ffmpeg: Convert .MTS files

I finally found a reliable way to convert .mts files into a usable format. Unfortunately, it's rather geeky. First of all, I had to find a recent version of the video converter ffmpeg. It wasn't easy to find a pre-compiled ready-to-run version, so I had to compile that myself. And then, I couldn't find a graphical user interface for it. And, of course, I don't have the skills to write my own graphical user interface for it.

And that's why it's so geeky: It only runs on the command line. This will be really handy once we have a gazillion videos in a complex folder structure, and we want to convert all the videos in one run, using a shell script (yes, nerdy, but makes things SOO much easier...). Right now, it's a little bit of a PITA because it takes some getting used to the command line.

The good news: I already found a shell script that deals with the nasty command line interface of ffmpeg, so it's rather easy to do the conversion after a little introduction to the terminal. The bad news: the conversion seems to take a pretty long time. I'm currently converting video from yesterday (MPSP Summer Academy in Maine), and after about 2 hours, I have converted 20 minutes. I hope that on newer computers, this takes less long.

For the procedure, two files are needed, the "ffmpeg" binary and the "hdffxvrt" shell script. I can't upload those files here, so please email me if you would like to have them.

Here come the directions for the (somewhat automated) conversion:

First of all, you have to install a little program to your computer.

1. Save the attached files to your Desktop folder.
2. Open the Terminal app: Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal (terribly sorry for this, it gets geeky from here...)
3. Type in "cd Desktop" and then hit enter to change into the Desktop folder.
4. Type in "sudo cp ffmpeg /usr/local/bin" and hit enter.
5. Type in your password, followed by enter.
6. Type in "sudo chown root:wheel /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg" and hit enter.
7. Type in "sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg" and hit enter.

Now that the conversion program is installed, you can use the attached script to convert the .mts files. Here is how.

1. It's probably easiest to put all the files from one morning/afternoon/day into one folder, before you start the conversion.
2. Copy the file "hdffxvrt" into the same folder as the files that you would like to convert.
3. In the terminal, change into this folder using the "cd" command, e.g. "cd /Volumes/ExtHD/FolderWithVideoData" for an external hard drive that is called "ExtHD" and the data folder "FolderWithVideoData."
4. Run the script by typing "sh hdffxvrt *.mts" and hit enter. This will convert all the .mts files in the current folder into .mov files in the same folder.
5. After all the files in this folder are converted, you can delete the file "hdffxvrt" in this folder.

A few hours later (hopefully), you will have a bunch of nice QuickTime-readable .mov files in 1280x720. If you would like to have it in a different format, size, etc., you can use Handbrake for the subsequent conversion (or edit the shell script accordingly to save a step ;-) ).