MTS to MOV Conversion

[Jeff Nesmith]

Man, what a useless thread. Egos, people, egos!

The MTS format is bullshit. It’s not that AVCHD is a problem, it’s just that it deserves to be encoded natively with all the metadata and such included—for example, with “log and transfer” within FCP. But often clients are in Indonesia or some shit and email you MTS files and that’s just the way it is.

I’m going to offer up my solution, ugly as it may be. Go ahead and use AME to encode the .mts file. Set it to export at the resolution and codec you want. So now you have a perfectly good video file with no audio.

Next, open the original .mts file in the VLC player (which I’m assuming you have.) Run a program like WireTap Pro or Audio Hijack to capture the audio from the VLC player. I assume your MTS file is not the most hi resolution audio, so don’t get all cringy. Now save your audio as something decent (aif or aac) and then open both files up in a video editor. I chose not to use FCP, but instead FCPX, because it works like iMovie—quick and dirty—no setting scratch disks, etc. and I’m not keeping this project file anyway.

Now just import your silent video and drop it in the timeline. Import your audio file and do the same. Sync it up, export to ProRes and you’re good to go in FCP. Does that make sense?

It’s not pretty, but we’re talking about either saving the file, and making it editable, or complaining to the client that their footage sucks. Up to you.

[Jeff Nesmith]

In fact, I created a post with more detail, just to address this issue. Hope it helps:

https://www.gypsycreative.com/mts-files-boy-they-suck-but-heres-a-solution/

Jeff

[Jon Chappell]

Jeff, the above link is broken. Your previous post on the process makes sense, but I’d like to read the detailed account.

I wouldn’t mind paying the $50 for ClipWrap, but it is so irksome that my Sony HDR-CX260, a popular vidcam, creates mts files that can’t be read directly by FCP. BTW, they drop into Vegas on my Windows machine just fine. And VLC plays them on my Mac. But can’t get them into FCP with Log & Capture, etc. This “directory structure” talk doesn’t make sense to me. The dang files should just open in FCP, just like they do in Vegas.

Can you supply the fixed link or copied text?

[Jeff Nesmith]

Sure thing. Sorry about the bad link. Try this:
https://www.gypsycreative.com/mts-files-boy-they-suck-but-heres-one-solution/
Also, and this is somewhat unrelated, make sure you’re using “log and transfer” instead of “log and capture” unless you’re taking footage from HDV.
Hope it’s helpful.

[Jon Chappell]

[Jeff Nesmith] “Also, and this is somewhat unrelated, make sure you’re using “log and transfer” instead of “log and capture” unless you’re taking footage from HDV. Hope it’s helpful.”

Thanks for pointing out the distinction, Jeff, though I may have misspoken in my post (but was performing the operation correctly at the time). In any case, I’ll make sure to remember this the next time.

Thanks too for your speedy response, fixing the broken link, and for the straight-shootin’, helpful and richly illustrated article on converting MTS files on the Gypsy Creative site. Very informative! -Jon

[Paul Kim]

So I’m wondering, what’s the disadvantage of having only the .mts files to edit with, without the other associates files in the original file structure of the SD card? Do you lose all the camera metadata associated with the clip?

I’m wondering because of all the people touting Premiere as advantageous since it can pull in .mts files without a conversion. I am also wanting to explain to people what they’re losing (if anything at all) if they go that route with Premiere.

I’ve always been advocating to maintain the entire file structure if only for the reason that I can work on multiple other NLEs, but I was wondering what Premiere was doing and what disadvantages it had if any when just the .mts files exist, and the rest was lost due to improper file management by a producer or client. Thanks.

[Jeff Nesmith]

Well, I can’t answer that one completely, since I haven’t made the switch (yet) to Premiere.

But one disadvantage to having only the .mts file is that Mac OS won’t read .MTS—or AVCHD files—natively with Quicktime. Of course, another problem is that most of the metadata is not contained within the .MTS file, such as timecode.

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that even when using Premiere Pro, the ideal workflow is to import and convert all of the footage and associated data from the original file structure on the card.

[Paul Pearce]

Hi,

I know this is an old post but thought I would include a solution that worked for me for this same problem.

I tried MPEG Streamclip (the beta version 1.9.3b8 in order to use the mpeg2 connector).

I have a Mac Book Pro retina; Mac OS X 10.8 and tried to convert a .m2ts file to a Pro Res 422 in order to edit in FCP X and it gave me this error:
Error can’t find the first video frame

I then tried Handbrake (a free open source converter) and it worked.

[Shane Ross]

We didn’t say to use COMPRESSOR…we (at least I) said to use CLIPWRAP2…from divergentmedia.com. Compressor doesn’t work on bare MTS files.

And the problem with Handbrake is that it won’t make editable files. It makes H.264 and MPEG2…mp4 and m4v files. Consumer level stuff. I use this for ripping my DVDs. It doesn’t work for converting MTS files into a format that FCP works with, as FCP doesn’t work with m4v or mp4 or H264 all that well. it wants ProRes…and that’s what ClipWrap2 gets you.

Shane
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