtout official information, so I will also use all my energy to leave Adobe if I can do it. And I have a lot of energy, I feel ready to convert my all team to new horizon now. I think with the price of these softwares we deserve at least an answer, if not, I think I should really start to move away. The time cumulated of my team lost with this problem is far beyond the price of this useless software....

Which converter utility did you get?

Thanks

/Ulf

I haven't had any issues with my own .MTS files however, my friend told me about a program called MTS.Merger that merges your mts files for you, so if your issue is spanned media it will solve it. The program is PC only though. If you want I can PM you a download link. Since it's only merging the files it doesn't actually touch the video, it also joins the video flawlessly just like when you import via the media browser, except it actually spits out a single complete file AVCHD MTS file.

Btw. You can get it here:

http://vontraining.net/download/

Ulf

Brorsoft MTS Converter

It was the first company that had a listing on Google that had a video converter that said it could do MTS files. That was the Brorsoft Video Converter. however, do not buy the plain Jane do everything Video Converter, instead buy the one made specifically for converting MTSs as the other one has problems with spanned media as well.

Even the MTS convert gives one little blip at the end of a file. I guess that it decimates the interlaced frames in a way that actually chops a about a second off the end of a MTS file. If you have footage from 2 different camera angles as I did that blip doesn't matter as I was on the other camera for those times that footage ended on one.

The video converter has the problem of knowing what to do with the beginning of a file, it seems to hold on a frame a few moments in to the file and then play the video when the audio gets caught up to that frame. At least this was my experience with it.

The great thing is the MTS and Video converter can be used in situations that Adobe can’t handle and I get my work done.

The other reason I post a detail of what I experienced with this software, maybe Adobe will do the smart thing and look at Brorsoft's MTS converter program and see what it does right and fix their software because this other software can give them hints of what it did to resolve the situation.

Additionally the Brorsoft converters can string files together or chop them up as needed. This software was easy for me as having used premiere for as long as I have, I kind of knew what to look for and found all these great features in a very efficient UI.