Ingesting MTS files without Private folder

L

LittleTreeMedia

Active member
Hi All,

So here is the issue I'm having. I was handed a harddrive containing footage shot on GH1 from a recent on location shoot. However the camera guy forgot to include the Private folders for each card, so i only have the folder with the MTS files. I found some software- Aunsoft video converter and Wondershare video converter that can convert the MTS to ProRes (Aunsoft) or to H264 (wondershare).

Does anyone have any experience with these two programs? I'm running a test now with each to see which works better, but the conversion rate is incredibly slow compared to when I bring GH1 footage in though FCP.

I also own a GH1, is there any work around here? Any other suggestions? Thanks

-Dave
LTM
 
I think that you can use a program called Clipwrap ( http://www.divergentmedia.com/clipwrap )to put the mts files in a quicktime wrapper and then convert them to ProRes or another editing codec using Compresor or the transcoding tool of your choice. Clipwrap is supposed to only change the wrapper of the mts files so there shouldn't be any quality loss but I haven't tried it myself so I can't tell for sure.
 
I've also been stuck with a bunch of MTS files without the proper directory stream structure, so stupid iMovie can't import them. These were from a GF13 shooting 720p.

I ended up using ffmpeg on OS X to convert them into m4v containers, which iMovie does read. The converted files contain H.264 video and AAC audio (I can't get ffmpeg to convert the original's AC3 audio properly). I think it's a lossless conversion so just the headers get changed.

To get decent speed during editing, iMovie needs to convert the video to Apple Intermediate Codec, so you'll get slightly less detail than the originals. I've tried editing the m4v files directly but my laptop chokes on it and throws up spinning beachballs :)

I got the ffmpeg binary from Clipgrab. Put this inside a shell script and you're good to go:
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i "$f" -vcodec copy "$f.m4v"
 
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If you really get stuck, you can transcode to prores in toast.
Never hurts to have a few options up your sleeve for those fast-turnaround jobs.

I've had occasional render issues with shots transcoded in stream clip to prores though.
 
rambex said:
I got the ffmpeg binary from Clipgrab. Put this inside a shell script and you're good to go:
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i "$f" -vcodec copy "$f.m4v"
Click to expand...

I did some testing on this and the audio output is some muffled-sounding AAC. The following script encodes MTS with H264 video/AC3 audio to MOV with H264 video/PCM 2-channel audio. Sounds a lot better too :)

ffmpeg -i 00000.MTS -vcodec copy -acodec pcm_s16le -ac 2 00000.mov

The resulting file plays back properly in Quicktime Player but you might have to install Perian. You can then use MPEG-Streamclip to convert to Prores or anything else that's better than AIC.
 
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