Premiere Pro no longer seeing .MTS file structure from Canon XA11s

[Bevin28193928m410]

Good Morning!

I am teach a nose to toes video production class and we have run into a new issue with our old 4K Canon XA11 camera's file structure not importing into Premiere.  It appears that it can't see the files inside the AVHC directory.  I have tried to import from each level of the directory scheme and nothing works.  The ONLY thing that has worked is doing a search in Finder (on a Mac, studio M2 running Sonoma) for .MTS files and doing a drag and drop rather than an import.  While this is a good work around, it took top level troubleshooting and knowlege to get this up and running.  These are freshmen level students and it is slowing down our progress drastically.  My Univeristy is small and we cannot afford to upgrade the cameras. Please advise.  Do I need to download some sort of new codec pack to make this work like it should.  I do not have this issue with my DSLR, my students who happen to have their own dslr, any of my Sony Professional cameras or a friend's cheap JVC 4k camera.  The XA11 file structure worked last year when we were using CC2022. 

[Bevin28193928m410]

That first line should say "I am teaching".  I can't seem to edit my post.  Apologies for the misspelling. 

[Ann Bens]

Not seeing the Stream folder?

(dont install any codec!!)

[Bevin28193928m410]

I can see all of the folders.  I can expand everything EXCEPT the AVHC folder that contains the acutal content.

[Ann Bens]

Is this just Sonoma or previous OS as well?

Importing via File>import or media browser. Latter is the way to go.

[Bevin28193928m410]

I just tried two other Macs I have.  Both are ventura 13.5.1.  One is an M1 and the other is Intel Core i9.  Same issue. 

I just found a crazy stupid work around.  Rename the AVCHD and the  BDMV directories in GetInfor and now I have access the STREAM directory with MTS files.  It looks like a Mac thing rather than a Premiere thing or a Canon thing.  But it's still a stupid issue to have no matter how you slice it.  I'm going to send a bug report to Apple. 

[R Neil Haugen]

AVCHD does a couple things that make working in video post maddeningly more frustrated than it should be.

First, the audio and video are not stored as a single file nor even in the same folder!

Yea, who thought that was a good idea?

Second, most cameras doing this create folders often for each clip, with the single audio file in each subfolder named ... something like ... Cam0000001.

And every audio file, from every clip, has the same name!

This is why some major video processing houses have had a requirement that all camera-produced AVCHD is transcoded to a usable "digital intermediate" format when it is brought into the system. The DI files are a complete replacement for the the original AVCHD files, in order to avoid the massive file tracking, mess-ups, and headaches.