Unable to import m2ts in sony vegas

Dave Blackhurst · January 21st, 2008, 03:28 PM

The Sony PMB "seems" just fine <wink>!

I was looking at the CX7 for discreet/lightweight/multicam event work, so being able to shoot for more than 15-17 minutes was an issue, and it turned out that ya gotta have the PMB software, but I haven't seen any problems with the transition between clips, at least so far, will have to take a closer look I suppose, but the test clips I shot show no dropout or anything in the range where there should be a "stitch".

Bummer if the Canon software isn't seamless - the new models looked sorta interesting... but if they have a flaw with long clips, I'll have to pass.

Aaron Courtney · January 22nd, 2008, 01:04 AM

OK, here's what I have found initially. I placed my HG10 on a table and piped in some audio from SoundForge of a Collective Soul concert I recorded so I had reliable audio to analyze. I ended up with a couple of splice points in the cam. First, I transferred the video via the provided Corel GuideMenu. Secondly, I simply dragged and dropped the raw .mts files from the Streams subdirectory on the cam.

Both file types open in Vegas Pro 8.0b (build 217) without any problems. And both file types exhibit exactly two dropped frames at every splice point (shooting 24PF - did not IVTC, just opened files into HDV 1080/60i template). Looking at the audio track in Vegas, clearly it's much worse. So I attempted to open the track in SoundForge to determine how many samples are dropped. SF came back with an unsupported file type error message, which isn't surprising.

Next, I ran the .M2TS files through Neo HDV to remove pulldown and get the audio into an SF readable format. Curiously, there weren't any blank frames present in the .AVI Cineform file. But the dropped audio seemed to be just as it was in both the .M2TS and .MTS spliced files within Vegas. I dumped the audio track into SF where I discovered 418 missing samples at the splice point (audio sampled in cam @ 48k) or 0.008708 seconds.

I don't have enough experience with video to tell whether or not that is enough of a loss to perceptually throw off A/V sync or not. But it doesn't take a goldenear to tell ya that type of dropout ruins the audio track for sure - renders it completely useless in critical situations. The obvious solution would be to run outboard audio recording equipment and sync it up later.

What is totally retarded is playback on the cam at any splice point is perfectly seamless. That tells me that someone screwed up the implementation of file retrieval off of this cam and that is pathetic. Canon really needs to address this issue because it plasters a big, fat blemish all over this camera which it doesn't deserve.

Douglas Figueredo · January 22nd, 2008, 06:54 PM

Thanks for doing all of that research - very appreciated. Also, I'm really glad to hear that you can just drag the files off of the camera - I HATE the guidemenu software - it makes no sense at all.

January 22nd, 2008, 06:54 PM	#18
Douglas Figueredo New Boot Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: New York, NY Posts: 15	You are the best! Thanks for doing all of that research - very appreciated. Also, I'm really glad to hear that you can just drag the files off of the camera - I HATE the guidemenu software - it makes no sense at all.

January 21st, 2008, 03:28 PM	#16
Dave Blackhurst Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Apple Valley CA Posts: 4,874	The Sony PMB "seems" just fine <wink>! I was looking at the CX7 for discreet/lightweight/multicam event work, so being able to shoot for more than 15-17 minutes was an issue, and it turned out that ya gotta have the PMB software, but I haven't seen any problems with the transition between clips, at least so far, will have to take a closer look I suppose, but the test clips I shot show no dropout or anything in the range where there should be a "stitch". Bummer if the Canon software isn't seamless - the new models looked sorta interesting... but if they have a flaw with long clips, I'll have to pass.

January 22nd, 2008, 01:04 AM	#17
Aaron Courtney Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 229	OK, here's what I have found initially. I placed my HG10 on a table and piped in some audio from SoundForge of a Collective Soul concert I recorded so I had reliable audio to analyze. I ended up with a couple of splice points in the cam. First, I transferred the video via the provided Corel GuideMenu. Secondly, I simply dragged and dropped the raw .mts files from the Streams subdirectory on the cam. Both file types open in Vegas Pro 8.0b (build 217) without any problems. And both file types exhibit exactly two dropped frames at every splice point (shooting 24PF - did not IVTC, just opened files into HDV 1080/60i template). Looking at the audio track in Vegas, clearly it's much worse. So I attempted to open the track in SoundForge to determine how many samples are dropped. SF came back with an unsupported file type error message, which isn't surprising. Next, I ran the .M2TS files through Neo HDV to remove pulldown and get the audio into an SF readable format. Curiously, there weren't any blank frames present in the .AVI Cineform file. But the dropped audio seemed to be just as it was in both the .M2TS and .MTS spliced files within Vegas. I dumped the audio track into SF where I discovered 418 missing samples at the splice point (audio sampled in cam @ 48k) or 0.008708 seconds. I don't have enough experience with video to tell whether or not that is enough of a loss to perceptually throw off A/V sync or not. But it doesn't take a goldenear to tell ya that type of dropout ruins the audio track for sure - renders it completely useless in critical situations. The obvious solution would be to run outboard audio recording equipment and sync it up later. What is totally retarded is playback on the cam at any splice point is perfectly seamless. That tells me that someone screwed up the implementation of file retrieval off of this cam and that is pathetic. Canon really needs to address this issue because it plasters a big, fat blemish all over this camera which it doesn't deserve.