AVCHD encoded MP4’s

[John Rofrano]

Where did you get these files? If from a camera, what camera stores AVCHD files as MP4? Are you sure it’s an AVCHD camera and not just an MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 camera which doesn’t necessarily make it AVCHD. I’ve only seen MTS and M2TS used as valid AVCHD extensions.

If Vegas can convert these files one at a time then you could use VASST Ultimate S Pro to set up a batch render to convert hundreds of these files at a time. It will load each one and render it to whatever format you need.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Darrin Salt]

Thanks for the information. Forgive my hd-newbie error – I was told it was a HD camera which produced AVC encoded files. It’s clear now that an AVCHD camera (producing MTS files) is not the same as an HD Camera producing video files (in my case, I’ve been given MP4 files) which are AVC. Confused ? I was.

I’ll have a play with VASST software and let you know how I get on. This is a low budget production, a charity has given me the MP4 files which came from a Samsung HMX20C “Full HD” camera. Obviously consumer but nevertheless I wasn’t expecting to have to recode the files one-by-one (almost “by hand”). Yuk.

Regards,

—–
Darrin Salt
London, UK.

[Darrin Salt]

Just an update.

The VASST plug-in for Vegas does do the batch conversion, so I’m 90% of the way there – but Ultimate S Pro is such a sledgehammer to crack this nut. VASST’s upshift software would be much more appropriate – if only it read AVC’s which were MP4 encoded.

I’ve never encountered such compatability issues before when it comes to conversion – is this just because HD / AVC is fairly new ?

I spoke to the purchaser of the camera and they showed me articles which they read when choosing it which showed MTS as a poorly supported format and they assumed MP4 (supported by Apple et al) as an obvious choice. All I can say is MP4 might be OK for playback on dedicated hardware, but somethings got to give on the editing front.

Back to my original message, I could really do with a simple, cost effective batch convertor for HD (AVC) encoded MP4’s. Does anyone know of such a thing ?

—–
Darrin Salt
London, UK.

[John Rofrano]

> I’ve never encountered such compatability issues before when it comes to conversion – is this just because HD / AVC is fairly new ?

I’m not sure if it’s the newness or the unwillingness to support a standard. AVCHD is the standard and consumers should look for a standard solution but it’s tough when the AVCHD camera costs $500 and the MPEG4 camera costs $99.

> I spoke to the purchaser of the camera and they showed me articles which they read when choosing it which showed MTS as a poorly supported format

Well it certainly isn’t poorer that an unsupported MP4 format. 😉 They may have misinterpreted what they read. Even a poorly supported standard is still a standard and still has a better chance of interoperability than rolling your own MP4 file that no one supports.

> and they assumed MP4 (supported by Apple et al) as an obvious choice.

Unless you are using a Mac, it doesn’t matter what Apple does or doesn’t support (Besides, I thought Apple didn’t like anything that wasn’t a MOV file). MP4 has several profiles and not all software and cameras support all profiles so it causes a lot of problems.

> Back to my original message, I could really do with a simple, cost effective batch convertor for HD (AVC) encoded MP4’s. Does anyone know of such a thing ?

Have you tried VASST GearShift? It will happily convert all of your MP4 files to Sony YUV or CineForm AVI which edits beautifully in Vegas. This is a specialized version of what is in Ultimate S Pro (and costs a lot less) 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Allen Zagel]

Well, I got this Sanyo Xacti HD which is a full HD/AVCHD cam and will shoot at 1920 x 1080. Nowever like you the files are MP4 and not M2T’s. However I’m using it at 720p 30

My Final Cut Express Log-and-Transfer won’t recognize them either.

So I found this MPEG Streamclip, a free open source program and on my Mac Book Pro I convert them using AIC but for Windows (yes there’s also a wnidows version) I used Apple Motion JPEG and imported the files right into Vegas. No problems at all. Did my thing in Vegas then made a DVD in DVDA.

But now I also have a lot of files to do so will look into Upshift as Streamclip won’t batch convert.

