Newbie Question: Best way to download .m2t?

[David Schamis]

Pardon the Newbie question - I just got my FX1 last Friday and I only wish I had more time to use it!

What is the best way to capture the .m2t files from the FX1, and just save the files as .m2t?

I have Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5.1, but I can't seem to figure out how to just save an unrendered file in .m2t format. I can do it in very very large .avi format, and can render in a bunch of different formats.

I'm sure this is just my ignorance, so I appreciate the help very much!

David

[Ron Evans]

USe capDVHS. It will capture to the PC as m2t. You should be aware that Premiere will not accept m2t files only CFHD. Premiere converts on capture and doesn't give the option to just save as an m2t. If you capture as m2t there will be no way to edit or then convert to CFHD unless you have Cineform HDlink which comes with the Aspect HD plugin. If you do have this then you could also use HDlink as capture m2t!!! Ulead, Pinnacle and Edius will edit native m2t files.

Ron Evans

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Sony Vegas will also edit native m2t files, although it's silly to do in any application. This is why the DI exists, it makes editing much smoother and faster.

[Steven Gotz]

Very large AVI format just means you need to buy more, and bigger hard drives. If you can justify shooting HDV, you ought to be able to justify larger drives.

[Ruslan Odintsov]

I agree that you should use CapDVHS to capture M2T streams. This way I never had I single problem capturing even on one of my old Pentium III 500 computers. After that, if you don't want to use the intermediate codec (large file sizes and also some color space issues), you can edit M2T's right inside the Premiere Pro 1.5.1 with the help of MainConcept MPEG Pro HD v1.06 plug-in. For some reason it's not mentioned much if at all in these forums, but it's a really good alternative to CineForm.

What's a really good thing about it is that it uses smart rendering, meaning it only recompresses when needed (effects, titles, transitions, etc.), leaving the other video parts alone. I tried it, and even when recompressed, I could hardly see any difference between rendered and straight forward material when played back from HVR-Z1 on HD monitor. I did not see any extra compression artifacts or changed colors/gamma, etc.

I even tried taking a few-seconds piece of the outside shots M2T footage from Premiere Pro timeline and saving it as Huffyuv AVI. In a 10 second clip I razor-cut a spot from 2 to 5 seconds and saved that work area as Huffyuv AVI. Later I re-imported this 3 second long Huffyuv AVI into the same spot on the timeline inserted in between M2T pieces, exported it again as another M2T, and again couldn't see any difference. So even going to Huffyuv and back to M2T did not introduce any visible differences. I tried the same thing with QT compressed as TARGA, and the same results.

So my point is, you can pretty much stay with M2T for capturing and editing. And if you need multiple layers of effects added (for example in After Effects), then you can use some free lossless codec such as Huffyuv or one of the lossless QT's and then re-import it back to Premiere Pro to make a final M2T to go back to your HDV camera. You don't really need CineForm, unless you want a smoother editing environment. Besides, Premiere's built in CineForm codec only works inside Premiere Pro, while placing the annoying watermark when trying to work with it elsewhere.

You can also use this plug-in to output your M2T files back to camera from Premiere Pro. If you even just captured M2T with CapDVHS to back it up to another HDV tape, you can simply use MainConcept plug-in to stream this file back to camera. This way it will be a 100% identical copy, unlike with the intermediate codec, where it gets recompressed and compressed again.

MainConcept has a trial version with a watermark placed on your output:

http://www.mainconcept.com/mpeg_pro.shtml