Help Converting .MTS files from a HD Camcorder

[DHC6twinotter]

Hey guys,

My parents just picked up a HD Camcorder for their upcoming trip to the Philippines. I'm trying to figure everything out for them. Camera is a Canon Vixia HG21 (High Definition with 120 gig hard drive).

They would like to store the files on the PC and burn DVDs, and possibly eventually burn BlueRay DVDs.

Anyways, it looks like the recorded files are in .MTS format. The software that came with the camera is horrible. Does anybody know of a program that is easy to use and will convert .MTS files to a format that is more recognizable? Something free?

I did some google searches, and I tried 4Videosoft MTS Converter. There are about a hundred different file conversion options, but I tried .AVI, MPEG, and .mp4. None of those worked, except for the MP4, but the picture quality was really bad. Maybe I'm just not picking the right file type to convert to.

Also, is there any video editing software out that can read .MTS files yet? Maybe a newer version of Sony Vegas?


Thanks!
Daniel

[mastacox]

For converting video off of my HD camcorder (Canon HF-100, very similar to yours but it uses SDHC cards) I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro. It's incredibly cheap for its capabilities at $85, and it's able to read the native files off of my camcorder (AVCHD files, a.k.a. *.mts files).

I too looked around for a free solution, and didn't find anything that actually worked worth a darn, so I bit the bullet and bought Sony Vegas. Definitely worth it IMO

P.S.- I hope your computer has some horsepower, otherwise re-encoding will take forever! On my old computer (2.1 GHz Single-Core Athlon XP, 1.5GB of RAM) it took almost 4 hours to re-encode a 15 minute clip I took to 1280x720... My new computer (3.0GHz Quad-Core Phenom II X4 940, 8.0GB of RAM) can do the same re-encoding in near real-time; HUGE difference. Also, definitely look into a Blu-Ray burner for full res backups, I'm going to buy one very soon because videos off these cameras eat hard drive space for breakfast.

[Scuba]

House party at dans parents place !!

[DHC6twinotter]

For converting video off of my HD camcorder (Canon HF-100, very similar to yours but it uses SDHC cards) I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro. It's incredibly cheap for its capabilities at $85, and it's able to read the native files off of my camcorder (AVCHD files, a.k.a. *.mts files).

I too looked around for a free solution, and didn't find anything that actually worked worth a darn, so I bit the bullet and bought Sony Vegas. Definitely worth it IMO

Awesome! That's exactly the kind of info I needed. Thanks! I wasn't sure if Sony Vegas supported .mts files yet, so it's really good to know that it does. I was thinking about buying it anyways, so knowing that it supports .mts files seems like it would be well worth it. I can't believe how horrible the software that came with the camera is.

P.S.- I hope your computer has some horsepower, otherwise re-encoding will take forever! On my old computer (2.1 GHz Single-Core Athlon XP, 1.5GB of RAM) it took almost 4 hours to re-encode a 15 minute clip I took to 1280x720... My new computer (3.0GHz Quad-Core Phenom II X4 940, 8.0GB of RAM) can do the same re-encoding in near real-time; HUGE difference. Also, definitely look into a Blu-Ray burner for full res backups, I'm going to buy one very soon because videos off these cameras eat hard drive space for breakfast.

My parents have a Dell with a 3.4ghz P4 processor and 1 gig of ram. My computer has a E6600 Core2Duo processor with 2 gigs or ram (which I'll probably upgrade soon). I'd probably install the program on both PCs (if the sony software will let me do that), but primarily use my PC for any editing. Both PCs are running XP Pro.

As far as hard drive space goes, we will probably buy an external hard drive with at least 1tb of space. Once editing is done, I’d like to have no more than an hour or so to burn to a DVD, but I know we will have a lot more video stored on the hard drive. A blu-ray burner is definitely something we will get eventually, but I think price is a bit prohibitive right now (although to be honest, I haven't really priced them yet).

House party at dans parents place !!

lol...sounds good! I wouldn't mind seeing you all again.

[DHC6twinotter]

Also, my parents have a Netbook with a 160 gig hard drive that they use on their international trips. I think they are wanting to use it as a backup in case they fill up the hard drive on the camera. The camera says it will store just over 11 hours worth of video in HD mode, so I dunno if they will even record more than that.

Brian, if I record video at the highest quality (mxp setting), can Sony Vegas "downgrade" the video to fit on a standard DVD? I'd like to record in HD for future use once we get a blu-ray burner, but I'd also like to burn an hour or so on a standard DVD for the time being. We may also post some videos online, once we get all that figured out.

Thanks.

[mastacox]

Well Blu-Ray burners are about $150 these days, which I think is a smokin' deal...

Brian, if I record video at the highest quality (mxp setting), can Sony Vegas "downgrade" the video to fit on a standard DVD?

Yup, that's one of the most basic things a video reencoder should be able to do. Your max quality setting will record video at 1920x1080, but a DVD is 720x480 so you have to resize the video to make it work on a DVD. Hi def video sites like YouTube or Vimeo support up to 1280x720, which is pretty good looking.

[DHC6twinotter]

Awesome, thanks Brian.