Allen

ASX Media Group, Inc.
http://www.asxvideo.com
NEW DVD – Europe, Trains-n-Trams

[Adam Rose esq.]

have same situ of MP4 inside .AVI, from a helmet cam recording to SD card, and converted them last time using Super IIRC. Just picked more footage from client this weekend, and have to dig up previous workflow. I definitely didn’t use anything expensive last time.

btw, the clips play best inside DivX player – haven’t tried the DivX converter since haven’t got the Pro version, but it’s also a possibility…….

[John Rofrano]

> Well, I got this Sanyo Xacti HD which is a full HD/AVCHD cam

Actually the Sanyo Xacti HD not AVCHD at all and nowhere on the Sanyo site does it make any claims of being AVCHD. The files are just a non-standard form of MPEG-4.

> But now I also have a lot of files to do so will look into Upshift as Streamclip won’t batch convert.

AVCHD UpShift won’t work because it only works with AVCHD compliant files. You can use Super(c) to batch convert a bunch of MP4 files to pretty much any codec that you have installed on your PC.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Allen Zagel]

Hi John

Wow! Okay my mistake. This is my first foray into any kind of HD. It says Full HD MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 It was easy for me to see and assume AVCHD seeing the AVC!

So what does this mean then and how to edit and make a SD DVD?

Do I still have to down convert or just lay it on Vegas timeline and edit? Now I’m stumped. Ive been using MPEG Streamclip and it seems to be working fine but maybe that’s not the way to go?

thanks for the correction.
Allen

ASX Media Group, Inc.
http://www.asxvideo.com
NEW DVD – Europe, Trains-n-Trams

[Darrin Salt]

Hi all.

Well I’ve solved my problem. I did try the Vasst products and although I had some success, it was a bit hit-and-miss (mostly due to the files and Vegas, not due to the Vasst products).

However, I then came across a (free/open source) package called MP4Cam2AVI. Note this is not the same as the shareware MP42AVI product. What this essentially does is convert the MP4 file into an AVI file. It does not re-compress the contents, these stay as AVC. Because no recompression takes place, it’s very quick. It also offers the option of converting many to one, so if you’ve a lot of incredibley small MP4 files from the same event (typically most of these camera’s create a new file every time the record button is pressed), it can create a composite AVI. This makes your NLE behave the way it would have if you’d be using a tape as your source material, with just one AVI per “tape” aka memory card. It appears to be only a PC product, but if you’re a Mac user with Parallels, you won’t be phased by that.

This isn’t the final part of the puzzle though, as Vegas won’t read the AVC encoded AVI’s (Sound only, video stream unsupported). However, lots of other converters now will and I selected Elecards AVCHD convertor. I did try Upshift, but that would not read the files. Elecard will read and convert, the major plus for me is that unlike many cheap convertors, it will output full HD .ts files from the input AVI’s. It also isn’t integrated into Vegas, which is a plus as I can run the conversions on another machine (It converts faster than I can edit, so that’s a bonus !).

To summarise, I take my MP4 AVC/AAC files, pre-convert them to AVI’s with MP4Cam2AVI and then finally convert with Elecard AVCHD convertor. The two stage process is a bit of a problem but the first is very quick and I get MPEG2 .ts files which work perfectly in Vegas. Just drop them straight to the timeline/trimmer.

Hopefully some of the HD convertor software writers will start handling MP4’s natively soon, especially because their is great confusion between AVC encoded HD and AVCHD !

—–
Darrin Salt
London, UK.

[Allen Zagel]

Hi Darrin

I don’t think you really need to go through a 2-step process.

Try out MPEG Streamclip
https://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-win.html
It will also convert to AVI among others. I convert to MOV files which Vegas has no problem editing.

I did find out Streamclip (also open source & free) does do batch converting as well.

Allen

ASX Media Group, Inc.
http://www.asxvideo.com
NEW DVD – Europe, Trains-n-Trams