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Improving Video Quality

hasmak

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ssj said:
thanks, theslime. even if makemkv does rip a blu-ray without much ado, the available mac programs that convert m2ts to prores are from. . . pavtube. so i might as well skip the makemkv step.

at least that's what i can gather, as pavtube has done such a good job of carpetbombing the google search engine so that pavtube and "blogs" about pavtube are the top results.
[MENTION=10624]ssj[/MENTION]
I am not a Mac user, but from the limited information available, FCP has native support for H264 and .mts
For future reference I have a couple of questions:
1-Does FCP accept elementary streams .mts or does it have to be muxed into a .mov container
2- If it accepts .mts as input, in theory, you can change the .m2ts extension to .mts (They are largely interchangeable) and try that as input (if you have the time, and the resources) can you test the hypothesis. If it works, then you would not have to convert to prores, since eventually you will be exporting to h264 or AVC.
3- If FCP needs a .mov container, can you mux the .mts into .mov without encoding (on Mac you can use AviDemux and on Widows you can use XmediaRecode with the setting video copy for either) and test the results.
Any info will be apreciated
Thanks
 

ssj

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Hey, hasmak. Hope all's well, and thanks for your idea.

Turns out that FCPX does accept mts/m2ts as a container. Even avi and mp4 containers can be imported, although editing delivery codecs would lead to quality issues.
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH12754?locale=en_US

I guess editing in mts simplifies things, as a conversion to prores now seems optional, but maybe there's an advantage to editing in prores vs. mts/m2ts? I don't have enough expertise in this dept to say.
 

ThrowgnCpr

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ssj said:
editing delivery codecs would lead to quality issues.
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH12754?locale=en_US

Although, I'm not a Mac guy, I think it's a fair statement that editing compressed files has the potential to cause problems in every piece of software. Womble seems to handle MPEG compressed files fine, but I don't consider that a full-fledged NLE, and it comes with it's own limitations/problems.

To avoid these problems, I always recommend that editors convert their files to the appropriate lossless or raw codec/container for their system
 

hasmak

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ssj said:
Hey, hasmak. Hope all's well, and thanks for your idea.

Turns out that FCPX does accept mts/m2ts as a container. Even avi and mp4 containers can be imported, although editing delivery codecs would lead to quality issues.
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH12754?locale=en_US

I guess editing in mts simplifies things, as a conversion to prores now seems optional, but maybe there's an advantage to editing in prores vs. mts/m2ts? I don't have enough expertise in this dept to say.

Hey ssj
Thanks for the quick response
I don't have a Mac or FCP, therefore I can not test this in practice, but in theory, since FCP has native support for .mts, .m2ts there should not be any problem in editing and there should not be any quality loss since the .mts/.m2ts is what you have on the Bluray.
I am hoping someone with FCP would test this (even on small clips) and let us know the results. If it works and there are no problems, that would save conversion time and the risk of conversion errors, and it will all be done with open source or freeware:)
Cheers
 

ssj

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i'm hoping that's the case, hasmak. anybody here have experience editing mts/m2ts in FCPX? the pros and cons compared to doing so with prores?

thanks in advance.

addendum: perusal of the apple discussion threads indicate that the mts format is difficult to edit in FCPX; it supposedly taxes the CPU quite a bit. advice from experienced folks seems to be: a prores conversion will take up a lot more storage space than the source mts file, but editing the prores file will be a much smoother affair than working directly off an mts file.

however, this information was gleaned from a 3.5-year-old apple thread. still would like to hear what fellow faneditors know.
 

TV's Frink

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ssj said:
however, this information was gleaned from a 3.5-year-old apple thread.

Why would anyone want to discuss a 3.5-year-old apple?
 

ssj

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return of the apple mummy.
 

hasmak

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ssj said:
i'm hoping that's the case, hasmak. anybody here have experience editing mts/m2ts in FCPX? the pros and cons compared to doing so with prores?

thanks in advance.

Alas ssj, it seems no one is interested in helping :-(. C'est la vie
 

TV's Frink

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Not interested or not able?
 

