[Stephen Heiden]

Had same issues with my Vixia HF100. A maddening detail Canon neglects to tell you is that longer clips are split. Not in the camera’s viewfinder playback – it’ll obligingly and secretly stitch the split clips together and play them seamlessly…the only hint is your noted discrepancy between number of MTS files.
You need to join the files back together, something I found on Voltaic’s site which now mysteriously only has the “why,” but no longer has the instructions on how… fortunately I saved them, though you’re SOL if you’re not on a mac.

File joining on the Mac
The Mac solution requires running a command under the Terminal. Many users will not have had to do this before, but don’t worry – its easy. Just follow these steps.

Open a Terminal window. The Terminal application can be found in your Applications folder under Utilities

Go to the directory where your spanned clips are located. You will need to use the Unix change directory command ‘cd’

cd Movies/MyAVCHDclips
{i.e., ‘cd’ followed by path to your MTS files, using / between folders/file}

Enter the following command and press Enter:

cat file001.MTS file002.MTS > newfile.MTS
{where file001.MTS and file002.MTS are your files to be joined.}

This will take a while! Leave it for at least an hour before checking on your results.
{Note- for me, it only took a few minutes}

Hope this helps.

[Stephen Heiden]

Peter, I’ve got mov files which I Import to FCP, and look blank (white screen) in Viewer – until I play them, and then they display fine… stop or pause results again in white screen. Is there some Import setting or something else that I’m missing? (files originate as .MTS avchd, converted via Voltaic 3rd party software; conversion is 1280×720, AIC).

[Stephen Heiden]

I’ve got a Canon HF100 and had same problem… FCP doesn’t like ingesting avchd. So I spent $35 on Votaic’s converter, which does a good job spitting out QT .mov files. Now I’ve got a new problem: how to use those mov files in FCP. It’s probably a stupid question, but Import is the only I know to get em in, and the resultant clips are white in the viewer unless it’s playing.

[Stephen Heiden]

I’ll compete for totally stupid… I have a Canon HF100 (uses avchd flash card) and spent eons trying to parse how to get footage into FCP 6. It’s true that only an Intel mac or equivalent, and FCPv6 – and god help you, imovie8 – can ingest avchd. There’s no firewire on the HF100, using the little usb flashcard reader takes forever.
Resorted to a $35 program – Voltaic, which does a nice job decompressing the .MTS files without FPC’s compulsory blind 1920 to 1440 HD conversion. Voltaic makes them into QT .mov files (at selectable size), and does it relatively fast.
Now the totally stupid: those .mov files imported into FCP6 display white in the viewer unless they’re playing. I’m a total noob in FC, don’t know if it’s even viable working with such Imported files, as all tutorials talk about is Log & Capture or Log & Transfer, neither of which these .mov files work with.