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  1. Member
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    (I have tried to research this as much as I can but I'm not very familiar with video editing and I'm still learning)

    Hi and thank you for your time and help,
    I recieved a nice apple mac book through my job and thought it would be nice to use it to edit video from my Canon HF100 with the IMovie software. After 9 months I changed jobs and had to return my mac book but I saved all the .mov files to an external hard disk. This video is very important to me as it is the first 6 months of our new baby's life. In my new job, I decided to get a PC laptop instead of mac but was devistated to find the files (apple intermediate codec .mov) won't play on my PC. The original .MTS files from these IMovie exports have since been overwritten.

    Question...
    What do I need to do to access these files on PC in the highest quality possible?
    Can I rescue these files without loosing any more quality?

    Quality is very important to me as I purchased a high def camera so I want to benifit from it in years to come. I always record in highest quality. I now use Pinnacle Studio 12 to import and edit new footage and that stays in .MTS format.

    Question...
    Would it be best for me to 1) get access to an apple mac 2) import into imovie 3) export in a format compatible with PC?

    I'm not great with indepth technical terms.
    Thank you and I appreciate your advice
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  2. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by skelinat
    (I have tried to research this as much as I can but I'm not very familiar with video editing and I'm still learning)

    Hi and thank you for your time and help,
    I recieved a nice apple mac book through my job and thought it would be nice to use it to edit video from my Canon HF100 with the IMovie software. After 9 months I changed jobs and had to return my mac book but I saved all the .mov files to an external hard disk. This video is very important to me as it is the first 6 months of our new baby's life. In my new job, I decided to get a PC laptop instead of mac but was devistated to find the files (apple intermediate codec .mov) won't play on my PC. The original .MTS files from these IMovie exports have since been overwritten.

    Question...
    What do I need to do to access these files on PC in the highest quality possible?
    Can I rescue these files without loosing any more quality?

    Quality is very important to me as I purchased a high def camera so I want to benifit from it in years to come. I always record in highest quality. I now use Pinnacle Studio 12 to import and edit new footage and that stays in .MTS format.

    Question...
    Would it be best for me to 1) get access to an apple mac 2) import into imovie 3) export in a format compatible with PC?

    I'm not great with indepth technical terms.
    Thank you and I appreciate your advice
    Oh boy! Where to start.

    First, always back up the original m2ts file. Future software/hardware will better cope.

    Second, Apple Intermediate Codec is proprietary to Mac and depending on how you converted, it can be 1440x1080i (for FCP/FCE) or 960x540p (for iMovie). In either case you will need a Mac to read the files and maybe Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express. Once in Final Cut, you can edit there or output to various formats.
    Recommends: Kiva.org - Loans that change lives.
    http://www.kiva.org/about
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    Thanks for your help edDV,
    For the future can I just backup the .MTS files from the flash memory? Or should I make a disk image of the whole flash card? What is the advantage of this?
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  4. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by skelinat
    Thanks for your help edDV,
    For the future can I just backup the .MTS files from the flash memory? Or should I make a disk image of the whole flash card? What is the advantage of this?
    Hard drives are cheapest. DVD is another option.
    Recommends: Kiva.org - Loans that change lives.
    http://www.kiva.org/about
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  5. Member
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    It's quite obvious from replies that the AIC file is of considerably inferior quality to the original MTS file. Hence the original should be kept. There is also a utility you can buy to change the headers on the MTS to make it into a more file, but with the original contents. So it can be edited on the Mac without re-compressing first. Apart from that it strikes me as very odd that no one has gone around to cracking this ridiculous codec and making it accessible beyond the realms of the Mac.
    Clever marketing ploy, but also very irritating for users of both PCs and Macs.
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  6. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    There are a number of "Mac-Only" QT codecs (AIC, Pixlet, R3D, Glue Tools, Sorenson3...). They don't get ported/hacked because it's a niche market (I wish they would).
    Borrow/Rent a Mac until they're converted to a format that is cross-compatible, preferrably Lossless/Uncompressed so you don't lose any MORE quality.

    Scott
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    Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
    Borrow/Rent a Mac until they're converted to a format that is cross-compatible, preferrably Lossless/Uncompressed so you don't lose any MORE quality.
    I have a Mac, but how to convert AIC Mov to a better format (and we're talking several dozen files)? For my own videos I have invested in ClipWrap - that preserves the mts file and just puts it in a QT wrapper. But now I have a bunch of files from a friend and need to edit them on my PC.

    I tried Movavi converter for Mac, but that can't read the AIC files and I bought Quicktime Pro - but its version 7 and has been superceded my QT X, which doesn't convert?

    I must admit to being less than a Mac nut.

    Martin
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  8. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    You probably bave iMovie, possibly FCP. You can get MPEGStreamclip.

    AFA QTPro, if you have used it's features more than a few times in the past, it's probably worth it to maintain. Either temporarily downgrade and do your stuff, or just bite the bullet and get Pro for QT-X. Still $30 bucks, right?

    Scott
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  9. Member
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    Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
    You probably bave iMovie, possibly FCP. You can get MPEGStreamclip.

    AFA QTPro, if you have used it's features more than a few times in the past, it's probably worth it to maintain. Either temporarily downgrade and do your stuff, or just bite the bullet and get Pro for QT-X. Still $30 bucks, right?

    Scott
    I fear there's no such beast as Pro for QT X and it can't batch transcode anyway

    I'll look at the other options tho... thanks!
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