What Is The Bost Most Lossless Format To Convert .mts Files To?

[JohnnyGalaga]

This is on a Canon Vixia HF21 camcorder. It produces high definition files that end with the .mts file extension. Apparently, this type of file is a menace to edit, as there just doesn't seem to be any good software that can do it. Pretty much, no matter how much you search on you internet search engine of choice, you never quite find anything that answers the simple question, what's a good program to reliably edit .mts files with?

So, I guess I'm gonna have to resort to converting these awful .mts files to another format first before editing. Does anyone know what is the best most lossless format to convert them to THAT CAN BE EDITED WITH SOFTWARE reasonably easily? .avi seems to come out bumpy and jittery somestimes, and .wmv degrades the quality.

Thanks.

It's surprising how little information there is on the internet about .mts high definition camcorder files.

[poisondeathray]

The most lossless format is native editing

Try edius neo booster , or edius the full version . It's optimized for h.264 software decoding, and will make your editing easier. Your current listed computer specs are sufficient.

Another option is Premiere Pro CS5 , with mecury playback engine. It's more expensive, but editing will be smoother if you enable GPU for rendering (you need a "hack" to enable your card, because it's not offically supported - search google there are dozens of threads illustrating how to)

For cuts only editing, you can try videoredo beta 4 - it's still in development (not perfectly stable), but "smart renders" so no quality loss, except for the few frames around the cutsite - as opposed to rendering the entire file

Other options for near lossless: cineform neoscene - many people use this and it will work with virtually all editors

And proxy editing (or offline editing): basically you edit a lower quality or SD version for ease, then swap back to original assets upon final render - again use <search> a lot of this has been discussed before

[JohnnyGalaga]

Wow. All those programs are too expensive and to download the trial version of edius you have to create an account. It is remarkable how difficult this is. The simple act of getting a camcorder and editing your videos. It makes me wonder. What are all those people out there doing with their .mts files? All those average consumers must be pulling their hair out trying to do anything with their videos.

So that's it? I guess this is just the way it is? More and more searching on the internet and it's the same conclusion every time: no way to affordably edit .mts.

[edDV]

Wow. All those programs are too expensive and to download the trial version of edius you have to create an account. It is remarkable how difficult this is. The simple act of getting a camcorder and editing your videos. It makes me wonder. What are all those people out there doing with their .mts files? All those average consumers must be pulling their hair out trying to do anything with their videos.

90% of consumers never do anything with their camcoder files. The rest may want to convert to DVD. The camera manufacturers usually include some kind of software to make a DVD. Very few consumers ever edit in HD. Those that do are on their own to figure it out.

[JohnnyGalaga]

Just wow. Even if we're on our own, how are we supposed to do something that apparently can't even be done? LOL.

[edDV]

Just wow. Even if we're on our own, how are we supposed to do something that apparently can't even be done? LOL.

It can be done but it took the consumer/prosumer edit software manufacturers about two years to catch up to AVCHD and top end i5/i7 CPUs and new display cards were needed.

In the meantime, pros decoded to uncompressed as they most always do and the rest used digital intermediates like Cineform Neoscene.

The whole point of the AVCHD format is to compress video to the point it will fit on a flash card. Consumers wanted flash over tape even though flash RAM is 10-15x more expensive than tape and they didn't care about editing HD. Such was the consumer research.

[poisondeathray]

most people would probably use cineform neoscene and vegas movie studio

while there are many great free apps for video processing, NLE's aren't one one of them. You can try lightworks beta, or blender (lightworks is unstable, but blender will be difficult for you unless you are already familiar with it)



or convert it to high bitrate I-frame mpeg 2 for free , and should work in your editor with reasonable performance, minimal quality loss

http://www.matrox.com/video/en/support/windows/vfw_software_codecs/downloads/softwares/version1.0/

[JohnnyGalaga]

Just out of curiosity, what does "NLE" mean, and what does "high bitrate I-frame mpeg 2" mean?

Thanks.

[poisondeathray]

Just out of curiosity, what does "NLE" mean, and what does "high bitrate I-frame mpeg 2" mean?

Thanks.

NLE = non linear editor. Something like sony vegas, adobe premiere pro. Something with a timeline /storyboard and usually multiple tracks that you can do serious editing in

MPEG2 is an older form of compression, but easier on the CPU to edit. I-frame means it's not long GOP. Each frame is coded independent of another . Long GOP formats are more difficult to edit, but better compressed (they code differences between frames, but when DEcoding, all frames that contain information related to that current frame must be decoded first, that's partially why editing is so "laggy" with these formats)

High bitrate means more data or higher quality, or less quality loss (i.e. bigger filesizes) for a given compression scheme



If you want I can give you an ffmpeg script that will batch convert everything to MPEG2 high bitrate I-frame. Basically you double click a .bat file , and all your AVCHD .MTS files in a given folder will be transcoded to high bitrate I-frame MPEG2.

