Trimming clips, making selections in .MTS files and exporting them

sohus

I am currently exploring VJ software to create visual installations instead of narrative movies. For this, I am looking for tools to quickly trim clips I shot down to a few seconds and save them in a format of choice. I have tried this in Final Cut Pro X but it is cumbersome. Is there simple tool/player in which you can open a MTS, set an in- and out point and export the selection as a new clip in one of the codecs available on the Mac? I remember that QuickTime Pro used to be able to do this. Any other tools that you have had great succes with? As I will be shooting lots of footage the coming months, it must be quick and painless. Looking forward to your tips!

balazer

tsMuxeR is the only tool I know of that can reliably trim .mts files from the GH2 without recompressing them. Even then, I would not trust it completely. Hang on to your original camera files if they are important.

If you are fine to recompress the video in the process, there are hundreds of tools for that - any video editing tool that can read AVCHD.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

I think that you need to search google for "vj software"

sohus

@Vitaliy_Kiselev
I already have the VJ software (Resolume + MAX MSP). I am going to shoot lots of short clips to VJ with and I am looking for Mac software with which I can load the clip, trim a selection, then save as 'in the codec that works best with the VJ software (DVX, quicktime)'. Simple + fast without making projects etc.

tida

For windows system try "Smart Cutter" ...

hireslofi

I'm also looking for such a utility. Like how the GH2 does it in camera...I assume it's not re-encoding when you split a clip.

Smart cutter looks good...I've tried it and it does the job. Does anyone know what the trial limitations are?

Any other solutions out there?

hireslofi

@sohus

ffmpeg may let you open the .mts and convert to .dxv - i'm currently exploring this route also for use in resolume.
there are GUIs for it but it's essentially a command line interface.

Meierhans

Thanks for the smart cutter tip. This soft looks like exactly what you need to get rid of all the garbage at the beginning and end of your footage without loosing quality by recompression. Will check out when at home. :)

balazer

I had tried Smart Cutter on GH1 files a while back, and it always crashed. The new version seems to be improved, working on my GH1 and GH2 files. I still don't trust it enough to not keep the source files. I trust tsMuxeR a bit more.

driftwood

Mac users can 'ClipWrap' it to Quicktime wrapped (keeps mts as was but in a new wrapper), Open the newly wrapped file in say MPEG_Streamclip, trim it, export to Pro Res or whatever.

Meierhans

I just tried Smart Cutter on Gh2 mts, worked like a charm. Guess since the file is gop 1 there will be no degradation at beginning and end. Great tool for killing garbage before going into PP.

valdi99

http://www.aunsoft.com/final-mate/

Trial version is far enough for loosless trimming.

balazer

Thanks, @valdi99. I tried Final Mate, and the output files play but they crash Sony Vegas.

BTW I updated my earlier post to say that Smart Cutter now seems to work.

MrEdd

I still haven´t found away to import HBR 25p files to premiere CS5.5 without seeing the yellow line that needs render. Is it out there anything similiar to Clipwrap to PC? (Update) I tried smart cutter and tsMuxeR but still havent found a way to the yellow render line don´t appear. @balazer what settings do you use?

Hallvalla

Mac OS X users:

I emailed Colin with ClipWrap about including trimming on a future version - he said it is being considered for version 3.0. Fingers crossed.

sprinke

I haven't used it myself, but Voltaic claims to be able to trim AVCHD natively without conversion.
http://www.shedworx.com/voltaichd

balazer

@MrEdd, I use Vegas, which happily takes HBR files and requires no extra rendering for them (beyond what any other progressive clip would require).

Frankly I'm not clear on what all of this benign PsF vs. malignant PsF business is. PsF does not simply mean that the video is being disguised as interlaced, as that author says. PsF means that the video has been *converted* to interlaced, and delivered in an interlaced encoding, albeit in such a way that the original progressive video can be recovered. I take it that in the case of benign PsF, software applications have a way of knowing that they are looking at PsF. But no one has said how they can know, and it's not clear that what they are doing generalizes across all different source videos correctly.

MrEdd

thank you balazer

cjdincer

I use Resolume Avenue 3.3.1 and by setting in and out points, I convert the GH2 MTS files to DVX with Aunsoft Video Converter. Had no problem at all. and why do you need a native AVCHD trimmer if you'd convert to DVX

sohus

@cjdincer
you set the in & out points in Resolume or with Aunsoft Video Converter? I think MPEG streamclip works the same as well. And yes, I am converting to DVX although I might want to create a master .MTS file (or ProRES) file first so I can use it as stock footage in my other projects as well.

hireslofi

@MrEdd the yellow line in Premiere just means that it might not be playable in real time. Do you have a CUDA enabled GPU? If so Premiere will play back yellow line material fine. If not it may struggle. I import MTS and the yellow line shows but it plays back perfectly with nVidia Quadro 2000.