Foreign PAL AVID client does not want .mts files, what's my option?

nedcam

nedcam

Well-known member
I am filming for Russian TV tomorrow so my AF100 is my only PAL camera. I will collect about one hour of material at 1080. So they don't want the .mts files because it gives their Avids problems annd they asked me to convert to .mov, .mp4 or .mpg. I have Final Cut Pro X but no compressor, it will allow me to export, or what it calls "Share" to H264.

Is that what I should do and then Filezilla them to their ftp site? They need it by Sunday night. I will not be renting an onboard recorder.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
 
I own Clipwrap but didn't see that option of going from mts to mov, will check again.

Thanks!
 
Or you could ask (tell) them to import the footage via ama and then transcode it to DNxHD. I've been doing that with no problems at all since the AF100 came out.
 
TomLenham said:
Or you could ask (tell) them to import the footage via ama and then transcode it to DNxHD. I've been doing that with no problems at all since the AF100 came out.
Click to expand...
You could also download avid media composer and use the 30 day trial to do the transcoding for them
 
When you import into FCPX, I thought that it automatically (unless you have it turned off) transcodes it into ProRes (.mov container, with ProRes codec). Can you not just give them those files?
 
These are the options I get in ClipWrap for exporting .mts files. All of them turn into .mov files.

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You'd be best off asking them what they want. For Avid, one of the DNx options might be good (I'm not familiar with the codec and only fairly familiar with Avid from a few years back). If they are working on Mac, ProRes is a good option. If they're on PC, I understand that ProRes is a bit of a hassle. So it really just depends on them. But those are both transcoding options. If you do the Rewrap option, there's no transcoding to a different format. Therefore, it should be pretty quick, whereas the rest will take a while. You'll end up with the same native files, but they will be in a .mov container instead of .mts (with the needed metadata to boot). I don't know what the codec is-- the other guys can help out there. But I would think h.264.

You might provide the rewrapped clips, plus whatever transcoded option they prefer. That's what I would do in a similar situation.

Edit: I noticed that you're going to FTP the files to them. If you don't have the option of shipping a flash drive or SD card to them, then you're pretty much stuck with sending them the native files. Any of the transcoded stuff is going to be too big to realistically upload. I've been thinking about my options with a job that I have coming up that I have to send the footage to London for (I'm in the US). I'm probably going to ship a large capacity flash drive or SD card (NOT one straight out of the camera). With both the native and transcoded clips. With a straightforward file structure, and a readme instruction on what is what. And I have to check if they run Mac or PC. The default file system of a flash drive or SD card is going to be FAT32, which can only have clips as large as 4 GB. So if they also use Macs, I can format the drive to HFS. But if they are on Windows, either I have to install something on my end that lets me write to NTFS, or they have to install something on their end that lets them read HFS. But that's only if I transcode the footage.
 
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I had to do something similar a few years back and converted all clips to mov in Media Encoder before handing the material over to the Avid editor.
 
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