Best way to convert HVCHD/MTS files to DVD

[TechiMan]

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone knows of a good way of converting MTS files to a suitable format to convert to DVD. I've heard it's best to convert the files to another format such as MPEG2, MPEG4 etc as MTS can't easily be imported to editing programs such as Adobe Premiere. I've tied various programs, but I either get very poor results or the software is incredibly slow when converting. I've used a program called Video to Video to convert the MTS (although not all my home video files were recorded in that format, some are a mix of MPEG4, depending which camera I used), but quite often I get really pixelated video even when I've used a good quality setting and set the video bitrate, framerate and aspect ratio accordingly. I converted a bunch of MTS files yesterday to MPEG2 and then converted them to a TS file to burn to a DVD, when even on playback of the encoded video I still got abit of choppy frame rate motion, why that is I don't know. I'm confused about framerate because some have suggested that it's best to convert the files to 30fps, yet the videos were shot in mostly 25fps (PAL), and some camcorders will allow you to record at 30fps, but if you've got video files you want to convert to DVD that are at 30fps but also have video files that were recorded at 25fps, which format do you convert them at if they are a mix?. I think the issues maybe down to the framerate of each of the formats I've originally recorded in. When the files were recorded from my camcorder they were recorded in separate files within the folder (each time you recorded and stopped it creates a separate file), some of the separate files can be huge because of the duration of the recording, and when you've got muliple files like this it can be an headache to convert them into one file.

From years of converting HD video I find it a very laborious process and makes me wanna go back to using standard SD video from a Hi8 camcorder. Maybe I need a better laptop at dealing with HD video.

At the moment I'm in the process of converting about 20 MTS files to MPEG2 using Video to Video. The file size is 3.2GB and the output size if 1.5GB, yet it's been converting for about 20 minutes now and has only converted 9% so far, which seems very slow. Something must be wrong with the program I'm using.

 

[next010]

Theres a sub forum dedicated to camera capture/convert were better advice may be found.

DVD is pretty old at this point, if your converting MTS (which is just a container) that has MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video in then there is going to be a downgrade in its image quality.

If you really wish to retain quality I would look at AVCHD which can be burned to BD-R and DVD-R and played back into most Blu-ray players, it uses H.264 as video codec.

Try the demo version of ConvertXtoDVD, its meant to be a one click solution for DVD and take care of all the details if your looking for something straight forward.

CPU based video encoding will takes it toll if you have an old computer, some software can leverage hardware video encoding built into PC's which is faster (but not always better quality).

 

[TechiMan]

Theres a sub forum dedicated to camera capture/convert were better advice may be found.

DVD is pretty old at this point, if your converting MTS (which is just a container) that has MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video in then there is going to be a downgrade in its image quality.

If you really wish to retain quality I would look at AVCHD which can be burned to BD-R and DVD-R and played back into most Blu-ray players, it uses H.264 as video codec.

Try the demo version of ConvertXtoDVD, its meant to be a one click solution for DVD and take care of all the details if your looking for something straight forward.

CPU based video encoding will takes it toll if you have an old computer, some software can leverage hardware video encoding built into PC's which is faster (but not always better quality).

Cheers for tht. I know that the version of Windows Movie Maker on the laptop I'm using (Windows 8) can import MTS files, so why something like Adobe Premiere won't is strange. And also a free program I've got called VSDC can import MTS files into a timeline, but it's quite slow playing on the timeline and isn't easy to trim and cut videos (and for some reason each video file imported goes onto a separate layer below the video layer above it, unlike other programs like Premiere (and Movie Maker) where each video file continues on the same layer, why this program does this I don't know, or maybe it can be changed. Because of this you lose track of where each video is on the timeline as they're below one another. And also cutting isn't a straight forward cut and ripple delete like Premiere is able to do and the video files don't seem to snap to each other when you move them across so that there's no gap between each file. Are you familiar with VSDC at all?.

Regarding DVD being old, yes that maybe but I don't know anyone who watches or records videos that are for bluray, unless you're a devoted movie buff. DVD is still a very popular thing amongst the general masses, and I don't think bluray or 4K will become the standard format when it comes to home videos. Most PCs and laptops are just not capable of processing the files easily, unless you happen to have thousands to spend on expensive hardware, which most people don't. My laptop is only about 5 years old and yet it can struggle with alot of the HD files from my camcorder (most people don't even use camcorders anymore as everything's filmed from their smartphones and the videos on them probably never come off the things). Thankfully I'm one of those who likes to shoot my home videos on a "proper" camera not some smartphone and preserve and store them on my computer and back them up.

