If you are having issues editing Canon Legria HF20/HF200 AVCHD MTS videos on Mac through iMovie or FCP X, you may wish to read this thread. It explains a way of converting Canon HF20/HF200 MTS clips to AIC .mov for use in iMovie and encoding Canon HF20/HF200 MTS files to ProRes .mov for editing in FCP X.
Issues bringing MTS files from Canon Legria HF20 to FCP X
“Hello, folks, I’m just getting started with Final cut pro X and wasn’t pleased to see that I can’t simply drag my MTS files copied from my Canon Legria HF20 to the timeline like I can in iMovie (Mavericks version). Please suggest a solution. Thanks in advance for your response.”
An “.MTS” file is not a complete video. It is just a very raw stream! Tons of information is missing. Anyone who gets their eyes on such a file has been digging within the AVCHD folder structure, which you just shouldn’t do and which is much harder to do since Mountain Lion. Just use AVCHD the way it is supposed to be used: Import from the card/backup into your editing software! If for whatever reason you’ve deleted the AVCHD folder, you will need third party converter to process file conversion. Here’s a guide talking about how to convert Canon HF20/HF200 AVCHD MTS media on Mac for iMovie/FCP X editing.
A quick guide on how to encode Canon HF20/HF200 AVCHD MTS files to a Mac friendly format for editing in iMovie/FCP X
Software requirement
HD Converter for Mac
Follow these steps:
Step 1: Open up HD Converter for Mac as a Canon HF20/200 MTS Converter for Mac. When its main interface comes up, click ‘Add File’ to load your source media.
Step 2: Select output format for iMovie/FCP X
1) Select AIC .mov as output format for iMovie
To convert Canon HF20/200 MTS files for iMovie, from ‘Profile’ list, choose ‘Apple InterMediate Codec (AIC)(*.mov)’ as output format under ‘iMovie and Final Cut Express’ column.
Important: If you’ve loaded a number of video clips to do batch conversion, please do remember ticking off ‘Apply to All’ option before you start.
2) Select ProRes .mov as output format for FCP X
From the ‘Profile’ list, move to ‘Final Cut Pro’ catalogue, and select ‘Apple ProRes 422 (*.mov)’ as target format. Apple ProRes is the best suited editing codec for FCP X and its former version FCP 6 and FCP 7. When loading them into FCP X/6/7, you needn’t wait for a long time for rendering.
Step 3: Custom video and audio settings (optional)
If necessary, you can click ‘Settings’ button and go to ‘Profiles Settings’ panel to modify video and audio settings like video encoder, resolution, video bit rate, frame rate, aspect ratio, audio encoder, sample rate, audio bit rate, and audio channels. 3D settings are also available.
Step 4: Begin Canon HF 20/200 AVCHD MTS clips to MOV Conversion on Mac
When ready, click ‘Convert’ to start format conversion. Once the conversion process is complete, you can click ‘Open Folder’ button to get the generated AIC/ProRes MOV files for editing in iMovie/FCP X with optimum performance.
Tips:If you don’t want to wait for the entire conversion process, you can tick off ‘Showdown computer when conversion completed’ and go away to do other things.
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