What program opens m2ts files?

[KidEgo]

I got a new digital camera, and when it records video, it records it in this format called m2ts, and Windows Movie Maker or Adobe Premiere does NOT support this file type. Can anyone help out?

[Zarxrax]

DGindex, I believe.

[Willen]

Which version of Premiere? Premiere Pro CS4 has native support and Premiere Elements 7 does too.

I assume that you have a AVCHD camera/camcorder since most of the questions about M2TS files are about footage from those types of products. AVCHD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD) is H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video and Dolby Digital (AC3) audio so some software will need to transcode or convert the video stream for editing.

You could always use AviSynth and frameserve the footage to Premiere and import it via the Premiere AVS plug-in. Or convert the files to lossless Huffyuv or uncompressed video (huge files!). You'll need the proper DirectShow codecs installed (ffdshow should suffice) and a M2TS file splitter (Haali's is usually recommended). Depending on how powerful your computer is, you might not be able to easily edit the files. In particular, scrubbing the timeline will be laggy.

Other programs that can open and edit these files are Sony Vegas 7.0e & Pro 8, Vegas Movie Studio 8 Platinum and newer, Pinnacle Studio Plus 11 and newer, Apple Final Cut Pro 6.0.1, and iMovie '08 and newer. Most of them will either transcode the video internally or require conversion to an intermediate format (Apple). Expect to use a good chunk of hard drive space either way.

[KidEgo]

Yes, it is an AVCHD camera by Canon. I don't remember which version of Adobe Premiere I use. And what is this AviSynth process, and how do you use it?

[Willen]

It is described here: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/ ... meth2.html and here: http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/ ... 34524.html

The plug-in was developed with AMV creation in mind, but is obviously useful for general video importing and editing.

[KidEgo]

I made a new AVS script like it said and posted DirectShowSource("C:\Directory\File Name.m2ts")

But when I tried to import it, it said:

Avisynth Error:

Script error: there is no function named "DirectShowSource"
(C:\Directory\File Name.m2ts)

Then I click OK, and it says Avisynth Error:

Import: couldn't open "C:\blankclip.avs"

What am I doing wrong?

[Qyot27]

You'll want to use DGAVCDec (DGAVCIndex and DGAVCDecode.dll) instead of DGMPGDec (DGIndex and DGDecode.dll). You need to make sure you place DGAVCDecode.dll in C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins, or else it won't autoload.

Open the .m2ts in DGAVCIndex and let it save the .dga indexing file. Then use AVCSource in your script to open the .dga rather than using DirectShowSource at all (which, you might not have DirectShowSource.dll in your AviSynth plugins directory).

You can actually have DGAVCIndex (or DGIndex, if you were working with MPEG-2) generate a script for you. That info is available in the help, but the basic gist is that you have a template.avs file residing in the same directory as the program, and it contains something like this, at the very least:

Code: Select all

AVCSource("__vid__.dga")

You then tell the program where that template is (Options->AVS Template, and then the Change Template File button), and then when you save the .dga file it will make the script for you automatically. The __vid__ part is the key there - it tells the program to replace __vid__ with the actual directory and filename you're saving to. That's two underscores on each side.

[Scintilla]

Isn't this a bigger problem right here?:

Avisynth Error:

Script error: there is no function named "DirectShowSource"
(C:\Directory\File Name.m2ts)

I thought DirectShowSource was a core filter in AVISynth. KidEgo, what version do you have? You should be on at least 2.5.7.

[KidEgo]

You'll want to use DGAVCDec (DGAVCIndex and DGAVCDecode.dll) instead of DGMPGDec (DGIndex and DGDecode.dll). You need to make sure you place DGAVCDecode.dll in C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins, or else it won't autoload.

Open the .m2ts in DGAVCIndex and let it save the .dga indexing file. Then use AVCSource in your script to open the .dga rather than using DirectShowSource at all (which, you might not have DirectShowSource.dll in your AviSynth plugins directory).

You can actually have DGAVCIndex (or DGIndex, if you were working with MPEG-2) generate a script for you. That info is available in the help, but the basic gist is that you have a template.avs file residing in the same directory as the program, and it contains something like this, at the very least:

Code: Select all

AVCSource("__vid__.dga")

You then tell the program where that template is (Options->AVS Template, and then the Change Template File button), and then when you save the .dga file it will make the script for you automatically. The __vid__ part is the key there - it tells the program to replace __vid__ with the actual directory and filename you're saving to. That's two underscores on each side.

Okay, I got the avs into Premiere successfully, but it saved the audio track as AC3, and Premiere doesn't support that. What do I do?

[Scintilla]

You should be able to use (say) BeSweet to convert the .AC3 to .WAV. If you don't have BeSweet, it's included in the AMVapp.