The Panasonic AG-HMC40 is one of the cheapest and smallest professional camcorders on the market. The camera is extremely portable and lightweight, weighing in at just over 2 lbs. While SD-based camcorders have been gaining ground in the consumer market, the AG-HMC40 has the ability to record 1080p AVCHD images at significantly higher bitrates.

The 1080p AVCHD recordings from Panasonic AG-HMC40 bring us a more lifelike picture and multilayer vision enjoyment. However, it occurs some frustrated problems when AG-HMC40 users intend to make home movies with these AVCHD footages in FCP, FCE, iMovie, Adobe Premiere Pro. Below are the quoted words from one AG-HMC40 who met the trouble of Panasonic AG-HMC40 with iMac and Final Cut Express.

Can anybody help me in this matter; I got the Panasonic Ag HMC 40 AVCHD camcorder. I would like to run Final cut Express to do some edit work with its AVHCD videos. But trouble occurs when I import the AVCHD to it, the videos are with glitches. And I spent effort to transfer AVCHD to my iMac, got final MTS files. This time, the Final cut Express cannot recognize the video at all!

In fact, the old version Final Cut Express can only edit in two codecs DV and AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec). The recent version FCE 4 only allows for transcoding AVCHD to Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) provided that the camera is actually attached to the computer - it cannot convert AVCHD files stored elsewhere and is currently for Intel processors only. So, when you want to edit Panasonic AG-HMC40 AVCHD on Final Cut Express on Mac, you’d better transcode
Panasonic AG-HMC40 AVCHD to AIC for FCE first which can make sure edit Panasonic AG-HMC40 AVCHD in FCE on Mac without any glitches.

First, you can download and install the AVCHD to AIC Converter on your iMac. This Mac AVCHD converter enables you to convert Panasonic AG-HMC40 AVCHD more friendly format AIC .mov for Fianl Cut Express with the preset profile that makes the conversion task easier.

Step 1: Run the AVCHD to Final Cut Express Converter and load the MTS files to it.
Tip: If you wanna join MTS/M2TS files for Final Cut Express, please tick the "Merge into one" box.

Sep 2: Click on Format > iMovie and Final Cut Express > Apple Intermediate Codec(AIC) (*.mov), which is the FCE favorable video format/codec. Then you can set the output folder as you want or just keep the default one.

Step 3: Click the “Settings” icon and you’d better set the video frame rate as 30fps, video size as 1920*1080 for editing AVCHD in Final Cut Express with best quality.

Step 4: Click the “Convert” button; it will convert Panasonic AG-HMC40 MTS to AIC for Final Cut Express on Mac immediately. You can find the process in the “Conversion” interface.

When the conversion process shows in 100%, tap the Completed button and then get the output AIC .mov video for FCE. Now, it’s time to import Panasonic AG-HMC40 AVCHD to FCE for further editing without any trouble.

Related guides:
Transcode Panasonic AG-AC160 AVCHD to Final Cut Pro 7
Convert Panasonic AG-AF100 AVCHD to ProRes for FCP
Convert Sony HDR-CX115 MTS to Final Cut Express 4 on Mac

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