Recreate basic AVCHD from MTS files

[paddyoloughlin]

Hi,
I have some video from a Sony HXR-NX5E camera, belonging to my dad.

The entire AVCHD contained video from multiple events and I was unfamiliar with how the format worked, so when my dad was copying the video to backup storage, I only told him to copy over the MTS files from the STREAM directory and to separate the files from each event into different directories.

Now that my dad is trying to edit and create DVDs for the event, we have discovered that his DVD/Bluray editing/authoring/burning machine will only accept the video in the AVCHD structure.

I feel pretty sure that there has to be a way we can recreate the CLI file for each MTS file, and the rest of the AVCHD structure (MPL file, INDEX.BDM and MOVIEOBJ.BDM) such that a player will play each of the movie files in order from start to finish, without menus, without altering the MTS files at all.

Unfortunately, I have not been successful in finding any tools which help me to do this and have instead taken to reading the source code of libbluray to understand the structure of the files I want to create.
This is a slow process, however, so in the mean time, I am wondering if anyone can tell me that if what I'm doing is possible and if there is a quicker way of achieving it than how I am going about it.

Any suggestions welcome

[Ghitulescu]

multiavchd

[setarip_old]

@paddyoloughlin

Hi!

If I understand your post correctly, I believe you can accomplish your purpose by simply "dragging and dropping" your files onto tsMuxeR and selecting the "AVCHD" tab at the BOTTOM of the tsMuxeR window...

[Atak_Snajpera]

your program must be weird if can not import just .mts . why don't you try sony vegas 30 day trial? it can import mts without stupid avchd structure.

[paddyoloughlin]

Ghitulescu,
I tried using the "Join MPG/M*TS/JPG" feature of multiAVCHD and then "Join with tsdemux". However, when I actually try to produce an AVCHD, Windows Explorer will not let me open the BDMV folder (in my multiAVCHD folder, "E:\multiAVCD\AVCHD\"), telling me that I do not have permission to open the folder and when I quit multiAVCHD, all the contents of the AVCHD folder are deleted except for the multiAVCHD.log file.
Would it be any use posting its contents to find out what went wrong?

setarip_old,
Whenever I try tsMuxer, it works for a good while, but eventually fails with the message "AV frame too large (65123 bytes). Increase AV buffer"


None of these solutions seem to do exactly what I was looking for. They don't leave the MTS files just as they were, but instead demux the streams, then join them and remux them, which is a lot more processing intensive (and takes a lot longer) and susceptible to synchronisation issues than just generating the CLI, MPL, INDEX.BDM and MOVIEOBJ.BDM files for the existing MTS files.

From my limited understanding of AVCHD structure, I figured this ought to be pretty easy to do. I'm not adverse to the demux-join-remux process, if I have to, but I just figured that it wouldn't be necessary and hoped there would be a tool to achieve that. Do I have it wrong? If so, any help on why tsMuxer and multiAVCHD are not working for me will be greatly appreciated

[Ghitulescu]

I am afraid that you should have not used the join function. I mean, camcorder files were never meant to be joined, but edited. This is why I mentioned multiavchd. For a simple join function tsmuxer sould have been more than enough.

[paddyoloughlin]

Ghitulescu,
When I originally tried to solve this problem, before posting here, I tried using multiAVCHD with the "Add Video Files" button instead of "join", but it doesn't give the results I require.

If I do not join, multiAVCHD creates one playlist per video file. I don't want this. I want one playlist to play all the files in sequence.
Looking at the instructions, the only way I could see to achieve this was to import the files to multiAVCHD using the "join" button. If I've missed how to do that, could you explain what I should be doing?

As for tsmuxer being more than enough for a simple join: I mentioned in my previous post that I'd tried it and it fails, so it doesn't appear to be up for the task.

I've also tried explaining twice now that it is not a simple join that I want, but I haven't been able to find what I want, so I have tried that as being the next best thing.
If I'm not being clear, can you explain what part of what I wrote is giving you trouble?

[Guest]

If all the MTS files have the same format, you can combine them with copy /b in a DOS window. Then author as AVCHD. Have you tried it?

[Capsbackup]

You can use multiAVCHD to play each title consecutively without joining them, but there will be a slight pause as the player changes titles. If this is acceptable, or you want to just try it out, after adding the titles and while still in the "media" tab, go down to the compilation window, click on the first title, and change after playback to "go to next title". Do this for every title you have and they will all play consecutively.
If you do not want a menu with all of these titles, just de-select "create top menu" and select "skip welcome screen" and "skip top menu playback" and either select or deselect "play all" (sequential playback).