Copied AVCHD videos to hard drive with Panasonics’ HD wrtier AE software

[Mark Barton]

I use HD Writer 3.0 software to transfer content from my TM900 camera. I usually shoot short clips, but I did find this thread that explains how to combine them with HD Writer.

https://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/archive/index.php/t-1366709.html

[Tom Yeiser]

Hey Mark,

I read through these and was able to get HD Writer AE 2.1 to copy the various files from one place to another on my computer, but they are still in the same format that Vegas Pro and Vegas Platinum won’t open as a single file (several m2ts files and a cont file). It is entirely possible I am missing something obvious, but what I want to do is find something that can read the container file and reformat the video into a video file that Vegas can treat as a single item on the timeline.

Thanks,
I appreciate your help

Sweet Owen Sound Recording Studio
Musician

[Phil Peacock]

Tom. I have a Pannny SD700 and ALWAYS use HD Writer to transfer my video clips onto my computer (rather than Windows Explorer which from memory had an issue I think but not sure now). Anyway, I create a folder on a drive to hold the files, tell HD Writer where to put them and let it do its thing. I notice that it then creates a.CONT, .PMPD, .SFK, a .TMB and a .m2ts file for each clip.

When editing with SVP-11 obviously only the m2ts file shows in the Explorer window and that is the file dragged onto the timeline (from SVP’s Explorer window). And I never have any worries with sync issues.

However, my clips/files are pretty much always less than 200k kb. I am wondering whether the fact that your files are presumably a lot bigger/longer and thereby causing the problem. If that is the case I don’t have an explanation or an answer for you.

[Tom Yeiser]

Thanks for the post Phil. These clips are big, the camera is splitting them at the 4gb limit.

Here is a screen shot of SVP11 with my two m2ts clips that ‘HD Writer’ created during ‘copy to PC’. I don’t remember how many times I’ve done this in the past year, but it has been a pretty regular way of working. Usually I can expand the m2ts files and just bring them together on the timeline and the audio and video plays back seamlessly. In this case the video blinks and the audio is way off. As they are aligned in the screen shot the video will play back seamlessly, but the audio drops out.

I will be able to make this work since I have a separate audio file from a Sound Devices 702, but it may be messy. Ultimately I merge the m2ts video with the 702 audio. If I have a single video file Plural Eyes will sync the files and take care of audio drift, but with three files that don’t line up, well as miraculous as Plural Eyes is, it can’t pull all three together.

What keeps me messing around with this is the fact that ‘HD writer AE’ can play these files seamlessly. The information in the cont, pmpd, sfk, tmb files must hold a secret that I can’t figure out how to use. I might have HD Writer make a DVD for me and see if I can rip the converted file off the DVD.

Sweet Owen Sound Recording Studio
Musician

[Tom Yeiser]

I took my three m2ts files and aligned them so the video would play back smoothly and rendered them to a mpg file. Then in a new SVP11 file I imported (import media) the mpg video and my wav file from the Sound Devices 702. Despite the audio glitches in the video file ‘Plural Eyes’ was able to sync the files, much to my amazement. It looks like this will be a solution. I guess life is too short to figure everything out, but I am glad ‘Plural Eyes’ was brilliant enough to cover my mistakes.

Sweet Owen Sound Recording Studio
Musician

[Phil Peacock]

Good on yer Tom. There is usually a workaround. Still not sure what is happening though although I notice that for some reason the audio in the lefthand clip on your timeline looks as though it finishes abruptly before the visual ends. Is this the case? Odd that it plays in HD Writer ok though. Best guess is the file size I suppose; haven’t researched this, but your audio recorder backup is a great idea for your scenarios.

Keep rolling.