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Converting Query
Hello you wonderful cows!
I am editing a short documentary in FCP 7 and have just been given an external hard drive of archival footage. Yay, it’s like candy at Christmas – only a great deal of the clips are .MTS and so my lovely candy has become a wretched gobstopper.
I’m a whiz at story-telling but am somewhat weak on file conversion. I thought I could use log feature but it keeps telling me the file is incorrect or the root folder is incorrect.
I am working with a whole bunch o’ video files. The main body of shots are done with a Blackmagic Cinema Camera at 1080 and are compressed as Apple ProRes 422HQ. The archival stuff is a darn-near 50-50 split between unviewable (and uneditable) .MTS files and MPG (and one file even has completely weird things labelled .MTS.moff — which I can’t begin to understand)
Any help on converting these strange and alien files to something editable would be very much appreciated.
Thank you, and happy new year!
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3 Replies
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Did they provide the FULL card structure for the MTS files? If so, you just need to select the base folder they are in. Well, if you have a folder that has multiple card backups, then you don’t choose THAT folder, you choose the main folder for the card backups. If they didn’t save the full card structure, then log and transfer won’t work. If they cameras they used were made more recently…meaning in the last 2-3 years, there’s a good possibility that they are too new of an AVCHD format for FCP 7 do deal with, as it was discontinued nearly 4 years ago.
If FCP cannot convert those, then look to ClipWrap2 from divergentmedia.com to handle them. It’s only $50, and can convert to ProRes 422, and quick. Handles pretty much every AVCHD media type.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I will ask about the card structure, all I know is that I was given an external hard drive that pretty much goes from the master folder of the documentary into Footage -> Archival ->Film Materials 1, 2, 3, and inside those folders are yet more folders of various shoots and films and bits made. I have tried using each sub folder as the target of the log and transfer but they are not responding.
I basically got handed a giant ball of string that needs unfolding so I will get back to the people who supplied the footage and enquire about base folder – but I am already pretty much certain I’ll just buy what you suggest as it’ll be far quicker and simpler!
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I agree with Shane, get ClipWrap. It sounds like whoever copied the camera cards drilled into the card structure and just saved the video files which is bad. That’s like taking the tape out of a miniDV cassette and throwing the cassette way, They’ve discarded all the metadata and card structure that’s needed to ingest the video properly. ClipWarp will convert the files to ProRes so you can use them again.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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