 

[next010]

Video editing forum would know more, don't have much experience with those packages.

I think we are definitely in the twilight years of optical media.

Many smart TV's and other devices these days have competent USB media players, you could just dump the video to a USB stick and you can play it that way as H.264 .mp4 video or mkv.

The only other video editor I've gone near is formally Corel video editor, a quick search says it supports mts containers, give its demo and try and just pump out your edited H.264 MP4 videos, it can do DVD as well but never used it. Corel also supports Intel Quicksync hardware encoder which might make the process faster on your laptop.

 

[TechiMan]

Cheers for tht. I know that the version of Windows Movie Maker on the laptop I'm using (Windows 8) can import MTS files, so why something like Adobe Premiere won't is strange. And also a free program I've got called VSDC can import MTS files into a timeline, but it's quite slow playing on the timeline and isn't easy to trim and cut videos (and for some reason each video file imported goes onto a separate layer below the video layer above it, unlike other programs like Premiere (and Movie Maker) where each video file continues on the same layer, why this program does this I don't know, or maybe it can be changed. Because of this you lose track of where each video is on the timeline as they're below one another. And also cutting isn't a straight forward cut and ripple delete like Premiere is able to do and the video files don't seem to snap to each when you move them across to each other so that there's no gap between each file. Are you familiar with VSDC at all?.

Video editing forum would know more, don't have much experience with those packages.

I think we are definitely in the twilight years of optical media.

Many smart TV's and other devices these days have competent USB media players, you could just dump the video to a USB stick and you can play it that way as H.264 .mp4 video or mkv.

The only other video editor I've gone near is formally Corel video editor, a quick search says it supports mts containers, give its demo and try and just pump out your edited H.264 MP4 videos, it can do DVD as well but never used it. Corel also supports Intel Quicksync hardware encoder which might make the process faster on your laptop.

The trial version of Premiere Pro I have when I imported an MPEG-4 file that was recorded from a camera with video recording on it was just show a greenscreen both in the preview screen and on the timeline, yet when I imported a 3gp file from my old phone the image was OK and playback was good. And also, I decided to merge together a few small MTS files to avi format so that I could import them into the timeline, but much of the playback was very choppy. When I bought my laptop playback from these files were very smooth, but now they don't play that well and look choppy, but I suppose that's down to the processor.

 

[TechiMan]

I downloaded a trial version of ConvertXtoDVD, added about 20 individual video files (most of them MTS files most of which were about a minute in length with a total length of about 90 mins) and clicked on to the convert to DVD button. All seemed OK at first for each file transcoding but then the progress barely moved at all for nearly half an hour of encoding the files and I don't think anything else would happen so I cancelled it. The programme seems to be very slow for some reason, maybe due to the files I was converting.

It seems that every attempt to find a good programme to convert all of my home video files to a DVD is failing, and there are many files that are stored on external HDD that I want to convert to a DVD as backup going back to 2008 up to the present time. If the files were all MP4 files then I don't think I would have such a problem converting them, but because they are 1920x1080 HVCHD files from my HD camcorder they are a real pain to convert due to the file format and size. I could try and convert each file to either MPEG-2 or MPEG4 but that would take forever.

 

[davee b]

I downloaded a trial version of ConvertXtoDVD, added about 20 individual video files (most of them MTS files most of which were about a minute in length with a total length of about 90 mins) and clicked on to the convert to DVD button. All seemed OK at first for each file transcoding but then the progress barely moved at all for nearly half an hour of encoding the files and I don't think anything else would happen so I cancelled it. The programme seems to be very slow for some reason, maybe due to the files I was converting.

It seems that every attempt to find a good programme to convert all of my home video files to a DVD is failing, and there are many files that are stored on external HDD that I want to convert to a DVD as backup going back to 2008 up to the present time. If the files were all MP4 files then I don't think I would have such a problem converting them, but because they are 1920x1080 HVCHD files from my HD camcorder they are a real pain to convert due to the file format and size. I could try and convert each file to either MPEG-2 or MPEG4 but that would take forever.

A bit of an echo from your other thread, but I have a lot of AVCHD footage and copy it as it is to disc. Looks great when played on a sub £100 bluray player.

 

[oneman]

@TechiMan

Which CPU do you have ?

And do you have a Graphics card ?