Panasonic G7 - Issue Transferring AVCHD Videos to Macbook

Leo "Zoom" wrote:

Never experienced any problems using just the contents of Stream subfolder. These are the original clips. They can be easily viewed and edited. All other files and folders - just a (almost) useless junk.

On Mac or PC? I use PC, but understand that it's more complicated to transfer the contents of the stream subfolder on a Mac.

Also, here are the actual problems you may run into by directly copying the MTS files from the stream subfolder:

1. Depending on the camera (not sure about G7), the numbering of files will start over every time you format or switch memory cards. i.e. 101.mts, 102.mts. If you are working on a project with a lot of footage shot over multiple days, you may end up with half a dozen 101.mts files. You need to keep this organized or you will end up having confusing issues later. For me, it was trying to work on a project some time after it was edited on another machine. Due to a combination of factors, the media couldn't be found and then I had to locate where 101.mts is located. Well now, which 101.mts??? It was a massive headache and I never really found a good solution. The proper thing to do is to use software that will transfer the files for you and uniquely name each file (usually with date and time in the name). Then each clip that you shoot has a unique name that will not be confused with another.

2. The main actual problem with transferring files directly from the stream subfolder is with long clips that go over the 4 GB file size limit. The camera splits this up into 4 GB files, but it's the metadata contained in the other files in the AVCHD folder that keeps them properly "glued" together, logically. Again, proper software that understands the AVCHD structure and will do this for you on transfer is the best solution. I have personally tested that editing two .mts files together that belong to a large clip will cause an audio and/or video glitch where they join together, and that this glitch is not there when you tranfer with software that properly reads and contatenates the AVCHD files together. I was pretty surprised by this. I figured that the last frame of one mts file would seamlessly transition to the first frame of the next mts file, but that is not the case!

To get technical, I understand that it's not so much the AVCHD metadata that fixes this, so much as the fact that the files get properly concatenated together. For some reason the .mts files don't split at proper frame or audio sample boundaries (maybe just not at audio sample boundaries, from my experience), but if you copy one file to the end of the other on a binary level such that the first byte of the second file comes right after the last byte of the first file this glitch is resolved. This is much easier to do as part of the normal transfer/import/ingest process rather than futzing with file copy commands, etc.

As for which software will do this, personally I have been using the free Sony Catalyst Browse, but I believe that most NLEs have some kind of import or ingest feature that should also handle this, and that there is other software that takes care of this but I haven't explored much further.