[stahly603]

Can Toast 10 or *anything* simply take the video I've shot with my HD video camera (that produces .MTS files aka AVCHD or H.264) which comprises multiple clips and burn it to a DVD for later playback on my Blue Ray system...here's the catch: continuously, without the hiccups in between clips and with no Menu (I basically just want to copy my raw MTS streams from my camera to a DVD and play it the same way it looks when I play it on my camera without noticing any interruptions in between clips). This has been an unnerving experience to say the least to do such a simple thing! Sometimes I just want to take the guts out of my little camera the size of a coke can and place them into my $5000 Mac Pro so it works!

thanks!

[WA1OUI]

Can't speak for Toast, since I've only owned it less than a week, but programs have to "ingest" the mts files and then convert them to something that can be edited. The AVCHD is stored as an incremental backup: one full frame followed by frames of CHANGES only. That's why they're small. Apple's iMovie will ingest from my Sony HDR-XR520, although I have problems with Final Cut Express which I don't think supports my camera.

There is a utility : Voltaic from shedworx.com that will take the mts files and convert them to AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) .mov files. If you concatenate the mts files all together first (details available on request!) the resulting .mov will be fine. I'm working with them to determine why I get blips at the junction of the outputted .mov files that I concatenate in FCE, because that isn't supposed to happen with their program. 2G .mts files have doubled to 4+G .mov files...

Due to disk limitations, my Sony will create a new clip every 15 minutes or so. If you make your clips less than that they will be complete without the blip between concatenated files.

Hope this gives you a little insight...

DHK

Can Toast 10 or *anything* simply take the video I've shot with my HD video camera (that produces .MTS files aka AVCHD or H.264) which comprises multiple clips and burn it to a DVD for later playback on my Blue Ray system...here's the catch: continuously, without the hiccups in between clips and with no Menu (I basically just want to copy my raw MTS streams from my camera to a DVD and play it the same way it looks when I play it on my camera without noticing any interruptions in between clips). This has been an unnerving experience to say the least to do such a simple thing! Sometimes I just want to take the guts out of my little camera the size of a coke can and place them into my $5000 Mac Pro so it works!

thanks!

[tsantee]

You can instruct Toast to produce no menu. There still are likely to be short breaks between video titles but that is an issue with the DVD or Blu-Ray player having to search for the next title (even if it is adjacent). This is not a Toast issue. In order to have seamless playback you need to use a movie editor to join the videos into a file that shows as a single title in Toast.

[stahly603]

thx for both responses. Regarding ingesting into iMovie, this is something I do NOT want to do...EVER! My goal is to produce original quality from original footage..not spend hours on converting to an intermediate format like AIC which blows up my file 10x and then export back to MP4 (the closest format I can get because I can't go back to full original MTS/AVC).

Thanks for explaining why I get the pauses in between clips...makes perfect sense.

This is not a plug for a competing product but in fact Sdedworx (Voltaic and Flamingo) does 95% of what I want as the movie 'editor' and AVCHD processor for the 'common man' (I dont even want to edit at this point!)...it plays then reads MTS, allows me to join them into a single clip (without converting the format) and then export back to MP4/H.264...*very* close to a perfect solution except the resulting footage is a little washed out from the original..but id say very very close. If I do not want to join, Flamingo actually takes the original footage (from the camera or my computer) and can burn them directly to my DVD (to play in BD player) in *original* format- but I do get the hiccups in between clips..but the quality is EXACTLY the same as original!

To my knowledge, Toast cannot join the original files nor can it burn original clips directly to DVD without any quality loss, thus cannot do what I want (yet).

Shedworx claims to have on their roadmap the ability to burn full MTS back to DVD/BD by mid year. This will put them way ahead of Toast as far as I can see...and its cheaper!

This post has been edited by stahly603: 24 January 2010 - 05:38 AM

[jhillestad]

Can Toast 10 or *anything* simply take the video I've shot with my HD video camera (that produces .MTS files aka AVCHD or H.264) which comprises multiple clips and burn it to a DVD for later playback on my Blue Ray system...here's the catch: continuously, without the hiccups in between clips and with no Menu (I basically just want to copy my raw MTS streams from my camera to a DVD and play it the same way it looks when I play it on my camera without noticing any interruptions in between clips). This has been an unnerving experience to say the least to do such a simple thing! Sometimes I just want to take the guts out of my little camera the size of a coke can and place them into my $5000 Mac Pro so it works!

thanks!

Look for a program called TSMUXER to join mts files together. Also Turbo 2.64 from elgato will join files too.