Using AVCHD (1080I) movies within FotoMagico.

Two questions: (1) My Panasonic DMC-FZ100 still camera takes AVCHD movies of 1920 x 1080 pixels at a bit rate of approx. 17Mbps and at 60 fps. Can these be dropped into FotoMagico without conversion? (2) Assuming they can, is it possible to pan across or otherwise select portions of the 16:9 frame produced if the slideshow is produced for a different aspect ratio (4:3)?

You can have a try yourself with our free trial of FotoMagico:

http://boinx.com/download/#fotomagico

Just adding to that from the technical perspective:
(1) Yes, movies are played back live without any conversion on playback.
(2) Absolutely yes, that’s the idea.
The only technical uncertainty is if your computer can do that fast enough with your type of movie. It’s best to follow Rudi’s recommendation and give it a try.

FotoMagico can play any movie files that are natively supported by QuickTime. So if QuickTime player can play a movie file, then FotoMagico can also use it.

The AVCHD movie files created by Panasonic cameras however cannot natively be played by QuickTime at this time. The need to be converted to a compatible file format first. I currently use Toast Titanium to achieve this, but I’m sure that there are other tools that can do this conversion as well (maybe Handbrake?).

Basti, do you have to add any info to this?

The DMC-FZ100 can also record video in mp4 format, so that might be better to use if I plan to incorporate video in a slide show since it wouldn’t need conversion. Can a 16:9 aspect movie frame be panned by Fotomagico while the movie is playing with the panning speed controlled so that the panning can be matched to the length of the video clip? To answer Rudolf - I’d love to try it out but don’t have time to play with it now. Leaving for Europe in 2 weeks and want to know ahead of time what formats to shoot in. By the way, is the Fotomagico manual available on line? It may answer some of my questions.

Peter, Thanks for clearing up the AVCHD file situation. I have tested the situation and brought the AVCHD files from the FZ100 into iMovie. They came in easily and I’m sure I can export them in a QuickTime friendly format. Don’t have time to try since we are leaving in a week. The 1080i video shot with this camnera is spectacular, so I’ll use that format and hope for the best.

You can pan & zoom across videos just the same as you can with still images. Let’s say you have a stationary video that was taken from a tripod, but you later you decide that the footage would look better with a bit of a zoom effect. Just place the video on the stage and add the zoom effect there (as you would with a still image).

For the conversion of AVCHD files from my Panasonic TM 700 I use and I can recommend VoltaicHD from ShedWorx.