Captain Khajiit

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ssj said:
anybody here have experience editing mts/m2ts in FCPX? the pros and cons compared to doing so with prores?
Throw has told you what you need to know in post #23 of this thread. While his advice was not specific to FCP, it doesn't matter, because the reasons that he gave for converting to an intermediary codec always hold true.
 

ssj

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Ah, I didn't know that mts is considered an intermediary codec. That clears things up further. Thanks, captain kat!
 

TV's Frink

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But but but
hasmak said:
Alas ssj, it seems no one is interested in helping :-(.
so no one wants to help!
 

Captain Khajiit

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ssj said:
Ah, I didn't know that mts is considered an intermediary codec.
It's not. It's a container – one that almost always contains a delivery format (one that you find on a commercial disc). The bottom line is that you should convert to a lossless or near-lossless intermediary codec, such as ProRes.
 

ssj

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thank you, CK. prores it shall be.

hasmak: this is what happens when one prays to cat gods. :-D
 

hasmak

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Captain Khajiit said:
It's not. It's a container – one that almost always contains a delivery format (one that you find on a commercial disc). The bottom line is that you should convert to a lossless or near-lossless intermediary codec, such as ProRes.

Greetings Captain
Thank you for your interest and responses
Let me start by saying that I am not an editor but my interest in this topic is twofold, one is purely academic, and the other is to be able to help other when needed.
The real question here is how well does the NLE handle other codecs?. an .m2ts from a bluray will almost always have an .H264 video stream, From the website, FCP has native support for H264, whether it works with it directly or does some internal conversion? I don't know, and I have no way of testing. And while FCP my handle prores better, what about other no Apple NLEs, do they have the same level of support for prores?, do they handle it better than H264?
These are questions that can only be answered by editors who have tried and tested it.
I hope I have made my self clear
Thank you again.
 

ThrowgnCpr

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hasmak said:
Greetings Captain
Thank you for your interest and responses
Let me start by saying that I am not an editor but my interest in this topic is twofold, one is purely academic, and the other is to be able to help other when needed.
The real question here is how well does the NLE handle other codecs?. an .m2ts from a bluray will almost always have an .H264 video stream, From the website, FCP has native support for H264, whether it works with it directly or does some internal conversion? I don't know, and I have no way of testing. And while FCP my handle prores better, what about other no Apple NLEs, do they have the same level of support for prores?, do they handle it better than H264?
These are questions that can only be answered by editors who have tried and tested it.
I hope I have made my self clear
Thank you again.

As the Captain has stated, I clarified this in post #23. Many NLEs claim support for a wide array of lossy codecs. Does that mean they handle them well? Generally speaking - NO. Results will vary from person to person depending on their workflow, but I always recommend that no matter what OS or NLE you are using, that you edit a raw or lossless file. Adding decoding of compressed files in an editors' workflow has often caused glitches.

Want to edit the delivery format (e.g., [lossy] h264 stream in an M2TS container) directly? Go for it, but proceed at your own risk. It may work fine, but I wouldn't be surprised if you encounter glitches at some point.
 

Captain Khajiit

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hasmak said:
These are questions that can only be answered by editors who have tried and tested it.

No. It's never advisable to edit a delivery format such as h.264, for reasons that have already been outlined. There are certain general principles that remain the case regardless of which NLE one is using. As you are not an editor, I suggest that you wait until you have greater knowledge and experience before attempting to give technical advice.
 

ssj

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just parking this information here for later use. . . cruised the creativecow forums and learned about an app called clipwrap that transcodes .mts files into prores.

will try this workflow once i get a new 'puter:
1) use makemkv to pull .mts files off a blu-ray
2) use clipwrap for transcoding to prores.

although pavtube seems popular, i dislike the way it markets itself. . . confusing number of products that seem to do slightly different transcodes, and all those spammy "blogs" that are thinly veiled advertisements. clipwrap seems to be available for a price similar to pavtube's.
 

theslime

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MakeMKV makes MKVs, though, not MTS files. You should check if that's something Clipwrap can work with or if you need yet another tool. If not, I'm sure MPEG Streamclip will do it (possibly only with Perian installed). ffmpeg on the command line can also do a straight h264/MKV to prores/MOV conversion, but it's, well, command line.

Tangent: Only on OSX will a simple tool like Clipwrap cost serious money. They would have been laughed out of the Linux (or even Windows) world in a second.
 
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