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ingvarai
ingvarai
Known Participant
September 29, 2009
Question

MTS files (AVCHD) in After Effects - supported?

  • September 29, 2009
  • 3 replies
  • 43047 views

I have a Panasonic HMC 151 camera, clips saved as MTS.

I can add them to an After Effects comp, and I can see the individual frames, so far so good. When playing back however, the movie hops back and forth and the motion and progress is funny.

So - what is this?

ingvarai

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    K
    kate5958
    Participant
    August 4, 2010

    I am very impressed with Pavtube MTS Converter. I've had good results converting the .mts files to .mov, with the settings h.264, 1200, 1280*720, 25fps, aac. The files look good on my Mac running Adobe Premiere, edit easily, and convert well to DVD format. Pavtube will also turn out super 'lossless raw video' files, but these are so huge my mac can't cope.

    http://www.pavtube.com/guide/compress-mts-for-adobe-after-effects.html

    ingvarai
    ingvaraiAuthor
    Known Participant
    August 4, 2010

    FWIW, I have upgraded After Effects to CS 5, and CS 5 has no problem with my Panasonic MTS (AVCHD) files. This is a big leap forward, although it wold have been good if Adobe supplied updates for CS4 fixing this. Anyhow, the new rotobrush justifies the upgrade, so all in all I recommend AE CS5.

    Ingvar

    Mylenium
    Mylenium
    Legend
    September 29, 2009
    MTS files (AVCHD) in After Effects - supported?

    Generally yes, but obviously not all of its flavors. Some cameras do not flag their streams correctly or add additional, non-standardized data that confuses AE. For those formats unfortunately only converting them before bringing into AE guarantees correct results. If you can provide a short clip (~30 MB, 5-10 secs.) we can investigate in the hopes that at latest for CS5 those formats are supported correctly.

    Mylenium

    ingvarai
    ingvaraiAuthor
    Known Participant
    September 29, 2009

    I have a 30 seconds long clip. I make a new comp in AE and add this clip to the timeline.

    I set a working area of about 8 seconds. The first 5 seconds playback is perfect, then it starts to hop back and forth. When sliding the work area on the timeline, I observe the same phenomenon. First 5 seconds fine, the rest just a mess.

    This is a real real disappointment. AVCHD is here to stay. In Sony Vegas, my favorite NLE, I edit AVCHD right off the camera. In Cs4 Production Premium, which costs 7 times more, I cannot edit AVCHD. I really do not want to wait for CS 5 to be able to use MTS files directly. I hope Adobe will issue an update to fix this. Or at least come up with some sort of a workaround or utility that will fix the problem.

    The images look just great as they are. Fix this issue please, I do not want to transcode and introduce more artifacts than I already have in the compressed AVCHD files, I want to use my MTS files as is. In case you wish, I can supply a file. How do I do this?

    Anyhows - I had thought Adobe already have access to such files, this camera is all over now, very popular.

    http://www.panasonic-broadcast.com/en/products/high-definition/avccam/AG-HMC151E-Video.php

    ingvarai

    ingvarai
    ingvaraiAuthor
    Known Participant
    September 30, 2009

    Anyhows - I had thought Adobe already have access to such files, this camera is all over now, very popular.

    I do not know. He's the employee and gets paid the big bucks. If he says so, we'll have to take his word for it. That aside, one should not expect a software vendor to automatically have access to any camera model, latest computer or whatever. Even a big one like Adobe has a limited budget for that and, lest we forget, even if they could buy it all, they'd not hire a hundred extra people just to test it....

    Mylenium


    That aside, one should not expect a software vendor to automatically have access to any camera model, latest computer or whatever. Even a big one like Adobe has a limited budget for that and, lest we forget, even if they could buy it all, they'd not hire a hundred extra people just to test it....


    This is not about "any camera model" but the upcoming and soon to become ubiquitous AVCHD compression format. This compression format has several parameters. To make Adobe support the particular AVCHD settings that Panasonic uses hardly requires "a hundred people", since Sony Creative, Edius etc. has no problems with these AVCHD files. I guess Panasonic itself would be the first to assist here.

    Sony Creative's Vegas 9.0 came in May, and since then has become 2 updates, which among other things improve AVCHD performance. I hope that in the very near future when I click the update button in After Effects that a fix will be downloaded which will make AE support also the Panasonic AVCHD files.

    ingvarai

    A
    Anonymous
    September 29, 2009

    Yes, AVCHD is supported natively in AE CS 4.

    However, as you noted, there are some decoding issues with footage from certain, newer models. The specific camera you mention keeps being mentioned all the time. Bummer, I know.

    The workaround for now is converting the footage to another format. If you google for "AVCHD converter", you'll find a ton of applications that do just that.

    Many users will tell you that converting temporally compressed footage (AVCHD, HDV, etc) to a spatially compressed format (or uncompressed, if possible) is always recommended for performance reasons. Agreed, but at the same time, a supported format is a supported format. Unfortunately, file-based formats are a bit of a moving target, as they are more likely to bend the specs as new models are released. Adobe is working with all parts involved. I can't mention a time frame, though.

    T
    Tamás22354154cwlb
    Participant
    December 21, 2021

    2021, and still the same problem...

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