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Render/Export troubles – Converting MTS for Final Cut Pro and exporting for iDVD
Hi Guys,
I’ve been given a hand full of .MTS files (2.5 hours of footage all up) and need to quickly edit them in Final Cut Pro and burn to iDVD. I’ve successfully converted the .MTS files to .MOV (h264 codec) and they are about 700MB for 30 mins. I’ve got 4 x 30 min clips in Final Cut with 3 colour correction, ready to export for iDVD. This is where my problem starts!
The troubles I’m having is the huge amount of render and export time it takes! 30mins of footage claiming more than 4 hours just to render the timeline! And if I try and export as Quicktime using current settings and as a reference it takes hours and hours. Grrr
I’m running a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM with 120GB free on my hard drive. And I’m running everything on the local machine, no external devices. If anyone has any tips I’d be your best friend forever!
Cheers in advance, Dale
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8 Replies
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As you have discovered, H264 is not an edit codec that FCP likes. It is one of the biggest causes for anxiety on this forum as a simple search for H264 will show.
.mts files need to be converted to ProRes422 ideally. Then there is no render in a FCP timeline unless you add filters or do speed changes & titles. Even so ProRes will render much faster. H264 is not only really slow to render but much more lossy. There are other potential problems like sync, green flashes etc.
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Hi Michael,
You’re a legend! The H264 was one of my concerns, thanks for your response. I’ll re-convert the footage and see how it goes.
Cheers again,
Dale -
Hi Michael,
Thanks so much for your response, I looked at the settings of the converter and noticed that the ‘Final Cut Pro’ default is H264. Looks like I’ll have to buy software to get the Pro Res option.
Cheers, Dale
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I have used Aunsoft’s MTS converter with good success, which has many FCP options including ProRes flavors.
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Hi William,
What seetings do you use in the converter? Can you give me an example of what file settings and sizes you get??
Im converting a 3min MTS file (150mb) to test and its producing a 940mb prores quicktime…is something wrong? Ive got 38min MTS files that are going to be well over 20GB, doesnt seem right to me. Cheers!
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Yeah that resulting file size increase sounds about right, MTS is compressed interframe, and ProRes is intraframe.
As far as other settings to reduce file size, you can use standard ProRes, not HQ, and even consider ProRes LT if the original material is well shot.
Plus if the final work is for iDVD that means you’re ending up in standard def. So transcode to 720– you don’t need to edit in 1080, that won’t make it look any better or more “HD” considering where it’s going. Work with a 720 ProRes sequence.
So… converting to ProRes standard and downscaling to 720 will make for significantly smaller files for your iDVD-destination project.
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If you are looking to squeeze the file sizes down a bit, Pro-Res LT is equivalent to Blu-Ray quality. I will lighten the load on your storage and FCP rendering times plus still come out looking good on DVD.
Bars & Tone
SALUTE! -
[Dale Fairless] “I’m running a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM with 120GB free on my hard drive. And I’m running everything on the local machine, no external devices. “
You really should have your media on an external 7200 rpm drive with at least a Firewire 800 connection.
ClipWrap also coverts .mts files.
HTH
Gary
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