[mrswla]

NLE=Non Linear Editing

[yoda313]

I'm curious about something and this might or might not help the original poster. Would editing directly to bluray be any easier with high def mts files? I know avchd is usually the most economical form but if the user were to get a bluray burner would it be better to edit and author for bluray? Or does an intermediate format still need to be used?

I guess I'm asking because I too got a high def pocket camera and avchd is my current form but if bluray would be more effective with editing and authoring (in my case a dual core processor) then it might be worth looking into getting an affordable bluray burner - and consequently a baseline authoring package - if it didn't come one on its own.

[poisondeathray]

I'm curious about something and this might or might not help the original poster. Would editing directly to bluray be any easier with high def mts files? I know avchd is usually the most economical form but if the user were to get a bluray burner would it be better to edit and author for bluray? Or does an intermediate format still need to be used?

I guess I'm asking because I too got a high def pocket camera and avchd is my current form but if bluray would be more effective with editing and authoring (in my case a dual core processor) then it might be worth looking into getting an affordable bluray burner - and consequently a baseline authoring package - if it didn't come one on its own.

Not sure what you're getting at...maybe you can clarify your question?

avchd is really a lesser subset of h.264 blu-ray (blu-ray can use MPEG2 or VC-1 compression as well) . But "blu-ray" includes higher bitrate, fewer restrictions, and other audio types as well (like HD audio, DTS-MA , TrueHD,etc...)

so converting it to "blu-ray" won't really help , unless it was MPEG2

[yoda313]

so converting it to "blu-ray" won't really help , unless it was MPEG2

So any avchd I make can be burnt onto a bluray into proper bluray format?

I guess the reason I'm asking is if its different from say having a kvcd play on a computer whereas a vcd plays on a lot of players. I was thinking avchd was so specialized it only plays on supported players that read it on dvd media. Does the avchd form factor import directly into "real" bluray authoring software?

Say for instance I have a recording off my hdpvr and want to make that h264 file into a "real" bluray. Is it any different when I make a avchd with the arcsoft software than when you use a real bluray authoring software - aside from the dvd media vs bluray media issue?

Sorry to the original poster if this is going too far offtopic but this might be relevant to you in some way.

[lenti_75]

personally I wouldn't buy a bluray just for this. I play the .mts files from my Pansonic 1080p60 perfeclty with Asus Oplay media player. I didn't even bother to buy a player and then a recorder.

it's much better to buy a media player and you can play anything on it.

[poisondeathray]

so converting it to "blu-ray" won't really help , unless it was MPEG2

So any avchd I make can be burnt onto a bluray into proper bluray format?

Yes, if done properly.

AVCHD is a subset of blu-ray, but the reverse isn't necessarily true. Higher bitrates of blu-ray can violate AVCHD restrictions. i.e. you can make a real blu-ray disc from AVCHD material, but not necessarily the other way around

I guess the reason I'm asking is if its different from say having a kvcd play on a computer whereas a vcd plays on a lot of players. I was thinking avchd was so specialized it only plays on supported players that read it on dvd media. Does the avchd form factor import directly into "real" bluray authoring software?

Yes it does. It's fully compatible "out of the box" with blu-ray. Blu-ray is the "big brother".

Say for instance I have a recording off my hdpvr and want to make that h264 file into a "real" bluray. Is it any different when I make a avchd with the arcsoft software than when you use a real bluray authoring software - aside from the dvd media vs bluray media issue?

This depends on the specific HDPVR streams. Remember h264 is a very very broad specification. So it depends if those HDPVR streams are compliant (they need to follow certain guidelines and restrictions in order to be compatible with blu-ray or AVCHD)

[JohnnyGalaga]

MPEG2 is an older form of compression, but easier on the CPU to edit. I-frame means it's not long GOP. Each frame is coded independent of another . Long GOP formats are more difficult to edit, but better compressed (they code differences between frames, but when DEcoding, all frames that contain information related to that current frame must be decoded first, that's partially why editing is so "laggy" with these formats)

High bitrate means more data or higher quality, or less quality loss (i.e. bigger filesizes) for a given compression scheme



If you want I can give you an ffmpeg script that will batch convert everything to MPEG2 high bitrate I-frame. Basically you double click a .bat file , and all your AVCHD .MTS files in a given folder will be transcoded to high bitrate I-frame MPEG2.

