how to organize the .mts files on my hard drive?

S

shawn.w

Active member
Hey Everyone,

So im shooting a promo video for a college right now, and want to be able to organize my video files in folders for each department of the college. As in all the Biology clips will go in the Bio folder, all the chemistry clips in the Chem folder, etc. But can i just drag the .Mts into these folders and still have them work? Or do i need to re-create the whole PRIVATE>XX>XX>XX directory on, all the way down to the folder that holds the video files then just organize them within the stream folder? Thanks!


- Shawn
 
If you edit with a mac, do not alter the directory structure! Rename the "PRIVATE" folder- after you've moved it to your HDD. You can nest that folder in whatever way you please... but touch the directories within that folder at your own peril... unless you are using something else to transcode your footage.
 
Im editing on a PC. So can i just create folders within the stream folder like:

Stream>math
>physics
>chemistry

To separate the footage from all the different departments ill be shooting? I would really like to know of a way that i could do this if the way im suggesting would actually be a problem.

Then every time i pull footage off the SD card after this i could just drag the .Mts files into their correct department folder? Or would i have to copy the info from all the other folders above the stream folder as well?
 
I would stick with the Entire Structure of the folders... At first I did not like it but after a few times I got use to it and it really is no big deal, and it makes it much easier to keep everything working properly....

So stick with the Whole Folder Structure Please....

Phil
 
Phil B said:
I would stick with the Entire Structure of the folders... At first I did not like it but after a few times I got use to it and it really is no big deal, and it makes it much easier to keep everything working properly....

So stick with the Whole Folder Structure Please....

Phil
Click to expand...
Same here. I create a short metadata text file next to the PRIVATE folder describing what can be found in the recording. Then I can use spotlight on OS X to search through all the text files to look for certain key words. Works pretty well for me.
 
Is there no program that can condense the file path and retain that information upon importing to your computer?

Or if i transcode the footage, could i then delete the clips i wish to and organize them as i like?
 
Well you could just place the whole directory structure in a .ZIP file and name that whatever you wish.

Currently I am just naming a parent folder with the name of what the footage is for. I guess the problem comes with multiple clips form the same card that are of different subjects.
 
How are you supposed to be well organized within a NLE, im using CS4, if you cannot change file names and every video file is just .mtsXXX. how can i separate the hundreds of files im going to have at the end of this project from each other rather than having to go through them one by one just to find the right interview?

also the fact that i cannot delete any of the .mts files seems odd, and is going to take up much more room on my hard drives. There's really no solution to this?
 
I to am new to this workflow so I am also wondering the same thing.

I really hated tapes, but at least I knew the workflow.
 
Hey Everyone,

I re-wrote my problem as i dont think i was very clear the first time and Ive read a bit more on AVCHD file directories. Let me know what you think!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm shooting a promo video for a college right now (on a HMC150), and want to be able to organize my clips in folders for each department of the college, and if possible label the individual video clips within each departments folder as: "professor ___ interview" etc. I will need to do this because I'll be shooting material for 8 departments simultaneously and will often have many clips from different departments on a single card, as I shoot material for various departments each day without a chance to upload in between.

ie. after dragging the whole PRIVATE folder off the SD card and retaining the original AVCHD directory, is there any way i can then organize or label each individual clip? The ideal solution being i could add a "Biology department" folder in the Stream folder, then move all the .Mts files in there and add a description of the clip after the original file name. Is anything like this possible?

Would it solve my problem if i used cineform to transcode (something I will probably be doing anyway) and then labeled and organized the files as i like? And just keep the original PRIVATE folder to archive?

Please let me know of any solutions you can think of as clip organization and labeling are going to be essential to me on this long term project. Thanks!


- Shawn
 
pailes said:
Same here. I create a short metadata text file next to the PRIVATE folder describing what can be found in the recording. Then I can use spotlight on OS X to search through all the text files to look for certain key words. Works pretty well for me.
Click to expand...


