Basically, the HD camcorders shoot footages in AVC/ H.264 MTS format, which is not editable in most non-linear editing software. Although the latest version of Sony Vegas (published by Sony) is capable of editing MTS format, it is only designed to run on Windows Platform. Mac users have to figure out another way to settle it down. Videographers would see FCP or Final Cut Studio as useful tool for audio and video editing, for amateurs who prefer to do some simple editing to their HD footages, FCE (Final Cut Express) is a better choice. This guide is written for Mac users that meet difficulties in importing Sony HDR-SR MTS footages to FCE. Why should the MTS files can not be loaded in FCE while Apple made it clearly that the Final Cut Express 4 work with AVCHD files? Surely FCE4 handles AVCHD footages shot in 1280*720 and 1440*1080. So when your footages are shot in 1920*1080, you need to convert the MTS to editable format for FCE. Hope the following guide helps.
Note: Final Cut will only handle AVCHD files when it finds them in their original file structure (either by connecting the camcorder or using a memory card reader), not isolated .mts files.
1. Add MTS and M2TS AVCHD files to this program
Once launched this program, the following friendly blue-sky interface will pop up, on which you can click “Add” button to load MTS and M2TS files.
2. Select FCE compatible format as output format and set save path
Click the drop-down list of “Format” to select FCE compatible format as output format, here I choose MOV for example. Click “Browse” button to specify where to store the output files. Moreover, if you have the need of joining multiple MTS and M2TS to be as a single file, you are able to achieve this goal via ticking the checkbox “Merge into one file”.
3. Set advanced settings
Click “Settings” button, then you will see the following interface, on which you are allowed to adjust audio and video parameters like codec name, bit rate, aspect ratio, frame rate, and audio channel. In principle, the larger input values, the larger file size, but accompanying with the better file quality; the smaller input value, the smaller file size, but in accordance with the more inferior file quality. That is to say, if you want to do advance settings, you’d better make a balance between the file size and file quality.
4. Start converting MTS and M2TS files to FCE format
Once all the above settings are finished, you can click “Convert” button to start converting MTS and M2TS AVCHD files into FCE supported format. The interface below will present you clearly about conversion progress, time elapse, left time, generated file size, and estimated file size. After conversion is done, you can easily find out the output files for FCE via clicking “Open” button.
Well, finished, what you should do next is just adding the output files generated from MTS and M2TS AVCHD files to Final Cut Express for editing.
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