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importing .mts files into FCP 7
I searched the forums to see if this had been covered, and only found advice on bringing in footage into FCP 6.
Here’s my situation. We’re using a Nano flash recorder for most of our footage, but up until a few days ago, our third camera wideshot was HD footage captured in by firewire. That camera has died. So we’re in the market for another.
Our camera person wants us to go with a SONY camera that records AVCHD files. (.mts) He gave me some files on a hard drive, to check if Final Cut plays nicely with them.
If I try to import these files, they come up as unrecognized.
So, I googled, and came up with some info that I found a bit confusing. One seemed to suggest that if we are running FCP 7 with Snow Leopard, that the files will be recognized. We are currently running OSX 10.5.8
The other suggested downloading either a pay or free version of ‘Aimersoft’s’ MTS converter.
So I thought I’d appeal to the wisdom of the people here. Are we better to upgrade to Snow Leopard? Go with the pay transcoder? Free one? Some combo of these? If one solution is more expensive but doesn’t require rendering delays, we’d go with that.
We have been using MPEG Streamclip to convert files, but it doesn’t recognize .mts files.
Thanks in advance!
Brent
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23 Replies
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You use LOG AND TRANSFER for AVCHD…it transcodes them to a QuickTime editing format. Here’s a tutorial:
Tapeless Workflow for FCP 7 Tutorial
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Use ‘log & transfer’ in Final Cut to convert the files to something edit-friendly, like ProRes. Shane Ross has a nice tutorial on the process.
Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style! -
Thanks gentlemen. I’ll give that a go.
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Brent I was/am in the same boat as you. I have always been a PC guy and got a Snow Leopard machine JUST for FCP. I am shocked that you have to transcode consumer camera footage. My Sony shoot AVCHD .MTS files as well.
Sony Vegas Pro and Premiere Pro CS5 both handle it without transcoding and taking up hard drive real estate. And if you have a video card with CUDA cores (Nvidia), Premiere uses the GPU of that card to speed rendering and previews tremendously!
I am very disappointed after all the hype I was fed about FCP 🙂
Tim
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Tim,
Yes, you should always take hype with a grain of salt. There is no magic bullet to all of life’s problems and I don’t think FCP claims to solve all of life’s problems. IMO, it’s kind of silly to judge an editing system solely on whether or not it can process a particular codec. If you had researched FCP, you would have found out that it doesn’t deal directly with AVCHD, but requires transcoding. Eventually, if AVCHD becomes popular enough with the FCP user base (squeaky wheel gets the grease) I’m sure it will be included in future releases. Until then, we all have to transcode. There are plenty of other reasons that people like FCP and ways that it makes life easy.That said, I’m annoyed that we can’t handle these files as easily as other codecs on Mac, and hope that this “issue” is resolved sooner than later. I just got a GH2 and I’m having some issues too.
Best,
NaicheNaiche
Mac Pro
Dual 2.8Ghz Quad-Core
16GB RAM
ATI Radeon 256MB
320GB 7200rpm
3TB 7200rpm Internal Software RAID0
Blackmagic Studio Card (working good so far) -
Hi, does anyone know what to do if you can’t import MTS files from the memory card? I have MTS files from a Sony handycam given to me on hard drive and am having a tough time finding the right program to transcode them for FCP. I’ve tried Mpeg streamclip with no luck
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I face the same problem as does Michelle Marrion.
I’ve been using HandBrakeBatch to convert my archived mts files into ‘Normal’ and ‘Universal’ – whatever they mean – and still FCP7 wouldn’t import them.
It’s such a let down and there seems to be no easy solution. -
Try selecting the top level folder instead of attempting to access the actual subfolder where the MTS is contained.
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Hi Shane,
I tried to watch your podcast: FCP: Tapeless Workflow with Final Cut Pro 7 by Shane Ross – 10/20/2010 but I get an URL error. My side? The podcast is down?
Question about MTS & FCP:
Steps when I work:
I videotape with Sony NX70 on a SDHC card.
SDHC card into my Mac: No Name
NO NAME: folder AVF_INFO, folder PRIVATE
In PRIVATE: AVCHD folder, SONY folder
in AVCHD: BDMV folder:
in BDMV: STREAM folder with .MTS filesHow can I upload .MTS files to FCP without converting them first to Apple ProRes 422 HQ with ClipWrap?
Did FCP made an upgrade to include MTS files?
Someone in the Forum said to upload AVCHD to FCP. Well, there’s no AVCHD file. The above steps show only .MTS files can be uploaded. Correct?Will you please help? Thank you
JP
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This link doesn’t work?
https://library.creativecow.net/ross_shane/tapeless-workflow_fcp-7/1
Try a different Browser if you must.
[jean Philippe Stuart] “How can I upload .MTS files to FCP without converting them first to Apple ProRes 422 HQ with ClipWrap?”
You can’t. FCP doesn’t work with those files natively. If you want something that works with them natively, get Adobe Premiere. FCP needs to Log and Transfer them to ProRes, or use ClipWrap to convert to ProRes before it will work with them.
[jean Philippe Stuart] “Did FCP made an upgrade to include MTS files?”
FCP-X might access the files, but it will also want to convert them before editing.
[jean Philippe Stuart] “Someone in the Forum said to upload AVCHD to FCP. Well, there’s no AVCHD file. The above steps show only .MTS files can be uploaded. Correct?”
I’m not sure what they mean, but the only way to get AVCHD footage into FCP is via log and transfer, or Clipwrap2. Log and Capture requires the FULL card structure be intact. And you need to choose the TOP LEVEL of that…choose the NO NAME when you look for files with Log and Transfer. Don’t go digging deep into the file structure, or FCP won’t do it. You gotta watch the video.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
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