AVCHD lossless edit
 

I recently bought a Canon HF100 camcorder. I want to edit the .m2ts files (1920x1080, H.264) created by the camcorder losslessly - re-encoding around the cut to close the GOP is fine, but the application must not re-encode the whole file.
That's all. I just need to be able to cut small chunks of the file, no effects, no postprocessing, no nothing.
Oh, and it would be nice if the editor would allow me to move back and forth frame-by-frame. The "editor" provided with the camcorder cannot do that. It's horrible.

I thought there might be a simple application on the Internet that would do just that, but I can't find anything.

Suggestions?

Try MPEG Streamclip at www.squared5.com. It may work for you.

All you need is Adobe Premiere CS3 with a new kick ass plugin from Mainconcept called "MainConcept MPEG Pro HDV 3.1.0". It will allow you to edit AVCHD and export it to any format you ever want. You'd need a fast machine with RAID0 setup with AVCHD footage playing off of it to have smooth timeline playback in Premiere.

I could be wrong, but it looks like Mainconcept is lossless only when editing MPEG2? It seems like it will still render AVCHD files.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I think it's a long way till AVCHD can be edited losslessly. If all you want is to split .MTS files losslessly, simply divide the clips right in the camcorder before importing the footage on your PC. I have a Sony HDR-SR7, and it does allow doing so.

The Cannon HF100 cannot split the files.

What's interesting is that the very simple editor provided with the camcorder (Pixela) does seem to edit the AVCHD files losslessly. But it's a primitive editor - e.g. it's very hard to select the cut point with a precision of 1 frame. There's no way to move back or forward frame-by-frame. I would even find acceptable a way to move the edit point GOP-by-GOP, but not even that is available - all I can do is drag the cursor with the mouse, and the scale is not that great.

Pinnacle Studio 11 plus will edit AVCHD .mts files on the timeline natively and will render out to a disk in AVCHD format. The disk is supposed to play in PS3 and BluRay players.

I have neither so can't test it, but others in the Pinnacle forums have reported doing so and being happy with the finished effort.

My newest editing computer falls just short of being able to edit 1920x1080 (quad core 2.40GHz and 2.66GHz needed to cut it), so I set the HF100 to record at 1440x1080 at 13MBps and that's looking good rendered out to hi def MPEG4.

I just put together a Q6600 PC, and I can easily overclock to 3.0 GHz. Just trying out Studio+, but seems to work OK. Bruce, are you saying you have 2.4 GHz? Try overclocking.

My Quadcore Q6600 2.4 with Vista 64Bit, and 4Gig of RAM Handles AVCHD editing in Pinnacle 11 Ultimate easily with no need for overclocking, I can Edit and combine several AVCHD clips from my HG10 Camcorder and Render a 25 Minute movie from within Pinnacle ,I then burn it to a AVCHD DVD for playback in my PS3 with no video quality loss at all in about 1 hour and forty minutes, this with simple transitions, background music and a intro Text ....I get on average 10 to 12 FPS during the render....

I use Premiere Pro CS3 w/ MainConcept Mpeg Pro HD 3.2 to edit the raw 1920x1080 files with DD 5.1 audio (imports correctly and seemlessly). Mix up the footage with HDV footage using a Mainconcept profile, etc. Great workflow and highly recommended.

Update: I have burned AVCHD content edited in Studio 11 Ultimate to standard disk in AVCHD BluRay compliant form and tested it in playback on a Sony BluRay player at Best Buy and in my son's laptop with BluRay burner. Looks great.

While I still do not have a BD player, the disk image created by Pinnacle Studio when rendering to AVCHD is playable in the Pixela Imagemaker player that came with the camera and on a 21.6" Samsung monitor looks crisp and sharp.

Just upgraded to Pinnacle 12 Ultimate, It renders AVCHD without any loss as well for playback in a Bluray or PS3, more stable in Vista and less bugs to deal with as well,responds much faster than the 11 version..Lets you render HD Menu's for your footage as well as your transitions...Now if only Vegas would release its long awaited update allowing the same features in Architech 5...