Dealing with AVCHD. Any free software to extract or edit AVCHD video?

Question

I have a Panasonic HDC-SD5 video carmera which records in HD format to a memory card. It also came with a DVD burner which burns this format to DVD which I need a blu-ray player to view. I can get about 30 min worth of video on 1 DVD.

My problem is the software that comes with the camera is not very good at all so I am constantly just using the 'backup' feature in the included burner (connect drive to camera, push backup, and it spits out up to 4 DVDs worth of HD video). Now that I have the video backed up on DVD in the HD format (blu-ray), is there any free software that I can use to edit this video and create other HD DVD's with my own menus, transitions, etc?

I was considering buying Pinnacle Studio but I wanted to exaust any free options before biting the bullet.

Any suggestions for software I could use or anything else I could do to make dealing with this AVCHD format any easier that I am unaware of?

Edit: Sorry forgot to include that I am running Windows Vista 64-bit.

Edit: Still haven't found anything that is truely free. Everything has limitations by either time, watermark the video or degrade the quality.

Edit: So I still haven't found really anything, so is there some software I can use to convert the video to another format that I then could use to edit the video?

Answer 1

Why didn't you try to use Panasonic attached software - HD Writer, although it is not powerful enough, the simple editing, burning dvd could be achieved.

Answer 2

I found a free solution! Windows Live Movie Maker which is an addon for Windows 7 will allow editting of AVCHD. Since my original question I have upgraded to Windows 7 and Movie Maker now does everything I need.

Answer 3

No OS mentioned so I'm guessing Windows. If the files you get from the camera over the USB connection are anything like most camcorders with mp4 video - you might need MP4Cam2AVI to move the streams into a regular AVI container (this won't degrade quality). This will allow more editing packages to read and import the files without being thoroughly confused - which might be useful when testing free alternatives like Wax.

If you can't already just watch the video files copied from the USB connection with any media player, get FFDShow as it will decode those mpeg4 video streams.

To convert to something else you could use VirtualDub. I don't see why burning them to BD-DVD would be required before you're done editing.

Here's a video showing how get started with Blenders sequence editor. Most 3D packages have this capability though it's mainly designed for editing texture or effect image sequences used within the 3D projects - not to do the complete post in. But it does work :)

Answer 4

Go for Pinnacle's Videospin - it has been receiving pretty good raves on the Net.

EDIT: Pinnacle's Videospin will support importing AVCHD in full -> but will only not be able to export HD.

I am recommending Blender - just found out from a friend that before he was able to pony up for FCP, he used Blender to do simple editing for his AvCHD videos. Check out this Blender wiki.

Answer 5

Sony Vegas and Nero Ultra both are able to edit the format. There is also AVCHD editor as already mentioned. I believe the last 2 will let you convert for free.

Answer 6

http://www.dvd-tool.com/editor/edit-avchd.html

AVS Video Editor for Windows