Mini Guide - AVCHD to Anything Using DGAVCdec

Soopafresh · Dismember Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

Well, if the screen is 1080i , then interlaced. Your display might not even be able to show 1080p. But if you're going to do that, then it makes more sense to take your MTS files and prepare them directly for Blu Ray playback. This avoids having to re-encode them at all. You'd need a Blu Ray player, of course.

TorontoXtreame · Member Joined: 28 Mar 2008 Location: Canada

45tripp · Dolphin Blue Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Location: Triptonia

nice one soopa.

i guess i would have dropped xport and used dgavc
like you demonstrated in an alternate version

Soopafresh · Dismember Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

Thanks 45tripp, I'll do that eventually. The A/V sync is really good right now via the Xport demux. I'm sure it is with DGavcIndex, I just haven't extensively tested it.

vhelp · ..Semi Neutral.. Joined: 31 Mar 2001 Location: New York

But dgavc doesn't work for all h264 videos. I know that it doesn't open my downloaded apple
(mov) trailers ... and the only way I as able to open those was with Yamb because it basically
just demux the A/V contents and re-wraps them in another (cleaner) container. I posted this
(vague) hint in another thread about a week ago or so.

--> Trailers MOV format -- How to decode/demux/trancode to .MP4 ? [Solved]

-vhelp 4592
_________________

VHELP's - Sample Clips [last: 12.29.06],
my YouTube videos

Soopafresh · Dismember Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

V5 released. Minor enhancements

- Newer DGAVCindex V22

- Resizes to more DVD friendly dimensions - 848x480 for NTSC and 1024x576 for PAL

- PAL version of the batch files included

vhelp · ..Semi Neutral.. Joined: 31 Mar 2001 Location: New York

I am hoping (dreaming) of the day when DGAVCindex will open all container packages,
including the apple mov trailers and other containers that house H264 or AVC content.
Well, we can dream, can't we ?

Until then, I'll continue on the hunt for the tool that opens all of them.. will make me happy

Thanks for your friendly heads-up.

-vhelp 4603
_________________

VHELP's - Sample Clips [last: 12.29.06],
my YouTube videos

DWBH · Member Joined: 30 Mar 2008 Location: Portugal

Hi.
I bought the Sony HDR-SR12, great camera. However, I can't read the mts files with the software that comes with the camera, so I use the Sony Vegas 8.0.
I like the program, and I think I can do some cool editing with it.
I've rendered some files, I've been experimenting with some output templates. Bottom line, I want to convert files to DVD, so I can watch them in my living room.
My question is: should I try the programs you guys have suggested, or can I use the Sony Vegas with good results? If so, which output format would you recommend me?
Another thing: what's interlacing?

Finally. What do you reckon: should a certain program to convert files and Vegas to edit them?

Noob here.

Soopafresh · Dismember Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

vhelp - you might know about QTsource http://avisynth.org/QuickTime

DWBH - Vegas will work well with your HDR-SR12 MTS files. There's so much to cover that it is out of the scope of this thread to get into the specifics. Download the manual

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/manuals/vegasfamily

Many Vegas tutorials on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZA0GC_Vob4&feature=related

AVCHD Editing programs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NNFnacJSdw&feature=related

bescene · Member Joined: 25 Mar 2008 Location: Canada

I posted earlier about a problem I was having using multi_demux_mts.bat on large *.MTS files created with a Canon HG10.

[url]http://forum.videohelp.com/topic348383.html

Thanks to Soopafresh I was able to get make the *.AVI files for further editing. Along the way, however, I discovered a problem with the "overflow" files that the camera creates automatically when recording long clips (greater than 17 minutes). For example when recording a long performance the camera starts recording into new file after about 1.9GB or 17 minutes of continuous shooting. This would be fine except that multi_demux_mts.bat doesn's seem to recognize the files that the camera creates automatically, but will easily process long clips when I've push the start and stop record button on the camera to record them.

I am going crazzzzzzyyyyy trying to salvage a project that could have been done weeks ago if only I'd done some research on AVCHD before starting a project in this format. Thank god I had a gs150 rolling to get the wide shots so its not a total train wreck just yet! Oh how I miss WinDV, firewire and the MiniDV! Low def is better than no def - please help!

Here is what I've got so far off the tape footage:

[/url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FR4OmJIoI8

Soopafresh · Dismember Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

Explain what you mean by "overflow" files. Do you mean a structure like:

00001.mts
00002.mts

etc?

bescene · Member Joined: 25 Mar 2008 Location: Canada

Yeah exactly. I start recording (0001.mts) after twenty minutes I have two files (0001.mts and 0002.mts). The second files dies every time and I can process the first one everytime. I thought it was a file size issues (memmory) but that doesn't explan why it wont work on the smaller files (0002.mts)

Soopafresh · Dismember Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

It's possible that customized version I made for you only accepts one .MTS file at a time. Try the 00002.mts file alone in the folder and try processing it. Make sure it's the only .MTS in there.

bescene · Member Joined: 25 Mar 2008 Location: Canada

Tried that. Also tried using TSremux.

