m2ts…AVCHD files?

[Christina Rule]

i had this problem also. The camera was prob a sony avchd handy cam. which does record to a hard drive. Are you working on an intel based mac?

[Christina Rule]

I had this same problem. The footage was prob shot with a sony AVCHD handy cam. Are you working with an intel based mac?

http://www.christinarule.com

[Stace Carter]

Tom –

I’m testing some AVCHD footage right now and browsing the memory card from the camera, what I have here are .MTS files.

I haven’t done a lot of work with this format but have experienced problems (nay, impossibilities)when trying to transfer the footage from anything but the card the camera captured them on, in this case a Panasonic AG-HMC70P. I believe in my initial test, I shot the footage, copied it to an HD (the entire directory structure of the card, which I believe is very important) and still couldn’t get Log and Transfer to find it.

You may want to get the Camera model and see if the manufacturer has some freeware conversion software. Our Avid guy here keeps telling me that’s the only way he can edit AVCHD 😉 Again, I have no probs as long as I Transfer direct from the card in the FCP L&T tool, which transcodes to ProRes on import.

Good luck, let us know what you find out!

[Christina Rule]

I was dealing with this for days! My work needed me to get files off their sony hdd camera and it was m2ts files. Of course the software that came with the camera only worked for a Pc and compressed the files alot when taking them off the camera. If you are working on an intel based mac you should be able to get the m2ts files into final cut. Other wise it wont work. I have a g5 at work and i had to use my Mac book pro to get the files into final cut. Let me know how it works out!

http://www.christinarule.com

[Ray Nygren]

Blue FX has a windows converter
and Panasonic OEMed a freware converter to DVCPRO thats standalone
that is also windows
VoltaicHD is a mac program
https://shedworx.com/?gclid=CNnd34aHy5cCFQIMswodc2MoTQ
AVC-HD to DVCPRO Transcoder

Here is a panasonic support page
https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/support/desk/e/download.htm

Just to differentiate itself Panasonic is now calling its version of
avchd AVCCAM but I believe its the same codec. It just started showing up on new panasonic cameras a few months ago. I guess its the pro version

[Tom Matthies]

Christina, I am working on an older Quad G5 running 5.1.4here at work, but I have a MacPro running FCP6.05 at home and also a Macbook Pro running the same version. Both of those are Intel based. I could do the work on my personal machines. How did you get the files converted in the newer machines?
Tom

[Ray Nygren]

I forgot to add the AVCHD viewer
https://www.digital-digest.com/software/download.php?sid=1714&ssid=0&did=1
Oxygen 1.2 for windows.
I have not found a MAC intel view yet

[Christina Rule]

On my mac book pro i just imported the files like you would any other files. Are you grabbing them off the camera or are they on a dvd? Dont hold me on this but i remember reading somehwere that the m2ts files would only work in FCP if you were on a machine with the Intel Core 2 Duo processor. That is how i ended up trying my mac book pro and sure enough i had success!

http://www.christinarule.com

[Andy Mees]

Tom

If you have just the m2ts files then FCP’s L&T won’t be able to import them because they lack the correct directory structure / supporting files
If they are AVCHD files then you can use Toast 9 very effectively for transcoding to another codec, much faster than Voltaic HD and you can set the target any supported codec on your system.
If they aren’t AVCHD … could they be HDV in MTS wrapping? Unlikely maybe, but you might want to check the https://www.ClipWrap.com demo and see if that does actually recognize them, if so it may be the best bet.

Cheers
Andy

[Tom Matthies]

I’m converting them using Voltiac right now. They are chugging right along on my MacPro. It will only take about an hour to convert a whole data DVD’s worth of files. This version of Voltiac will allow me to export a number of formats including any in the Quicktime library. Since it’s an industrial training video and it’s SD, I’m just converting all of the HD files to DV50 anamorphic. The quality from this little camera is surprisingly good. I’ll have to look into getting a new “vacation” camera soon.
I did determine that the files were from a Sony consumer HD camera. The disks were provided with only the media files and none of the supporting database or directory info so scratch L&T on this project. I’ll just queue all of the files up and batch convert them overnight.
Thanks for the input.
Tom