AVCHD Player for Mac OS X?

[Zack Andrews]

Does anyone know of a way to play AVCHD .MTS files on Mac OS X, such as files straight from the HF100? The following link seems to suggest Flash Player 9.3 will play .MTS files, but I have yet to figure out how to do it. Any ideas?

I know the nightly builds of VLC is suppose to do it, but when trying this on my MacBook the video is very choppy and then VLC crashes after about 5 seconds. Thanks!

AVCHD straight to Flash Player 9.3 demo (Flash Rocks)
http://www.crafted.com.au/blog/2008/...o-flash-rocks/

[Steve Mullen]

You've just discovered one the joys of AVCHD -- no Mac players and only one PC player. And, none of them will really play video unless you have AT LEAST a 2.66GHz QUAD core computer. Think Mac Pro with 8 cores.

[Larry Horwitz]

Just to clarify a bit....

AVCHD will play on the PC with several players I have owned and used,including the free DiVX player. Some of the other AVCHD players are Nero's Show Time, ArcSoft's Total Media Theater, Cyberlink's PowerDVD 7 HD versions, Corel's WIN DVD 9 Plus BluRay, as well as all of the authoring programs for AVCHD on the PC, which number 7 I can immediately think of. That makes at least a dozen in total!

The Mac is vastly less versatile / capable when playing AVCHD content from the camcorder, although I do find it very competent for HDV.

Larry

[Steve Mullen]

He was asking about OS X.

Also, you are counting DVD Players which, in their HD versions, are not free or even cheap. And, it's not obvious to a new camcorder buyer than DIVX has anything to with AVCHD. I think of DIVX only in the context of ripping (stealing) SD DVDs since MPEG-2, AVC, and VC-1 are what the industry uses.

Most people expect to play their media with either a QT Player or WM Player.

But, thank you for the tip on the DIVX. I'll have to see if the DIVX player that's on my Mac can play AVCHD -- although unless I had a MacPro it won't really play.

[Larry Horwitz]

I know he was asking about OS-X Steve, but your comment that there "is only one PC player" for AVCHD is really quite wrong. I agree that some of this PC software is indeed a bit expensive, but the very best of them on the PC (in my opinion) is Nero Show Time which comes with an entire suite of really useful software including disk burning, AVCHD disk creation and editing, and other things and is available for $69. None of the other programs is much more than $79 with the exception of Pinnacle 12 Ultimate, which now sells for a bit over $100 but has a $30 rebate.

My point with all of this is that AVCHD is fully represented on the PC with a total of 13 ways to play it, 8 ways to author and edit it, and at least 5 more ways to convert it:

1.DiVX Player
2.Nero Show Time
3.Arcsoft Total Media Theater
4.PowerDVD
5.WinDVD
6.Sony Vegas 8 Pro
7.Magix Movie Edit Pro Plus V14
8.Ulead / Corel VideoStudio 11.5
9.Ulead Corel Movie Factory 6 Plus
10.Cyberlink PowerDirector 7 Ultra
11.Nero Vision 5
12.Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate
13.ArcSoft Total Media Studio HD

There are also a number of PC programs which simply convert AVCHD into other formats for easier editing, including such programs as:

1.Vaast Upshift
2.Voltaic
3.Elecard AVCHD Converter
4.TMPGE Express
5.Mainconcepts h.2664 encoder

and others.

I have absolutely no desire to spark any Mac versus PC thread or discussion here, but I do want to make it clear that the PC has a really extensive AVCHD set of tools, and my personal mnigration from doing nearly 5 years of HDV editing is now entirely replaced for AVCHD with very smooth and rapid workflow PC software, substantially better and much faster than HDV ever was. Despite owning a 4 core and then an 8 core MacPro, I was never able to find anything remotely equal in performance on the Mac for AVCHD, given the very limited software choices of Final Cut or iMovie.

Larry

[Zack Andrews]

Thanks, guys, for the information and discussion on this. This AVCHD format is reminding me of things like FireWire - great technologies buried alive by the licensors.

Though it never had a Mac OS X product, several months ago I came accress Mirillis.com who had a simple app called Oxygen AVCHD Player. Now, if you go to that site you will see that the AVCHD cops took it down. What a shame. Does this mean VLC will be killed when version 9 comes out with playback support for AVCHD?

But is not AVCHD h.264? And is not h.264 an open (free) standard? I'm confusued. Is AVCHD a free and open standard or not? I admit, I don't really know.

[Larry Horwitz]

I'm not an attorney Zack but this may provide the answer to your question:

MPEG LA News Release

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Zack Andrews

But is not AVCHD h.264? And is not h.264 an open (free) standard? I'm confusued. Is AVCHD a free and open standard or not? I admit, I don't really know.

AVC/H.264 is part of MPEG-4 which owned by the MPEG group. You can't, they claim, have an AVC encoder/decoder without a license.

Sony and Pana took a license for AVC, locked certain parameters, and now had a product they could license to others. It's not clear if they only license the NAME. It might be legal to have an AVC codec that used exactly those parameters as long as you called it something else, e.g., AVCPIX.

Note there are two versions of AVCHD: one uses the less powerful BASE profile (Sony) and the other the MAIN profile (Canon and Pana). Which I suspect reflects Sony's desire to keep AVCHD restricted to consumer camcorders.

PS: I claim codecs are math and one can NOT patent an equation. Think of human development if Sum, Chi Square, Mean, Standard Deviation, FFT, etc. had been able to be receive a patent. You would need a license to balance your checkbook. I believe you can only steal an implementation: code, circuit, etc.) So I expect you will see VLC with a AVCHD decoding even if it isn't called AVCHD.

[Austin Meyers]

the only app i've found that will recognize m2t files is elgato's turbo.264, the downside being it's made to only work with the turbo.264 hardware encoder (usb dongle) and when you export you can only export to 900x600 or something close to that.

that aside, any of yall who do a lot of encoding on slower macs might want to check it out.

elgato.com

[Larry Horwitz]

Does the Mac version of the DiVX player open and play AVCHD?

[Steve Mullen]

I will be checking this week. But, unless you have a MacPro -- your playback will be very poor.

[Larry Horwitz]

I agree entirely Steve. As I said a few posts earlier in this thread:

"Despite owning a 4 core and then an 8 core MacPro, I was never able to find anything remotely equal in performance on the Mac for AVCHD, given the very limited software choices of Final Cut or iMovie."

I no longer have any MacPros here, having been through the AVCHD issues (and also dealing with Parallels, Bootcamp, and related Mac problems when running Windows) but I was impressed with how well DiVX played so I am guessing that perhaps AVCHD may possibly work well also with their codec, and then again it may not.

[Chuck Fadely]

On the editing front: From brief testing with Canon files, using Final Cut Log & Transfer to ingest AVCHD and convert to ProRes is pretty painless -- as long as you have an Intel Mac, FCP 6.02 or better, and lots of disk space.

[Alkim Un]

Originally Posted by Chuck Fadely

On the editing front: From brief testing with Canon files, using Final Cut Log & Transfer to ingest AVCHD and convert to ProRes is pretty painless -- as long as you have an Intel Mac, FCP 6.02 or better, and lots of disk space.

chuck,

I have Casıo F1 files. its codec is H.264 and extension is .mov but I couldn't ingest with "log and transfer " with final cut. When I try to drag the media to transfer window, it says "media is not supported..."

As far as know H.264 is apple codec, but we couldn't use or play it ?

thanks
alkım.

[Michael Goldberg]

you need a newer intel based mac
the problem is you cant make a hd dvd with mac
but it plays fine