Renaming AVCHD files from FS700

[John Wiley]

Hi all,

I've just started handling a lot of footage from FS700's and wondering if there's an easy way to manually rename files to individual names (eg with surfing footage I end up with 100's of short clips from each days shoot which I want to have individual names like "firstname_surname_location_date_description").

I'm not looking to do a batch renaming as the individual file-names are specific to each clip - rather I'm just wondering what the best way to circumnavigate the AVCHD file structure in order to get individualised clip names, without causing headaches with the file structure?

I've worked with AVCHD plenty before, but mainly for event work where everything could stay in chronological order in the AVCHD root folder and could be imported directly into a Premiere project through the Media Browser. However moving forward It's not a solution to import into a project and then rename there - because with surfing footage I often use it in several different projects over long periods of time, it is imperative that I have every clip easily locatable and with an individual name in explorer (I'm on Windows with Adobe CC, by the way).

I remember years ago AVCHD cameras used to come with importing software which re-stitched all the individual files in an AVCHD folder structure into singular clips which were no longer dependent on the folder structure - but this doesn't seem to be the way things are done anymore!

[Chris Medico]

That is a challenge.

For sure you shouldn't tinker with file names in the RAW AVCHD structure.

Would something like this be of any help?
PlayMemories Home Download

[John Wiley]

Thanks Chris, I'll check it out. Looks reminiscent of the import software which all AVCHD cameras used to come with.

My other thought was just to transcode everything to Cineform, which has other advantages, but the one problem that might arise is when I want to share a single file with somebody else who might not have Cineform installed.

[Nate Haustein]

On Mac I use a program called ClipWrap that "re-wraps" the MTS files into .mov files without needing to do an actual conversion. It's very fast and lets me obtain self-contained and widely compatible clips from the spanned MTS clips.

A Google search for "rewrap AVCHD PC" led me to this product: ClipToolz Convert

It looks like it's doing some behind the scenes voodoo with ffmpeg without the usual open-source confusion. In other words, it looks like someone developed a spiffy GUI to control the open source software. But if it simply works, that's definitely worth the price in my book.