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.MTS to ProRes and conversion issues
Hello everyone!
I’ve been searching for some info on this topic, but surprisingly I haven’t found too much. I am editing a 2 camera film, one is a 60D (H.264 easily goes into ProRes format for editing) and a Panasonic GH2. The GH2 footage is in .MTS files, which isn’t viewable by many players and needs to be transcoded.
So for my workflow, I found a program called MacX to convert the footage. Out of MacX, my options for HD video are MPEG4, AVI, and MP4. MPEG4 made the most sense, processed the footage, everything so far so good. To match my other footage and bring it into editing, I sent it to process with Compressor to ProRes. This is where the issues start:
The footage became blocky, the colors shifted, and it looks overall extremely compressed. I’ve tried this from the .AVI conversion as well, and still had the same issue. Am I missing something as far as workflow here? Hopefully someone else has had some experiences with these darn .MTS files!
My edit rig:
Mac Pro (2007 version)
Leopard 10.5.8
Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB ram
ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card -
7 Replies
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Have you tried LOG and TRANSFER with the GH2?
Tapeless Workflow for FCP 7 Tutorial
Also look at MPEG STREAMCLIP or ClipWrap2. They go directly to ProRes.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Thanks for your reply Shane!
Unfortunately, I only got the footage on a hard drive dump from the camera op, no cards. Would it pay to put it back on a card, and then try for log and transfer?
I used Streamclip for my other footage, but it doesn’t recognize the .MTS file format. Haven’t heard of clipwrap, I’ll give that a search and see what it turns up.
My edit rig:
Mac Pro (2007 version)
Leopard 10.5.8
Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB ram
ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card -
If the footage is on a hard drive…that is fine. As long as they kept the FULL card structure. If not, then ClipWrap2 is your best bet. Divergentmedia.com
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Ah, I see. Didn’t realize I could use that command when the file structure was the same. Seems to be working fantastic, thanks for the help! I figured the problem was somewhere in processing the footage twice, which never seems to be a good thing.
Side note: I’ve bookmarked your blog, great and interesting stuff!
My edit rig:
Mac Pro (2007 version)
Leopard 10.5.8
Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB ram
ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card -
Just as a matter of interest, what are you editing with and did you try importing directly to the system?
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I’m on FCP6, and I didn’t import right into the edit system because we were just using an offsite Macbook for ingest and data storage. I would have LOVED to just have the edit system right there with me and Log and Transfer, but it wasn’t in the cards.
Hours after the original post, everything is in and organized, so FCP did indeed take the .MTS files just fine, as long as its done with the Transfer window. I was under the impression that only FCP7 took them natively, and 6 would throw a fit. Great to know for the future!
My edit rig:
Mac Pro (2007 version)
Leopard 10.5.8
Quad Core Intel Xeon, 10GB ram
ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card -
Although Final Cut Pro has been improved to support MTS, it’s still not a “NATIVE” format. According to Apple, ProRes encoded MOV videos are highly compatible with FCP software. That means you can convert MTS to ProRes so that you can import MTS to Final Cut Pro for editing without any video, audio codec issues.
There are several different transcoding programs, and more than a few MTS to ProRes converting solutions. Here is a link that I combed through the options to pull together the simplest, working method.
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