My first AVCHD project, and more

[cxsmichael]

Dear friends,

I need your help with the following project that I have recently started out with:
I have rented a video camera and it made some very beautiful videos (20 files, in total 20GB). The videos are really important to me. I have copied the contents of the video camera and it contains an AVCHD folder with 20 .MTS files.

My purpose is to make 1 or more DVDs to play on a television at home.

What I wanted to do is:
- Merge the 20 files and use some fade ins/outs to make one nice complete video file, using maybe Adobe Premiere.
- Then, export the single file to a DVD format to play on a DVD player.

My skills are not that advanced in Adobe Premiere. I however have other skills in other adobe programs. The first thing that I am having some difficulties with is the .MTS-files. I am converting these files as we speak to MP4 H.264 - HD 1080p formats.

My questions are:
- Is this the first thing you would have done also? Or is it better to join the files at first and then convert them to a certain file format?
- Are there other things that I have to think of when it comes to exporting the file to the correct DVD format for playing on a DVD player?
- What do I have to know about the AVCHD folder? What do I have to do with the other folder in the AVCHD folders/files, like: CLIPINF, PLAYLIST, INDEX.BDM en MOVIEOBJ.BDM?

Thank you all so much for helping me in advance.

Greetings
Mike

[SameSelf]

Welcome to the forum!

Is your desire just to watch the movies? If so, are you sure you want to put the movies on a DVD? Your videos are HD and DVDs only support standard definition, i.e. SD. IOW, you will have to downrez your video to SD to fit on a DVD, and your "very beautiful videos" won't be so beautiful after that, especially if your TV is HD. If you are intent on putting the videos on some sort of optical media, then Blu-ray is the only option for HD content. But authoring Blu-ray is harder than DVD and a pain. Can you just put the .MTS files on a flash drive and plug that into your TV to watch? Much easier than editing, re-encoding, burning DVDs etc. If it is the smooth fade in/out in a single video you are after, you could still do that in Premiere but just encode as an MTS or MP4 (whatever your TV supports) and put that on a flash drive. IOW, avoid the authoring DVD/blu-ray step.

As you can see, I have more questions than answers but that is because everyone's situation is different.

EDIT: The first step is determining exactly what you want to achieve, what tools you have at your disposal, and then the least resistance path to get there. Sometimes it involves a DVD, but many times it doesn't or doesn't have to.

[smrpix]

The first thing that I am having some difficulties with is the .MTS-files. I am converting these files as we speak to MP4 H.264 - HD 1080p formats.

No need. You can feed Premiere the entire AVCHD folder and it will ingest the files as-is and merge any spanned clips. Drag and drop the folder into the project window. Premiere may report some files were not imported -- that's fine, it's only the metadata files it's skipping.

After editing, export to the correct DVD format for your framerate and/or country. Do you have Encore for authoring the DVD?

[julitomg]

Unless you have an old version of Adobe Premiere, you should be able to import and edit your camcorder´s .mts files without problems. Just make sure your project properties matches your file´s as closely as possible. If you still feel you need to convert to a more editing-friendly format before importing your files, use a lossless avi codec, such as UT Video Codec Suite https://www.videohelp.com/software/Ut-Video-Codec-Suite , lagarith or Grass Valley HQX Codec, the latter is good and efficient. Or prores if you work with Mac. The resulting AVI or MOV files will be quite large but very easy to edit, Premiere should work without trouble and directly from it´s timeline you can export to whatever distribution format you wish, either in SD (for your DVDs) or HD (to make blurays for example, mp4´s or youtube uploads)