Good God what did I get into?
 

Ok, so I do all the video work for a local Improv group here and we just had our No Pants 2K10 event. we rode the local subway with no pants on... It was tons of fun and I was fortunate to have a 3rd camera guy with me this time. He was using an HD camera that recorded to the internal memory and I am fairly sure it was a Canon. Now, What I forgot, was that its an entirely different animal than my standard HDV and DV tapes I have been working with.

So, Now I have 20 some odd .mts files that I can't get to work in Premiere Pro CS3...

Can anyone point me in a direction so that I can start my editing on this project? I do not get paid for this work and I can't really afford to pay too much to get a converter for it.. is there any other options?

Thanks!

Sounds like it's an AVCHD format. trick is to have those mts files back in their original file/folder structure as if they are still on the card or camera. There's bound to be a thread here on what that structure is. Although I use FCP, I have CS4 and just for grins tried it and it worked fine with my AVCHD camera.

There are a few apps that will convert the mts files without the folder but none that I know of that are free. It's been a while since I last searched and I checked for both Mac and windows apps.

Don't fret if you no longer have the original directory structure - you can just lay the individual files out on the Premiere timeline and edit as usual.

But first you need to convert them to a format CS3 can read (or find computer with CS4, which can read AVCHD natively). I suggest you download the trial of either NeoScene or ProspectHD from Cineform.com. When you install the trial (which is fully functional for several days) you will see an application called HDLink - load the mts files into this and it will batch convert to high-quality CFHD-codec avis or movs.

The encoder will expire after a few days, but their decoding codec (so that you can edit the converted files later) is free.

You might also consider converting these files to mpeg2 / HDV format using either Voltaic or Vasst Upshift. The mpeg2 files are easier to work with, particularly on older computers which lack the horsepower to handle h.264/AVCHD.

Larry

Well, the computer can handle them... its just that I lack the coding support.


I will try what Graham suggested and see how that works...

ok, I downloaded the Cineform and I got lost at that point. it starts to run things in command prompt and I have forgotten all that stuff by now.

When I opened Premeire, It showed some extra effects but I could not find any converter.

Can someone help out with that one?

Hope this help. It will guide you how to do the conversion AVCHD to CF AVI format


Videoguys Blog - How to make a Blu-Ray DVD using CineForm NEO Scene and Adobe Premiere CS4 (Windows version).

I am learning to deal with stuff yet and haven't taken on editing yet, but I did get some satisfaction with
Moyea .mts converter. At least I can view the unedited clips on windows media player now and upload to youtube. This program is nice if you simply want to convert .mts to avi

If you really want to edit AVCHD with Premiere Pro CS3, then I recommend The Mainconcept MPEGPro HD programme. It doesn't need to convert files like Cineform and the others, so you don't have to wait for the conversion to de done.
MPEG Pro HD: MainConcept