AVCHD issues

[ronin99]

I have a card form a camera that shoots to AVCHD, you end up with 1 AVCHD file on the card and then once you bring it into Resolve it will display the amount of files as 00000.MTS, 00001.MTS, and so forth.

When I open this particular card in Resolve I get 1 clip - 00000.MTS. The camera was allowed to run basically until the media was full to capture a time lapse. Therefore, about every 40 mins it should created a new .MTS file. However, in Resolve these other .MTS files aren't showing. When I scrub through 00000.MTS I get Media offline after about an hour of material or so.

When I open this in VLC player it show 12 .MTS clips and I can play through them.

Any idea what is going on in Resolve vs VLC?

[cyvideo]

I think you have run into the old Fat32 AVCHD 2GB 10 minute file scenario. The problem with these files if you do try to throw them onto a timeline 'as is' there is usually an audio break of around half a second at each clip junction. If the clips have contiguous timecode, i.e. each clip is part of a long shoot duration and the timecode follows through without a break from clip to clip then they are "spanned" clips. If you have the whole file card structure of the SD card some NLEs will see all these contiguous clips as one file and will bring them in as one file. Premiere will see them as one clip though they do remain as a bunch of separate clips on the hard drive. Vegas Pro on import will without re-encoding rewrap or 'stitch' these files together and create a new single long file. I've never used AVCHD in Resolve but this may be the issue that Resolve is not seeing these clips as spanned. Worth checking out I guess.

Now if you don't have the whole folder structure off the SD card and only have the AVCHD clips you will need some 'joiner' software to seamlessly stitch the files together without re-encoding. If you are on Mac I can't point you in any direction but if you are on PC this following app will join all the files with contiguous timecode together as one complete clip that Resolve should handle without any issues.

Chris Young

https://www.igorware.com/file-joiner

File Joiner.jpg

[ronin99]

Hi Cy,

Thanks for the reply. I have the entire structure, even saved the card and haven't formatted it yet as I'm trying to figure out a way to solve the problem.

To clarify the folder structure I have in finder is PRIVATE / AVCHD (1 file).

In Edit Ready - it shows 1 clip - 00000, I get a thumbnail image but it won't play.

Info in Edit Ready shows - clip 00000, MTS (Spanned 12 files), Duration 0.

It is strange to me that VLC will actually break it into the correct files and even play them.
Is there a way for me to export the files from VLC?

I'm on a mac so I can't try file joiner

[Joshua Cadmium]

I think there is a combiner program on Mac, but I also have used AVCHD to Mov Lite to convert the files first and then bring them into Resolve.

[Barry1908]

I think there is a combiner program on Mac, but I also have used AVCHD to Mov Lite to convert the files first and then bring them into Resolve.

Download a trial of premiere, import it in premiere using the media tool tab (important) then create a new timeline and export as a prores LE, or even just export the XML to resolve and it will probably work.

[NorBro]

Hi Cy,

Thanks for the reply. I have the entire structure, even saved the card and haven't formatted it yet as I'm trying to figure out a way to solve the problem.

To clarify the folder structure I have in finder is PRIVATE / AVCHD (1 file).

In Edit Ready - it shows 1 clip - 00000, I get a thumbnail image but it won't play.

Info in Edit Ready shows - clip 00000, MTS (Spanned 12 files), Duration 0.

It is strange to me that VLC will actually break it into the correct files and even play them.
Is there a way for me to export the files from VLC?

I'm on a mac so I can't try file joiner

Right-click on the one .MTS clip/file and "show package contents" to see more of your data. You can then copy and paste those .MTS files into a folder and use other software manually.

Normally I would never do this and just use FCP X which will solve everything, but once you do that Resolve will most likely see all 12 in the separate folder.

And, yes - you can export out of VLC...choose 'File' and then 'Convert/Stream'.