Man! That sounds like a plan!! It's unreal how hard all of this is. Batch converting would be a major plus. What file extension will these "high bitrate I-frame MPEG2" things be in? Will I have have a lot of loss in quality since this MPEG2 is older? Will it keep the same resolution and frame rate as the original .mts files from the camcorder (unlike the Sony Vegas)?

Oh yeah, one more question. Will the video files I get out of it actually be editable WITHOUT all these hassles?

[yoda313]

@poisondeathray - thanks for the clarification.

@johnnygalaga - I return your thread to you.

The mpeg2 files are generally in .mpg file formats. If you use a high bitrate you won't have a loss of quality. I had done some similar stuff and you can use a 25mbps bitrate to really insure everything is retained.

Will the video files I get out of it actually be editable WITHOUT all these hassles?

Assuming they are regular proper mpeg files yes. Mpeg is really the mainstay of video files and have been around for a long time. Mts, m2ts, and all the others are much more recent entrants into the video world. Mpeg was around before dvd was (read upon vcd to learn about mpeg1).

Edit - you can do high def mpeg2. You can do high bitrate mpeg2. Its only 720x480 mpeg 2 that is "old" for dvd use. You can make a 1920x1080 mpeg at 25mbps bitrate.

[poisondeathray]

Man! That sounds like a plan!! It's unreal how hard all of this is. Batch converting would be a major plus. What file extension will these "high bitrate I-frame MPEG2" things be in? Will I have have a lot of loss in quality since this MPEG2 is older? Will it keep the same resolution and frame rate as the original .mts files from the camcorder (unlike the Sony Vegas)?

Oh yeah, one more question. Will the video files I get out of it actually be editable WITHOUT all these hassles?

This will be in .m2ts format (so MPEG2 in .m2ts) , and should be editable in vegas movie studio ( which you already have according to your other thread ?) or any NLE . So editible , yes. But exporting is another thing you have to learn about . The export options are mediocre in Vegas (IMO)



Try converting 1 or 2 samples clip first, play with them a bit and see if it's ok in terms of performance

The quality loss will be minimal (you won't be able to tell unless you zoom in and pixel peep). If the filesizes are too big, adjust the qscale value to your tastes (higher q values are lower quality, smaller filesize , lower values are higher quality, bigger filesize, it's set to 4 in the script below) .

BTW, At qscale=4 we're talking probably 100-150Mb/s, not 25Mb/s . So probably 4-5x filesize. At qscale=1 it's ~400-500Mb/s (smaller bitrates are easier to edit as well, less data to parse)

(I'm assuming you shot in 60i (interlaced), because the script is slightly different for progressive)




1) download ffmpeg, place a copy of ffmpeg.exe in the folder that you want converted
http://ffmpeg.arrozcru.org/autobuilds/

2) write the following in notepad text file in the same directory, save it, rename extension from .txt to .bat

for %%a in ("*.mts") do ffmpeg -i %%a -vcodec mpeg2video -r 29.97 -qscale 4 -qmin 1 -intra -flags +ilme+ildct -top 1 -acodec ac3 -ab 384k -f mpegts %%~na.m2ts

3) double click .bat file



Note: If your camera shoots AC3 audio already, then you can replace "-acodec ac3 -ab 384k" with "-acodec copy" , this copies the audio instead of converting to AC3

[JohnnyGalaga]

I don't know what "AC3 audio" is. This is another difficulty with editing. All the terminology is overwhelming. There's not really anything I can find online that just gives a straight-up explanation for average consumers as to how to edit .mts files from start-to-finish.

So let's do this. Let's figure it out once and for all. First of all, freeware is out the window. So here's a step-by-step list of what to do.

1. Say you're the average Joe and you just splurged on a nice new high-definition camcorder. The video files end in .mts (which edDV advised in another thread are the same thing as .mt2s files) These files are sometimes referred to as a "container," or as "AVCHD" or "H.264".

2. You have to convert them to another format such as .avi or .wmv first before you can edit them. But your method with "ffmpeg" still results in .m2ts format?

3. After the files are converted, then they can be edited without all the problems you have with trying to edit .mts files directly?

[yoda313]

Ac3 is dolby digitial audio - the same you get on dvds - but it can be either stereo or surround sound.

[poisondeathray]

I don't know what "AC3 audio" is. This is another difficulty with editing. All the terminology is overwhelming. There's not really anything I can find online that just gives a straight-up explanation for average consumers as to how to edit .mts files from start-to-finish.

So let's do this. Let's figure it out once and for all. First of all, freeware is out the window. So here's a step-by-step list of what to do.