Ooo!!! That's a prety good idea. I might adopt that :dankk2:

:bath:
 
After reading around a bit more on AVCHD, seems like the only reason you need to keep the file structure and names intact is if you need to use the playback information again, which i dont think I will, and would rather sacrafice for much greater ease of editing and organization. Oh and also a few people mentioned it would be useful to retain the file structure and names if you were authoring blue ray discs for some reason i didnt understand. But im finishing to the web and DVD so im not worried about that either.

Anyways i dont have a problem just dragging over the STREAM folder from now on and organizing / renaming the clips relevant to their contents, at least for this project. Anyone know a reason i may not want to do this?

- Shawn
 
can anyone confirm or deny the AVCHD file structure only being useful for playback or Blue Ray? Could really use an answer on this soon as i would like to spend tomorrow organizing my clips. Thanks!
 
Humm, another possible downside to modifying the AVCHD file structure for my organizational needs:


"Moreover I believe the NLE is able to detect when the streams have been split up because of the FAT32 4gb limit and it automatically joins them. Without the AVCHD metadata this is not possible at all."

Is this true? I cant believe there is no way for people to label their clips or delete .mts files they know they will not use in editing without messing up their ability to import into a NLE.
 
"Moreover I believe the NLE is able to detect when the streams have been split up because of the FAT32 4gb limit and it automatically joins them. Without the AVCHD metadata this is not possible at all."
Click to expand...
I was only talking about Final Cut Pro there. Many NLEs can deal with the raw clips without having the entire AVCHD structure present and if you need to join large clips you can do it manually. If you're using Final Cut Pro you will need to preserve the structure, which is not such a bad idea after all because you retain a consistent copy of your recording you can easily write back to the SD card and put it back into the camera. If you destroy the content structure this is no longer possible.

There is another thing you can do. You can copy the AVCHD content to your harddrive and create symbolic links (they're called junction points on windows) to the original files and name those junction points the way you want. A junction point is basically a file reference in the file system which does only take up a few bytes but it can be treated as if it was the original file.

Google for junction point.
 
Thanks for the help Pailes. the idea of setting junction points is appealing, but I would also want to delete some of the .Mts files to save space, which would make the junction points useless as deleting even one .Mts file within the structure would throw everything off right?
 
shawn.w said:
Thanks for the help Pailes. the idea of setting junction points is appealing, but I would also want to delete some of the .Mts files to save space, which would make the junction points useless as deleting even one .Mts file within the structure would throw everything off right?
Click to expand...
If you want to delete something I would recommend deleting the clip right in the camera, that's the way I do it.
 
shawn:
keep a complete copy of the card contents for archive purposes.
make a copy of the .mts files or transcode them to something else for your scratch disk.

always retain the original folder structure intact as a backup.

since you're on a PC, you can pull individual clips and stick them in whatever folders you want. personally, i don't like the slower-than-realtime performance of editing raw avchd and therefore i always transcode to an avi container with either Canopus, Cineform or the free DNxHD codec.

as long as you take that approach you can move those clips around wherever you want.
i've done that a lot myself, finding it quicker and easier to view clips in WMP and swiftly drap and drop files into named folders to organize my assets into bins outside of my NLE.

another option is to do this from within your NLE. the advantage is that it won't affect the location or filenames of the original source files. you can import your clips and create folders/bins just for the project.
the disadvantage is if you need to deliver or handle specific groups of clips outside of an NLE. i used to do this a lot, delivering data dvds of clips organized into folders.

another reason for keeping the folder structure from the card is if you want to use the MainConcept DVCproHD converter tool....it needs the info in the folders to process the footage into P2 format.

bottom line, if you don't convert to DVCproHD and are on PC and never have to deliver raw footage to a Mac user/editor, then you are free to pull those .mts out and put them wherever the heck you want. just keep your backup in the original folders...there will come a day when you'll wish you had!

be free! =)
 
Great, thanks averan! What transcoder would you recommend for taking up the least space and having ease of use? Cineform was what i was considering.
 
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