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Question

MTS files (AVCHD) in After Effects - supported?

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
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.

K

kate5958

Participant

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

ingvaraiAuthor

Known Participant

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

Legend

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

ingvaraiAuthor

Known Participant

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

ingvaraiAuthor

Known Participant

Todd - sorry for being unclear. I have the full retail software of CS4 Prod. Premium. What i meant to say was, has the issue with supporting the AVCHD files from panasonic cameras been fixed in AE CS5 or will this problem persist indefinitely? Have you continued testing this?

I have a consumer model panasonic AVCHD camcorder and I have the same problem as the original poster (the MTS files from the panasonic camera skip and stutter in AE, even though they work perfectly in Premiere and Media Encoder). I was strongly considering the HMC150 for professional work but I would avoid panasonic MTS files if AE doesn't support them properly. I currently use CS4 hence why i asked about CS5.

You said you'd heard a lot of complaints about the HMC150 files, so you obviously know there is a problem with panasonic's MTS encoding. You claim that there are other companies that have produced MTS files that work perfectly well in AE. I would like to know exactly which cameras you have used to import MTS files into AE that do not skip and stutter so i can pursue those cameras.

Or, conversely, if ALL MTS files skip and stutter in AE, then say that. And stop claiming to support MTS files.

To sum up:

1. What cameras/companies (ie sony, etc) have produced MTS files that AE can utilize without skipping and stuttering?

2. OR do MTS files from the HMC150 work in CS5?

3. If the answer to #1 is none, and the answer to #2 is no....then I guess stop allowing MTS import in the next version?

RE:Ingvar - though i appreciate your follow up comments, I'm not converting my MTS files if I don't have to - that isn't a good solution for me.

Jo,

dropping the excellent HMC 150 because of this, is drastic in my eyes. I hope AE will support it, and am curious to what extent CS 5 supports Panasonic HMC 150/151 AVCHD files (MTS files). My workflow, however,involves several othe applications, and they do not read AVCHD (yet) so I have to transcode in any case. The lossless Lagarith compressor for AVI is worth a consideration, IMHO.

Ingvar

A

Anonymous

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

2021, and still the same problem...

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