1. Say you're the average Joe and you just splurged on a nice new high-definition camcorder. The video files end in .mts (which edDV advised in another thread are the same thing as .mt2s files) These files are sometimes referred to as a "container," or as "AVCHD" or "H.264".

2. You have to convert them to another format such as .avi or .wmv first before you can edit them. But your method with "ffmpeg" still results in .m2ts format?

3. After the files are converted, then they can be edited without all the problems you have with trying to edit .mts files directly?

For basic purposes they can be considered the same; m2ts is slightly different , and has extra timecode data



It will be easier to edit MPEG2 in .m2ts than AVC in .mts



At this point, from start to finish, no hassle, you need a fast system with good software. Native editing is easy with Premiere Pro CS5 if you have it setup properly with MPE.

Unfortunately , there are no free or low cost solutions to do what you want easily . So there are lots of convoluted or tricky workarounds and the many options have been mentioned in this thread - such as the ffmpeg or any conversion method. ffmpeg is nice because it's free and supports batching. Again, Neoscene is probably what most consumers would use. There is a reason why this is mentioned many times. Because it works.

Choose one of the options or wait a few years until the software and hardware catch up. Edius neo booster is very close . I edited an AVCHD project on a friggen laptop that's way slower your desktop - no problems. It's very well optimized, much better than elements or vegas. Give it a try

Good luck

[thechemist78]

I realize this topic is several years old but I just came across it a few days ago. I certainly share the original poster's (Johnny) frustration dealing with .mts format files. I too am an owner of a Cannon Vixia HD21 video recorder which captures beautiful HD video but joining and editing the .mts files that this recorder produces is a pain. But a few years ago I discovered a good solution that works the best for me. I had already purchased a software program called MPEG Video Wizard DVD 5.0 by Womble Multimpedia for editing .vob files and creating edited dvds. This program is still available on a 30 day free trial basis from their website. It will take some effort the learn the features of this software but I find it is well worth the investment. The software can import many different types of video and audio files and I discovered, a bit by accident, that it will import .mts files (the trick to importing .mts files is to choose All files "." in the file types dropdown box). Once the .mts files are imported into the software they can be added to the editing timeline and multiple .mts files can be added back-to-back on the timeline to join them when exported. Once the files are on the timeline they can be edited with frame accuracy using the editing tools in the software (very powerful editing capabilities once you learn what the software can do). Now once you have done all the editing/joining of the .mts files you can export the resulting edited video files as an MPEG file with HD quality (yes the is a rendering process but it in much faster than any other software I have tried). And a very neat feature of this software is that you can use the "DVD maker" to immediately create a DVD of your edited video that is playable on any DVD player. So with this one software package you can go from raw .mts video files to an edited and produced (burned on disc) DVD. Really neat! Anyway this post may be too late to help out Johnny but maybe some other frustrated person will come across it and find it beneficial. Good luck.

[pippas]

Not quite sure why anyone would want to record their video in HD and then lose a lot of quality by creating a standard definition DVD?

I'm sure the program you speak of worked fine at the time of the original post, but things have come a long way since then, and you can do much better for that sort of money these days....

[thechemist78]

Well for one thing most of us don't have equipment or disc to burn Blu-ray disc so this is the best option I have found to edit .mts files and make acceptable quality dvds from them. However if you have found better software options for editing the .mts files and producing HD quality video I would be most interested I learning about it. Please share or direct me to a place on this forum where it is already discussed. Thanks

[pippas]

Well for one thing most of us don't have equipment or disc to burn Blu-ray disc so this is the best option I have found to edit .mts files and make acceptable quality dvds from them. However if you have found better software options for editing the .mts files and producing HD quality video I would be most interested I learning about it. Please share or direct me to a place on this forum where it is already discussed. Thanks

I don't think there's much need to create Blu-ray discs for consumer HD video. Too restrictive and expensive!
But I wouldn't use DVDs either - any more than I would try and record my audio onto cassettes!
No point in losing quality, when it's not necessary....

As I mentioned above, things have moved on some way since 'MPEG Video Wizard' - and many other Mpeg2 editors - were popular choices for video editing.

These days I find I get my best results from converting my .mts files into an intraframe intermediate format like HQX or Cineform (both free codecs) for easy frame accurate editing, and then use free editing software (like Virtualdub and AviSynth) to create my edited files - still in HD, so with very little quality loss. Certainly not the big hit in quality creating a DVD would require...

I replay my edited files in either my WD Live media player, or via USB into my Pansonic PVR.
Or I upload them( in HD) to You Tube.

No need to mess around with optical 'spinning discs' at all any more...or indeed use any of the editing software designed to work with creating DVDs by 'downgrading' HD footage....

I think I stopped doing that about 5 years ago...