.mts to .mp4 with minimal or no change ?

[NewTwoVideo]

Yes, I see the same thing in MediaInfo. And some editors have a problem with it too. My rudimentary understanding is that with "separated fields" interlaced video in MP4 the frame rate flag is supposed to be set to the field rate -- and that is what ffmpeg is doing. The editors (like VirtualDub2) are probably at fault here. Players probably deal with this correctly because they use the timestamps embedded with each frame in the video stream, not the frame rate in the header.

Thank you for the explanation.

To try to ensure that what I send to other people as a link to a file on a cloud server will play without grief, I will try to record those in 60 Progressive.

If on the other hand I am recording with the intent to play on my Television or burn to BD-R to send to someone to play on their set top BD player connected to a Television, I will use 60 Interlaced.

But my final question is, if I am not sure what the final destination is for something I record, should I choose Progressive or Interlaced ?
Can one be converted to the other if necessary to ensure playability ?

TIA

[DB83]

The basic rules (in my book) for capture


1. You capture according to the source >> interlaced is captured as interlaced
2. Your capture frame-rate should match the source >> e.g. a VHS is captured at 29.97 fps/25 fps nothing else


Capturing interlaced at progressive or at a non-native frame-rate thus doing these changes in real time is virtually guaranteed to produce bad captures.

[Sharc]

Btw. it seems that one can avoid the framerate ambiguity by muxing to .mkv instead of .mp4

ffmpeg.exe -i "your.mts" -c:v copy -c:a copy "your.mkv"

MediaInfo reports it as

Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan type, store method : Separated fields (2 fields per block)
Scan order : Top Field First

I am pretty sure that any player which can playback .mkv will play it correctly, including VirtualDub2

[codehound]

Btw. it seems that one can avoid the framerate ambiguity by muxing to .mkv instead of .mp4

ffmpeg.exe -i "your.mts" -c:v copy -c:a copy "your.mkv"

the .exe is superfluous, too

ffmpeg -i "your.mts" -c copy "your.mkv"