View Full Version : *.m2t on a MAC


Steven White
June 1st, 2005, 08:54 AM
I have some HDV footage I've sold, and use a PC with Premiere Pro 1.5.1 with a demo of AspectHD.

The clients want the footage on either HDV tape, or on DVD-ROM. Since it's only 5 minutes of footage, it's signficantly cheaper for me to transfer the file on DVD. Here's the catch: as digitized data they want it as a "*.mov" file.

Since I'm on PC, I don't have it as a *.mov, but rather as a *.m2t. What I wanted to know is, if I just rename the *.m2t to *.mov, will it play properly on a MAC equipped to handle MPEG-2 transport streams? Or does Apple use some proprietary packaging that will provent an *.m2t from playing?

Has anyone with a Mac downloaded a *.m2t from the web, and played it back properly in Quicktime? I don't have the Quicktime MPEG-2 plugin - so I can't test it.

-Steve

Bryan Suthard
June 1st, 2005, 09:17 AM
Steven,

Quicktime does not play m2t files directly. It will play m2v files but the m2t files need to be demuxed to create those. There are a number of utilities that do this.

Steven White
June 1st, 2005, 09:22 AM
Hm. How do you get an uncompressed HDV to play on a mac in a *.mov package then?

-Steve

Bryan Suthard
June 1st, 2005, 09:28 AM
My solution to view the M2T files directly is to use VLC (Video Lan Client) instead of quicktime - www.videolan.org. Uncompressed MOV files are unplayable on my Mac which is a dual 1Gig but VLC does well. Perhaps your client can use VLC to play the files instead of Quicktime. It is multiplatform also. You may want to give it a try. It is free.

Nate Weaver
June 2nd, 2005, 09:03 AM
Viewing the files in VLC is probably besides the point. I'd think they want quicktime format so they can EDIT the material, not just watch.

I'd see if I could find a DVCPROHD codec on the PC, and encode to that.

I think your only REAL option is to give them the .m2t and tell them how to convert it to QT on their own machine. Or give them the tape.

Be careful what you promise in these early days of HDV, it will be easy to screw up jobs.

Steven White
June 2nd, 2005, 11:41 AM
Good news! They say the *.m2t will be fine. Hooray!

-Steve

Mark Ross
June 5th, 2005, 08:31 PM
FWIW, MPEG Streamclip can open a .m2t file and transcode to any and all flavors of Quicktime goodness. And it's free. Check it out at:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/mpegstreamclip.html

EDIT: And I am a total idiot, as it says in post #1 that you are not a Mac. *slaps head*