Burning an AVCHD camera archive to multiple DVDs
I needed to send a 28GB AVCHD camera archive as a set of DVDs to another site without editing or recompression. The SDHC card was recognized as /dev/disk3s1 on my Mac Mini. The process first creates a disk image from the mounted device, then splits that image into separate (~4.0GB, due to overhead) files, then creates CD burnable images of each split image file, then burns each of these images to a separate DVD.
To recombine, copy the parts from every DVD into a single folder, then open the root “video.dmg” image. This will automatically mount the combined image which can then be targeted by an application like Final Cut Pro for Camera Archive importing.
These are all Terminal commands. First, create and split the disk image:
mini:/Users/chrisl/ 1$ hdiutil create -srcdevice /dev/disk3s1 -o video.dmg -format UDRO -segmentSize 4.0g Preparing imaging engine… Reading whole disk (Windows_NTFS : 0)… ................................................................................ (CRC32 $35BE143E: whole disk (Windows_NTFS : 0)) Adding resources… ................................................................................ Elapsed Time: 20m 54.382s File size: 29736081679 bytes, Checksum: CRC32 $C6BECE6B Sectors processed: 63395840, 58078272 copied Speed: 22.6Mbytes/sec Savings: 8.4% created: /Users/chrisl/video.dmg created: /Users/chrisl/video.002.dmgpart created: /Users/chrisl/video.003.dmgpart created: /Users/chrisl/video.004.dmgpart created: /Users/chrisl/video.005.dmgpart created: /Users/chrisl/video.006.dmgpart created: /Users/chrisl/video.007.dmgpart
Next, create burnable images of each chunk using a loop:
mini:/Users/chrisl/ 2$ for i in video.*; do hdiutil create -format UDTO -srcfolder $i -o $i && rm $i; done ................................................................................ created: /Users/chrisl/video.dmg.cdr ................................................................................ created: /Users/chrisl/video.002.dmgpart.cdr ................................................................................ created: /Users/chrisl/video.003.dmgpart.cdr ................................................................................ created: /Users/chrisl/video.004.dmgpart.cdr ................................................................................ created: /Users/chrisl/video.005.dmgpart.cdr ................................................................................ created: /Users/chrisl/video.006.dmgpart.cdr ................................................................................ created: /Users/chrisl/video.007.dmgpart.cdr ................................................................................
Burn each image to DVD, using another loop:
mini:/Users/chrisl/ 3$ for i in *.cdr; do hdiutil burn $i && rm $i; done Please insert a disc: Preparing data for burn Opening session Opening track Writing track ................................................................................ Closing track ................................................................................ Closing session ................................................................................ Finishing burn Verifying burn… Verifying ................................................................................ Burn completed successfully ................................................................................ hdiutil: burn: completed Please insert a disc: Preparing data for burn (etc.)
Done!
or, if you’ve copied the whole archive locally already (to /Volumes/Data/DISK in this example), replace the first step with these two steps:
mini:/Users/chrisl/ 1$ hdiutil create -srcfolder /Volumes/Data/DISK -nospotlight -noanyowners -format UDRO split.dmg ................................................................................ created: /Users/chrisl/split.dmg mini:/Users/chrisl/ 2$ hdiutil segment -o video.dmg -segmentSize 4.0g split.dmg; .......................................... created: /Users/chrisl/video.dmg created: /Users/chrisl/video.002.dmgpart created: /Users/chrisl/video.003.dmgpart created: /Users/chrisl/video.004.dmgpart created: /Users/chrisl/video.005.dmgpart created: /Users/chrisl/video.006.dmgpart created: /Users/chrisl/video.007.dmgpart