Last year, Koh Tao Oceans Below made the transition from filming our HD underwater video using DV tape cameras to our newest standard- HDD (hard disc drive)- filming HD video (1080i) in both NTSC and Pal (30/25fps).

Moving over to HDD cameras changed everything for us. It is a much more practical way to work in a busy office with cameras going out on the morning dives, coming back to the editing suite only to be prepped to go out again for the afternoon dives. We appreciate that we can now use the same camera day in day out, without having to worry about whether there's enough space for the next staff member or underwater videographer internship trainee to record their HD underwater footage.

At the time of this article, our BSAC Professional Underwater Videographer training center has five new high-definition HDD cameras with Aquatica underwater video housings for student use. For us, HD tape cameras are a thing of the past. Gone are the days of constantly replacing tapes, sorting out dirty head issues, trouble-shooting tape deck malfunctions caused by so many moving parts, not to mention dealing with the limitation of a 60 min record time.

It seemed the only draw back with these new wonder cameras was the compression they use. AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) was a codec that haunted us for some time. We searched high and low on the internet for an effective way to deal with it. No one seemed to know anything. There was just more questions.

With the introduction of Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, we then had the ability to work with AVCHD- there were even a few plugins for CS3. But the problem was that yous eemed to need a super computer to work with it effectively. At Oceans Below we’re usually running 6/8 computers at a time, half of which are for the students to learn underwater video editing techniques. It was virtually a full time job upgrading these machines to handle the new formats that kept coming out.

One option we found was using a great little piece of software called ‘AVCHD upshift’ which converted the AVCHD/mts files to HDV/m2t,a much bigger file, but easier for the computers to handle. This was never going to be a longterm solution.

The SOLUTION!

Finally, Adobe has released Premiere Pro CS5! This was developed with AVCHD in mind. With the addition of the new mercury engine, Premiere Pro CS5 can run multi-layered AVCHD tracks without a problem. You can even apply effects to these clips and watch them back straight away.

Thank you Adobe! Once again you've raised the bar and made life easier for all of us Pro Videographers on Koh Tao!