Panasonic AVCHD files

[blacktooth]

Earlier this year I purchased a Panasonic HDC-DS800 high definition camcorder. After years of editing ATI files, I'm going to use my VideoStudio (X4) to edit AVCHD files.

To get the files from the camcorder to the computer, there are 2 options. One is to go directly to the SD card on the camcorder through the My Computer option. This gives me .MTS files, which I can transfer to my hard drive.
The other option is to use the software supplied with the camcorder, which is HD Writer AE 3.0. This transfers to my hard drive .m2ts files. Along with the .m2ts files, it also transfers (or creates) .tmb files, .pmpd files, and .cont files.

Can anyone pass on any wisdom as to which of these 2 options is better? I'm really confused about this. Thank you.

[BrianCee]

I found using the HD writer a bit cumbersome so now I just put the SD card in my computer and drag and drop the files into a folder on my hard drive - then import them to VideoStudio for editing - no messing about , no conversions = identical quality on card and on computer.

[blacktooth]

Thanks for the advice. It sounds simpler to do without those extra files created by the HD Writer. One thing I liked about the HD Writer is that it automatically renames the files with dates and times, which makes it nice for organizing and working with files - and there are a ton of video files now, for me anyway, compared to using AVI files. Is there a nice program out there that can efficiently rename the very generic files names (00001, 00002, etc) that are produced by the camcorder?
Thanks again.

[BrianCee]

Windows provides various means for bulk re-naming files - have a look here :-

http://www.howtogeek.com/111859/how-to- ... ple-files/


...

[blacktooth]

I've installed Bulk Rename Utility, and I think it's great. It took just a couple of minutes to figure it out (looks more complicated than it really is). Now all of my MTS files are imported from the camcorder's directory into my hard drive and are renamed. I named them in a date/time format. For example, the first file is named 2012-02-17_19-39-28 (bought the camcorder on February 17, obviously.) This is perfect. However....

Unfortunately, when I go to import media files into VideoStudio X4, I get an error that says "The parameter is incorrect" and the program freezes. I tried this several times. Then I renamed one of the files and called it "test". The test files imported with no problem. The other files with date names still crash the program. Any ideas on what's going wrong?

Thanks again.

[blacktooth]

Quick follow-up. I can manually rename any of the MTS files with the exact date/time format that the Bulk Rename Utility is set up for, and the manually renamed file will import successfully. Then I try to import one of the files renamed by the utility, and VideoStudio freezes up (and have to go to the task manager to kill it).

[BrianCee]

Sounds as though the bulk re-name utility you are using is upsetting something else in the file/VideoStudio relationship.

I always use windows itself and can't remember ever having problems.

[dhnj]

Earlier this year I purchased a Panasonic HDC-DS800 high definition camcorder. After years of editing ATI files, I'm going to use my VideoStudio (X4) to edit AVCHD files.

To get the files from the camcorder to the computer, there are 2 options. One is to go directly to the SD card on the camcorder through the My Computer option. This gives me .MTS files, which I can transfer to my hard drive.
The other option is to use the software supplied with the camcorder, which is HD Writer AE 3.0. This transfers to my hard drive .m2ts files. Along with the .m2ts files, it also transfers (or creates) .tmb files, .pmpd files, and .cont files.

Can anyone pass on any wisdom as to which of these 2 options is better? I'm really confused about this. Thank you.

When you use the supplied HD Writer AE 3.0 to transfer the video clips from your camcorder to your PC 4 sets of files are generated.
.m2ts, .tmb, .pmpd, and .cont. Without the 4 sets of files for each video clip in your PC you will not be able to use HD Writer in the future to do any editing.

[blacktooth]

I played around some more with renaming those MTS files, and VideoStudio then began rejecting all of them, even ones I had previously renamed manually and imported successfully. I have no explanation for that.

Then I tried moving them to an external hard drive. I copied the MTS files, all with their Bulk Rename Utility names, onto the external hard drive. They all import into VideoStudio with no problem. Same files, same file names, just from a different drive. And when I then try to import the files from the internal drive, it all crashes again.

Perhaps the problem has something to do with this: My internal hard drive is 1TB. For the purpose of keeping things organized, about a week ago I partitioned this internal hard drive. I made it 500GB and called it drive V. I only want to use this drive for editing video. I'm not sure why this would cause problems, but it seems that it has. I'd like to use this internal drive to store some of my video files, as my external drive is just about full.