(Sony) MTS File Format difficulties

frankiefoo · Member Joined: 03 Nov 2009 Location: Switzerland

Hi folks,

my dad has recently bought a Sony HDR-SR12E HD camera. It records to an internal HD in the proprietary .MTS format from Sony.

I need to somehow streamline the "record - archive - view on tv" process for my dad. It has to be easy as he does not have advanced computer skills.

He wants to view his videos on his HD television screen which has a HDMI interface.

What's the best way to bring videos to the television? It's easy to view them if the movies are still on the internal HD of the camera, but as soon as you want to archive them on the computer, this question arises.
It is possible to convert them into some other format like .MOV using tools from shedworx.com (FlamingoHD, VoltaicHD), in order to burn them on DVD. But it turns out to be a little complicated and error prone. And it takes huge amounts of time and space to convert.

It would be cool if he could save the raw movies to an external HD in .MTS format and connect this drive to the television. There is a device from Western Digital that can actually connect a HD to a HDMI TV device: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=735
Does anyone know if it works well?

Is there any other approach or device than you can recommend?

Thanks a lot,
Frank

minidv2dvd · .com Joined: 12 Jul 2008 Location: United States

if something easy is required to convert them to dvd i'd say get him convertxtodvd. easy and quite good. no need to do anything but drag the .mts files into it. no prior conversion needed.

pippas · Member Joined: 09 Jan 2004 Location: UK

frankiefoo · Member Joined: 03 Nov 2009 Location: Switzerland

Thank you, these are both excellent tips. I guess I'll try them both. convertxtodvd seems to be really easy to use. And the WDTV device is a good investment if it really works great. Having the original files and being able to play them directly on tv is great, and having a copy on DVD is also very favourable.

Any other experiences from users?

nitro1973 · Member Joined: 23 Mar 2009 Location: europe

I do all this stuff through PCs. Both notebook and desktop are connected to TV with HDMI. I keep AVCHD recordings on HDDs. DVDs are too risky in my opinion and making backups every 1-2 years would be a pain in the ass.
For playback I use Splash player. Im not sure if it needs more advanced skills than using external HDD with WD.

pippas · Member Joined: 09 Jan 2004 Location: UK

Couple of further things to consider. If you want to use standard recordable DVDs to play back your footage in full HD, then you will need a Blu-ray player to play the discs. They will not play on a standard DVD player.
You can use a number of programs to convert your footage -like the one suggested in the post above - so that it can be replayed as a standard DVD, but you will lose quality.

If you choose to use a PC based software player, then you will need a pretty powerful machine to get 'smooth' playback of the original AVCHD. Core 2 duo as a minimum - and even that can be pushing it!

The external hardware players -like the WDTV and the Popcorn Hour -use a chip set that plays back the original footage, in full quality, with ease.

Or you can go full 'Blu-ray'- still a bit expensive, IMHO, and do you really want to do the 'disc' thing, all over again?!

frankiefoo · Member Joined: 03 Nov 2009 Location: Switzerland

yes, I am aware of the fact that blu-ray players are actually able to play the original videos. As far as I understand, no conversion is necessary. But, as you say, blu-ray burners are still a bit pricy, and to use the discs on the tv, another blu-ray device (player) is necessary.

The external HD approach seems better for archiving purposes, to me. Having all videos on a large HD is nice, however also potentially dangerous in terms of data loss.
I think I'll go for the WDTV for now and wait until blu-ray players become affordable. When blu-ray has a broader market acceptance, it will probably become convenient for my dad to be able to burn movies on disc in order to distribute them to friends. But at the moment, not many people I know actually have a blu-ray player.

Another thing that comes to my mind is the big number of movie files his camera produces. It splits the movie up in chunks of a couple of MB. Does anyone know how the WDTV (or similar devices) cope with this fact? Are different folders recognized as different movies and can the folder name be used as the movie title on the tv menu? Or is it necessary to merge corresponding chunks in advance? These are all things that seem quite important to me for people with only moderate computing and IT skills.

All in all, things have become very complicated for my dad (and probably for many 60+ aged persons). In older times, they had their DV cartridges and knew exactly how things worked... Now he is really overstrained. I try to explain to him what the advantages are, but apart from the better quality, he does not agree

nitro1973 · Member Joined: 23 Mar 2009 Location: europe

pippas: There is no need for hardcore CPU for AVCHD playback. My friend just got a graphics card for $35 (nvidia 9500 or 9600) and it supports hardware acceleration for avchd playback. There are 2 free players: Splash and MPC-HC that support H/W acceleration.

frankiefoo: I use 2 HDDs for clips backup. I do it manually at the moment but im thinking about RAID or something. My parents watch clips of my children, I send it on DVDs, and they use splash (its easy to use) for playback.

jagabo · Member Joined: 09 Dec 2005 Location: none

The WDTV Live should play your AVCHD files with no problems.

http://forum.videohelp.com/topic371982.html
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic374280.html
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1172446
http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php