Cant open avchd files on my mac. (LX5)

Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum and the proud new owner of a lumix lx5. So far, I love this camera, however, I'm having trouble opening, or even finding my videos recorded in avchd lite in my memory card once I plug it in to my computer. I'm using a macbook pro purchased last september (which has a dedicated slot for memory cards). When I plug the memory card in, it shows 3 folders: DCIM (which contains all of my RAW, jpeg and .mov files), MISC (which is empty), and PRIVATE (which contains an AVCHD folder). Within the AVCHD folder, there are three more folders that are full of files that i have tried to open with a number of programs such as quictime, vlc, itunes and mplayer. None of these programs seem to be able to open any of the files. Im assuming that these files are not the actual videos since the number of them do not match up with the number of videos I've shot, but I can't seem to find where else they could be. I have no trouble opening videos shot in motion jpeg format, just avchd.
I'd greatly appreciate any I can get in opening these files.

Thanks,
Felipe.

The videos are the .mts files. They'll be numbered like 00001.mts and so on.

VLC definitely plays them! Quicktime won't.

Wow, I feel really stupid now. Anyway, thanks John!

Anticipating your next question, I've looked at a few conversion programs, however, I'm using windows. For windows, TotalVideo2DVD is really simple and will burn a DVD, iso file or both.

AVSVideoConverter ( http://www.convertavchd.com/ does windows and claims to do macs. I've tried it, worked ok but until you register it puts a logo in center of screen.

Like others have said, the only file you need is that .mts file. If you do a google search, all the downloads that say free really aren't and will either nag or restrict until you register. However, most seem to be fairly modestly priced for what they do.

I assume you can set the camera for .mov output (FZ35 does), that may be more usable but is a bigger file.

Hi Felipe,

in case you have installed iMovie on your computer: it will detect the videos on your card automatically, so you can easily import them into iMovie and play or edit them there.

-- Carsten

PS: I have iMovie'11 installed on my computer and it works great with the LX5. I do no know, however, whether older versions of iMovie also work.

Felipe Garza said:

... I'm having trouble opening, or even finding my videos recorded in avchd lite in my memory card once I plug it in to my computer. I'm using a macbook pro purchased last september (which has a dedicated slot for memory cards).

Click to expand...

Felipe, there has also been a discussion about this some time ago in the forum: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=37005186

I was hunting for a while on google and others to finally find this:
REMUX for mac and its 100% free!
http://www.nef.wh.uni-dortmund.de/~mt/remux/

best,
g