CatDV doesn’t like m2t files,what are my options?

[Bryson Jones]

Just use Premiere to make an h.264 mp4 proxy and archive away. Or some people create a mezzanine file (prores?) and then edit from that.

AVCHD is a tough one in a lot of workflows.

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com

[Maurice Coombs]

Thanks for writing back, from what Iv’e heard is that H.264 isn’t a good codec to edit in so I’m leaning on flipping them to DVCPROHD for archive and any possible edits in the future. Any thoughts on using DVCPROHD?

Thanks

[John Heagy]

[Maurice Coombs] “Any thoughts on using DVCPROHD?”

m2t is an MPEG2 format so I’m gonna guess it’s 1440×1080 in which case you do not want to go with DVCProHD as it’s 1280×1080.

ProRes supports 1440×1080. Consider rewrapping as a standard .mpg via MPEG Streamclip or .mov via ClipWrap.

John

[Rolf Howarth]

H.264 isn’t a great codec for editing (it’s optimised for small file sizes not for ease of editing), but then nor is AVCHD .m2t (as that’s basically just H.264, in an MPEG wrapper). There are three main approaches you can use when working with AVCHD:

a) Use ClipWrap to rewrap the video as a QuickTime .mov and edit with that. No loss in quality, but it’s no longer an .m2t file. Perhaps archive the .m2t file somewhere just in case.

b) Keep the .m2t file and edit with that in Premiere, but create an h264/mp4 or similar proxy for logging in CatDV, playback on the web, etc. (Or use Xuggle to play the .m2t file within CatDV, but be aware that playback is quite jerky and only suitable as a low quality preview).

c) Transcode all your media to a common mezzanine format such as ProRes and use that, perhaps archiving the original .m2t files. This is particularly useful if you work with a variety of different cameras and want to work with a common format.

[Maurice Coombs]

Thanks for the info everybody. I think I’m just going to convert everything to prores.

Thanks Again