AVCHD to h.264 (+ resize)

[vaizki]

I have a Canon HG20 camera and need an easy automated way to get the AVCHD clips from it converted into lower resolution h.264 files.

Most of the recordings are 30min to 2 hour interviews, so the AVCHD stream gets split up into multiple .MTS files. So the tool would preferably be able to concatenate them back into a single clip.

I know I can do this via iMovie, but it involves importin and transcoding into Apple Intermediate Codec, then creating a project for each clip, then exporting that into a h.264 file. As I don't intend to edit these at all, it's a huge waste of time, space and CPU. Not to mention requiring manual intervention and work between each clip. I have about 20 of these already backed up as MTS files and 5-6 more coming every week.

So is there a way to roll a script (I know my way around bash etc) with ffmpeg or a Mac compatible software package that will do this? I'm ready to pay a reasonable "shareware" price if needed.

So far I haven't gotten any results with Quicktime, VLC, Handbrake...

 

[PenguinMac]

If you're willing to run Windows 7, here's what I'd do: run the Canon importing software on Windows 7 to concatenate and copy the MTS files off of the hard drive (the HG series uses hard drives I believe), then run ClipWrap on the Mac to rewrap the native H.264 files into a MOV or MP4 container (the standard AVCHD container is an MPEG2 transport stream). That should be very fast if you have access to a Windows 7 installation.

 

[vaizki]

I've never used the Canon importing software and don't have a Windows box at all right now.. Thanks for the suggestion but I think I'm going to look further into this still