Hello all,
First apologies If I tresspass some rules, I haven't seen/read any. So please move/remove/notify me If I'm doing something wrong.
I have a Canon HG20 HD video camera. I used to import video's on WindowsXP/Vista with the standard Canon tool. That created nice M2ts files with date time stamp as filename.
Two years ago I switched to Mac and discovered that in fact the Camera has all into a AVCHD container.
I started out with importing to iMovie in 2012 and discovered that it created .MOV files. (did not do any editing yet, I was just importing/backupping for later editing).
Later I thought It might be wise to backup the AVCHD file/container straight from the camera via Finder. I did that in early 2014 and also last week, to make another backup. You see, I am not shooting that much and am backing up really infrequently, shooting just short clips of our baby/kids.
When we bought a Smart TV, I discovered that the .MOV files are not being compatible with Samsung DLNA (Don't have a mediaplayer)
So this week I started investigating als this stuff. I discovered that AVCHD and MOV is not a fileformat but containers etc.
I have the feeling that iMove can't do what I want: Have video files from my cam able to edit on mac and also to view on our Samsung Smart TV via streaming from my Synology NAS.
I tried also tonight the latest Canon CameraWindow and ImageBrowser software for Mac from the Canon Site, but that does not recognize the camera, while Finder sees the camera and has mounted a CANON folder.
I think I got the solution by buying iSkySoft Video Converter. With this I can both convert the MOV files I have and the AVCHD Backups to MP4 files by keeping the original quality/bitrate etc (I shot most in FXP 17MBPS)
As the Move files were named with the date/time stamp, I guess I am ok now with those.
But the MP4 files converted from the AVCHD container files are having just a sequence number as filename, and I am not sure how to regain the datetime information. I checked with MediaInfo tool, but unfortunately it says : Encoded date: UTC 1904-01-01 00:00:00.
So I thought I could use some help.
Therefore my question if there is a kind soul on this forum who can help me out with some advice what I could do best. So I can define a good working workflow for my current stored files and future clips I will shoot of our kids growing up.
I don't mind using a different tool, but it should be user friendly. open source would be nice if available.
And please don't advice to buy Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, as I think that is over the top/too expensive for my goal
My requirements are
- import and edit on mac
- view on TV (and maybe create a DVD sometime)
- Don't lose any quality due to encoding/decoding or whatever
- only GUI like solutions, don't have the time and knowledge to investigate in commandline stuff etc.
Thanks a lot for any help.
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Your specific requirements have pretty well eliminated all the options -- iMovie, Premiere, FCPX ( probably your best bet) and Avid. Maybe Lightworks software-only version.
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Well thanks for your comment. Can I use Imovie to convert/create clips which I can both edit and watch on my SmartTV. Or should I just buy a mediaplayer and go with the apple .Mov / quicktime format. But what if I ever decide to go back to windows (not that I am planning that, but hey , you never know what happens in life, right)
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I can get the MTS files out of the AVCHD with iSkySoft videoconverter, but how can I do this with keeping the metadata like date/time stamp?