playing AVCHD on Samsung HDTV via external drive?

[njitgrad]

I have a Samsung LN46B650 with an external HD connected to the USB input. On the hard drive I have all of my (standard definition) camcorder footage in AVI files, neatly organized in folder by year. This is very convenient for showing clipshows when entertaining family.

A few months ago I purchased a Samsung TM300 HD camcorder and now have plenty of footage that I am ready to edit. I was hoping that the Samsung codecs in the TV would play the M2TS files from the external HD but apparently that won't work. Since I have to dump my footage (it only has 32 GB internal) onto my PC regularly, playing footage from the camcorder (as Samsung's reply to this is) is not really an option because I would have to invest in a lot of SD cards. I also don't feel like dealing with BluRay burners.

I've been scouring the web to see if someone has accomplished M2TS playback but to no avail. My next option would be to convert to a supported format. Any suggestions on what that format would be and how much of a difference in quality I should expect? All of my footage is 17Mbps.

[njitgrad]

As an experiment, this morning I burned a project (AVCHD footage) to DVD (using my Samsung HD writer app).
The quality is far less than I would desire, though I only played it back in VLC, not my HDTV.

I then used AGK to create an AVI from the files on the DVD. I have yet to check the resulting file, but I can only assuming that its even less desirable.

There must be a format that I can convert to that is as close to AVCHD as possible that my HDTV media player will support.

[Soopafresh]

There's the ~$100 option of an external HD media player such as the WD TV Live. That would be the highest resolution playback available.

I can't find a list of supported codecs and resolutions on that TV set so I can't suggest alternatives.

[njitgrad]

There's the ~$100 option of an external HD media player such as the WD TV Live. That would be the highest resolution playback available.

I like that idea but after doing a little searching it seems like the WD TV Live has issues playing AVCHD. Is this still a known issue or has it been resolved already. I'd hate to spend the money only to have it not do what I want it to do.

[njitgrad]

Well I ended up getting the WD HD TV live yesterday.

It played the .m2ts files (downloaded from my Panny TM300) that I was concerned about just great.

After I mapped the external HD (that I connected to the WD HD TV Live) to my PC as a network drive, I was able to transfer the .m2ts files rather quickly. Most impressive.

I am also able to play the library of AVI files that were generated with AGK. The AVI files were generated using the DVD-to-AVI feature of AGK at 100% quality.

HOWEVER (and this is a big disappointment) I cannot play AVI files that my older Sony DV camcorder produced. Neither the source AVIs nor the final AVIs after I did my editing in Premiere. What gives?

I want to have my cake and eat it too!

Quick question: it seems I only needed to transfer the .m2ts files to my external drive for playback of my HD footage. What are the other files that have the same file name prefix used for? Do I actually need these?

[asmir syed]

I also had the same problem.

[yawa]

Hello guys!

I have the same problem too with my Samsung HDTV 7000 series. I can stream AVI, MKV and so on from my pc to it, but it doesn't accept MTS and M2TS files. I'm looking for a acceptable solution, and that is what I found till now. If I simply rename my MTS files as .TS or .MP4 - voilà - Samsung is already able to play back them, BUT WITHOUT SOUND.

Why? These files have an AC3 audio stream, right?

So the rest ist simple, but not optimal. I'm using tsMuxer to demux my MTS files, then I start azid.exe to convert the AC3 to WAV and then I remux the file again with tsMuxer. That's it. It takes just some seconds of processing!

And now a QUESTION: It would be great if someone could give me a tip how can I process my MTS files in a batch mode, because I have a lot of MTS files I would like to play back (without editing, cutting and so on ...) on my TV! I mean, batch processing without video converting the files, just demux, convert audio and remux again.

Thanx in advance!

[nic2k4]

Besweet has batch processing. But why don't you use Handbrake to convert to a compatible (RTFM) high quality format. And it does batch processing to.

[jagabo]

HOWEVER (and this is a big disappointment) I cannot play AVI files that my older Sony DV camcorder produced. Neither the source AVIs nor the final AVIs after I did my editing in Premiere. What gives?

I don't know why, but there are no standalone media players that will play DV AVI.

[edDV]

I have a Samsung LN46B650 with an external HD connected to the USB input.

The 650 has a limited list of formats that are in a table in your manual. The 7/8/9 Series support more formats but I don't recall seeing AVCHD on the lists.

[yawa]

Besweet has batch processing. But why don't you use Handbrake to convert to a compatible (RTFM) high quality format. And it does batch processing to.

Besweet can only encode/decode/recode audio files, correct? It's not what I'm looking for, cuz I want to demux video + recode audio + remux the video again.

Many thanks for a Handbrake tip! I'll try it!

Ok, Besweet can really be used as a command line audio converter in my workflow, you've right, thank you very much!

[njitgrad]

So the rest ist simple, but not optimal. I'm using tsMuxer to demux my MTS files, then I start azid.exe to convert the AC3 to WAV and then I remux the file again with tsMuxer. That's it. It takes just some seconds of processing!

When I convert to WAV with Azid and remux, I still get no sound. Am I not using Azid correctly? I don't use any options just the following:

D:\Azid_P4 E:\file.ac3 E:\file.wav

[RAMIT]

I have a Samsung B8000 TV which ich connected via HDMI to a Play Station 3, this allows me to play AVCHD directly (or from a connected Synology server) without any conversion.
Hope that helps.