Soopafresh · Dismember Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

How big is the 00002.mts file? Is it small enough that you can upload it to http://www.mediafire.com/ ? Anything over 100MB might take too long to upload.

bescene · Member Joined: 25 Mar 2008 Location: Canada

The *.MTS file is 1.9Gb straight out of the camera. I don't have FTP or I'd drop it there.

birdbrainz · Member Joined: 07 Apr 2008 Location: United States

adamhamel · Member Joined: 10 Apr 2008 Location: United States

Soopafresh. Your contributions have been awesome. I'm sure you have spent quite some time, thanks. I have a couple of questions for you.

I've read many posts on many forums, and I'm trying to get my head wrapped around HD.

I own a sony hdr-sr5 so I get AVC-HD .m2ts file. Your bat file does work on my files.

You seem to have a good handle on things so I'm asking for your thoughts / suggestions.

Here is what I think I know? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

My goal is to be able to edit with Final Cut Pro.

Editing:

1) Editing compressed video seems to be a bad idea. I can do this in Sony Vegas, but you need a very beefy machine, which I do have a Pentium D, w/ 3gb of ram, and It still seems a bit slugish when editing .m2ts files.

2) Besides Vegas most editing solutions don't even handle Editing compressed video. I was able to use Nero to convert my .m2ts to a .mp4 container which I was able to edit in imovie and final cut. I played with mb/s and other quality controls, but I know it's just no going to be as good.

3) If I decompress the mpeg 4 using voltaic, AIC, or some other decompression the files get enormous.

I'm really not sure exactly what to do at this point. I don't want to convert the whole library to downgraded versions, and I'm sure in 6 months there will be a better codec anyway, but I want to be able to have the best of both worlds. Compressed file size (save storage) with preserved quality (raw .m2ts), but still be able to edit

Others have talked about extracting the video and audio from the .m2ts file and wrapping it in a QuickTime container so FinalCut and iMovie would be able to read them. Not sure if this is possible. It seems that you already are able to extract. How difficult would it be to wrap it in a QT container?

I guess when it comes down to it. I'm less concerned with file size. I can always buy another harddrive

since they are cheap these days, but I don't want to lose any quality, and I want to be able to edit them with FinalCut.

What do you suggest would be the best way to approach this? The QuickTime approach seems ineresting as maybe one would not have to re-encode (lose quality), maybe we could just re-wrap in a QT container.

Thanks
Adam

adamhamel · Member Joined: 10 Apr 2008 Location: United States

Couple of other points:

the ffmpeg call in your bat files works good for standard DVD quality.

1) I want to edit in at least 1440 x 1080 which is my native resolution for the .m2ts files. I realize that if I render to standard dvd it seems pointless, but I would like to be able to re-open those projects later and output to blue-ray / hd discs when they become the standard, and I don't want to have to re-create the project.

What are your thoughts on editing in certain resolutions. Should you always try to edit in a higher resolution for future flexibility?

Soopafresh · Dismember Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

adam - thanks for your kind words

I'm not going to have very good answers for you, as I haven't explored the workflow of AVCHD processing on OS X and Final Cut. The most popular program in this regard does seem to be Voltaic for the Mac. I believe iMovie has built in support for AVCHD (at least I think I read that somewhere).

And as you mentioned, disk drive space is cheap these days. 1TB drives are $200.

Regarding the file dimensions, it all depends on the speed of your editing program and what your target is going to be. Blu Ray output would mean no resizing of the original for editing. But again, a native resolution file for editing is going to be a lot bigger than a resized for DVD file.

Bottom line, hold on to your .M2TS files until better solutions are created.

adamhamel · Member Joined: 10 Apr 2008 Location: United States

wow. That was fast man. Yeah IMovie uses apple's AIC codec to transcode to a .mov file. Of course in my case when I turn the camera on it crashes imovie, I've heard others having success with this. Once again. And when I use Voltaic the quality just doesn't look as good as the original.

Both nero and TMPGEnc produce a pretty good mpeg 4 movie in the .mp4 container, I was just looking for possibly a way to change to a mp4 container without transcoding, but maybe that is impossible, or to just extract the raw video from the .m2ts and put it into a different container.

Adam

Soopafresh · Dismember Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

You can put it into a MKV container without transcoding (although why would one do that), but MP4 is out because it doesn't allow AC3 audio, which is in the M2TS file. See that? If it isn't one thing it's another!

BTW, check out this article for some more options on OSX

http://37prime.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/avchd-and-mac-os-x/

baby · Member Joined: 04 Apr 2005 Location: asia, philippines

Hello there i'd follow these steps regarding feeding the .avs into tmpegenc plus using virtual dubmod but virtual dub crashes.. I just want to encode my .mts file ecorded from sony hdr sr 12 into .mpg file. normally TPEGxpexx 4.0 took 3 hrs. to finish it and I wonder if there is way to at least half the the time consumed from tmpegxpress 4.0...

thanks

Soopafresh · Dismember Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

Try upgrading Avisynth to 2.58 http://www.free-codecs.com/AviSynth_download.htm

Try regular VirtualDub instead of VirtualDubMod

Your PC is SLOWWWWWW. 2.0Ghz is far too slow for working with HD source material.

TmpegencXpress v4 will take advantage of multicore processors.