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AVHCD cameras, MTS files, and Vegas 9
Hello,
I have recently purchased a Canon Vixia HF M40 camera, which is an AVHCD camcorder that produces files with the extension .mts. It’s an extremely practical camera for its price range, but the MTS files are giving me some trouble in Vegas 9: in the preview window, they appear extremely choppy, which significantly hinders my ability to properly edit, not to mention that it makes me feel like I’m having a seizure!
I’ve heard that people use Cineform’s Neoscene to convert MTS files into AVIs, which run smoothly on Vegas. However, I don’t feel like paying 129$ for a programme that I will only use to convert files. Does anyone know of any free converters that I could use? Or perhaps some other workaround for this problem? Some obscure codec, perhaps?
I have tried Apecsoft’s converter but the AVI files it produces are not recognized by Vegas: the clips appear without a thumbnail in the Project Media window as soon as I import them, are greyed out and appear as “Media Offline” in the Trimmer (only the video track, the audio is entirely absent), and cannot be drag/dropped at all into the Timeline. All this despite being perfectly normal if played with VLC. This may have something to do with it being a trial version.
I would greatly appreciate any help on this. I like my camera, but it’s not of much use if I can’t edit what I film!
Lazar
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4 Replies
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I know what you mean about paying for Neoscene, but for me it’s been worth it. I have a Vixia HF S21, which shoots to AVCHD and I have Vegas 9. My computer ran the footage pretty well, but even so, with any plugins or higher quality previewing, it was choppy.
There’s a discount code you can find by searching Creative Cow to get Neoscene for about $100, and it’s really easy to use. It’s basically drag and drop for converting your files.
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I have two i7 computers that can edit my 1080 60p .mts files from my tm700 fine. But you can also render each clip as DV widescreen, edit those, then replace them with the original .mts files just before rendering.
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Hi. Thanks for the tip, it seems like an interesting workaround, but i’m not exactly sure how to do it. I’m a bit of a novice, you see!
When you say render the clips as DV widescreen, do you mean to play with the project properties (probably not, because i don’t see how that would help) or do you mean actually use Vegas to render each individual clip as a new file? That seems incredibly time-consuming: put in time-line, render, wait while vegas renders (i have an i5, 7200 RPM with 8GB ram but it still takes a while to render!), import new file into project, delete old MTS file from timeline, start over. With around 30 clips per filming session, that may take a lot of time.
And even then, if i use the newly-rendered files to edit my video, how do i replace them with the original MTS files afterwards? I remove the rendered DV widescreen files to force vegas to see them as “Media Offline” and then manually find the original MTS by right-clicking on the offline clip? again, this seems very time consuming. But if that’s what i gotta do, then that’s what i gotta do!!
But if i misunderstood your instructions, i would greatly appreciate some help!
Lazar
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This is called using proxies to edit with. DV widescreen is very easy on your CPU and will edit like butter.
If your computer wont edit your .mts files, you will need to convert them all to something Vegas can use on your PC, being Cineform or DV.
Render each to the same name, in the same folder and the extention will be avi. If you’ve already started a .veg with the .mts, you can replace the file by clicking on it in your project media tab and select replace, then point to the new .avi file with the same name. Edit with these avi files, then use the same method to replace them with the original .mts files and render. Best done just before you go to sleep. LOL
There is a program called Gearshift by Vasst. John Rofrano, also a Sony Vegas leader here at the Cow workes for them I believe. Feel free to jump in John, maybe tell her the benifits on using it versus my method.
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