How to use .M2T files on the Mac

[ArthurDaley]

I pulled terabytes of HD content onto the PC via HDVsplit and the file extensions are .M2T

Now it seems that it is some kind of wrapper/transport that the Mac does not like. How do I go about making them Mac friendly? Thanks

[tomlee59]

Do you want to play it, or do some other operations on the file?

VLC should be able to play .m2t streams. It also can transcode into other formats, if that's what you want to do. VLC is free.

There are undoubtedly many other apps that can work with .m2t streams, but without knowing more about what you want to accomplish, it's hard to say much specific. If you post back with a little more info, I'm sure that you'll get lots of useful suggestions from others on this forum.

[ArthurDaley]

Thanks.

I want to video edit them on the mac say with iMovies08 or FCP.

[Frobozz]

I'd start with MPEG Streamclip where you can do basic cutting and trimming of the .m2t videos. If you want to export segments for use in iMovie or FCP use Streamclip to convert to full quality QuickTime Movie.

[ArthurDaley]

Will this process involve quality loss? Thanks

[havema-1]

Editing MPEG1/2 is lossless if you edit to the GOP (the GOP length can be up to 0.6 seconds). Editing to the frame needs decoding-encoding which may introduce quality loss.

And of course converting MPEG to DV for iMovie will lose quality especially if you convert the material back to MPEG with iDVD. MPEG->DV quality loss is minimal (scaling may introduce its own artifacts, though).

[guns1inger]

HD to DV will be more than just a little lossy. Aside from the huge drop in resolution you will take a big compression hit. It is probably the best option for the tools you want to use, but set your expectations at a realistic level.

[havema-1]

> HD to DV will be more than just a little lossy

Oh yes, I didn't notice that the OP had HD input.

Then one option woul be to try to convert it to AppleIntermediateCodec (HiDef) for iMovie HD's HD project. Haven't tried that in practice, though.