.mts clip join tool

P

pailes

Well-known member
Hello everybody,

a few days ago I promised to write a little tool that can join a sequence of mts files by the means of a simple copy operation.

A first version can be downloaded here:
http://peter.nxbone.net/mtsmerge/MTSMerger.zip

It was written in a hurry and might not be finished yet, but it seems to work to some degree. (e.g. VLC does not recognize all the clips in the merged file, it only plays the first clip).

If it works I will make a Mac version too.

Cheers

EDIT: New version online (fixed some minor bugs)
http://peter.nxbone.net/mtsmerge/MTSMerger_1_0_0_2.zip

EDIT 2: The server is currently down, I attached the tool to this post.

EDIT 3: Attached Mac version.
 

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First of all, thanks again Pailes. I know this took some of your valuable time to put together.

I tried this last night by shooting a 2 hour continuous shot. When I imported the unmerged files into Vegas, they had that little glitch that they always have at the seam. After merging the files with Pailes' merging prgram, the glitch seems to be gone and it appears that they are joined seamlessly. I haven't yet tried it with audio, etc, but so far so good.

Maybe others can run some tests as well

Thanks again!
 
Nice work; suggestions for the next drop:
- Allows for multiple selections in the list (to remove several for example).
- Selection focus goes back to the file above or below the one(s) that were removed from the list.
- Add a text or label somewhere in the main form to show the size of the currently selected file in the list.
- Or, within the same list, append the file size to each of the elements in the file list: example: "y:\videos\0000.mts, 568231424 bytes"

Good work regardless. I could do these updates if you don't have the time :D
 
Lumiere said:
sorry i couldn't figure it out,what is tihs actually for?
Click to expand...

Since FAT32 format (which all the SDHC cards used in the HMC150 are formatted to)

It has a 4gb limit... thus if you were to shoot a long speech or play, every 4gb the clip will spilt and form a new one...

This program will take all the clips and merge them together into one continuous clip
 
Zacatac said:
Since FAT32 format (which all the SDHC cards used in the HMC150 are formatted to)

It has a 4gb limit... thus if you were to shoot a long speech or play, every 4gb the clip will spilt and form a new one...

This program will take all the clips and merge them together into one continuous clip
Click to expand...

To add to this, when you just take the individual .mts clips and try to put them together on the timeline in your NLE, there is usually a little glitch there at the seam, it doesn't smoothly transition to the next clip. This program merges them seamlessly.
 
Thanks for putting this together Pailes.

I am the one who posted and asked for some help.

I have not had the chance to download the program yet, but I will and try it out.

Thanks again!
 
I downloaded the utility and it works, thank you.

One thing though, when I added the clips and put in the filename of the new merged clip, I just put the name, no extension.

The resultant merged file did not have an extension.

So I renamed with a .MTS and everything was fine.

So is it possible to have the utlity add the same extension of the individual files to the merged file?

Thanks again, no more DOS prompt!
 
How does this tool that you've created affect timecode from the source clips? Will there merely be a smooth timecode jump in the new, joined clip from the first clip's final frame's timecode to the timecode of the second clip's first frame's timecode? And if the original two files were actually continuous but broken up because of NTFS restrictions, will the new, joined clip have uninterrupted, continuous timecode where the split once was?

I ask because original timecode of all of the footage is critical for the workflow I've got going - we're offlining with lower-res, transcoded footage, and we plan to online with the full-res, original footage (in this case, maybe the "originals" would be whatever your tool creates as the joined clips).

Excited for the mac version. Thanks a ton!
 
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Thanks for sharing this app with us! I don't have my HMC yet but with this utility, do you have to identify the clips that are to be joined? Or can the program read an entire folder of MTS files and using metadata to identify files that were split due to the FAT32 limit?
 
@jscheib:

This tool is only a replacement for the copy operation mentioned in this thread:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=160668

Therefore the time code won't be touched at all. The tool will simply append binary files.

A proper solution would be to demux the stream into the program elementary streams and adjusting the PTS time stamps to form a continuous timeline and mux it again into a single stream.

@booggerg2:

You will need to add MTS files directly. I was thinking about a proper AVCHD tool many times, unfortunately I don't have much time these days, but it would definitely make a lot of sense to work with the AVCHD metadata.
 
How is the editing of long form videos done without a joining tool? The clips will be imported as individual 4GB clips and it would be entirely up to the editor to know which clips are to be joined to form a continuous clip?
 
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