Convert MTS/M2TS(AVCHD) to AVI

Wesley thanks for the great post and helping us get through this on Ubuntu! I have a question though if you have a second? My question is what does all this converting do to the quality of the video? And does Ubuntu just recognize and mount the camera that is hooked up via usb like an hdrux1! Any help would be much appreciated thanks.

This works great for me. You don’t happen to know how I could easily de-interlace the video from my Canon HG10 do you? Thanks!

Cool, I just needed to modify the ffmpeg command to add -deinterlace and -aspect 16:9

I followed all the steps you described, but when I try to use the m2tstoavi.fifo command it gives me “command not found”. What could be the problem? The installation was completed successfully I think, or at least it didn’t give me any error messages.
thanks

Another problem: I’ve just finished converting a MTS file into avi but all images are distorted and colors are changed. If I watch directly from the camera, instead, the video is perfect. Should I use a program or a particular configuration?
thanks again

Hi. Sorry, but i’m a linux newbie, I’m stuck at the part where you have to ./path/install but it says that i don’t have the permission to do so. Can anyone help me?

Hi! This script works fine :)
Thank you
The only problem is sound :(
I have no sound after converting
My camera is SR5E

New problem!
Sound is working now (after installing some codecs)
But resulting avi is strange and can be played only by mplayer :(
when I try to play it by Kaffeine or other movie-player, time-slider starts jumping back and forward
and sound starts to work asynchronously with picture :( (speed of picture is not constant)

In response to Roberto’s comment regarding the “command not found” message with the m2tstoavi.fifo command… I had the same problem. I seem to have fixed it my changing the permission on it to 744, and opening it with “./m2tstoavi.fifo ________.mts”. In other words, for me it seems that the command required a “./” prior to the text whereas the normal command did not. Hope this helps…

To all with the “command not found” problem: Just copy the m2tstoavi.fifo script into your /usr/local/bin folder, just like the other scripts:

sudo chmod 744 m2tstoavi.fifo
sudo cp m2tstoavi.fifo /usr/local/bin

The script is then in your path and you can omit the ./ before the command.

After installing I view the samplevideo.avi file and it is 2 seconds of black. Are there some codec’s I am missing?

My setup is a headless linux box running Ubuntu 7.10 server. I have to pull the samplevideo off to view. I’ve been able to get the video to convert, but there is no audio when I copy the resulting AVI to a Windows XP box. Thanks for your help.

Greetings. Thanks for putting this together. I ran through the instructions and got the sample video converted at the end of the install but am having problems running the script using my files. When I try to execute the script I get:

/usr/local/bin/m2tstoavi.fifo: line 1: #!/bin/csh: No such file or directory
/usr/local/bin/m2tstoavi.fifo: line 11: syntax error near unexpected token `(’
/usr/local/bin/m2tstoavi.fifo: line 11: ` set files=($*)’

here’s the file itself:
#!/bin/csh

#The scripts and instructions in this package are free to use and
#redistribute AT YOUR OWN RISK!! Standard disclaimers apply.
#NO WARRANTY!

if ( $#argv == “0″ ) then
echo usage: $0 filename.m2ts …
exit
else
set files=($*)
endif

I do have a csh file in the bin folder (a link to executable actually), but I can’t create a folder due to that link being there.

If anyone has any suggestions I’d be much obliged.

Thanks!

Ok, finally got the script to run again by deleting the first line of script and retyping it but now I get the following problem:

Cannot open Annex B ByteStream file ‘bits0001.mpv’

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Hi, when I try to run “m2tstoavi.fifo 00000.mts” in my video folder it says: “using: xporthdmv: Command not found.”
Both m2toavi and -fifo do the same. I’m using ubuntu 8.04 and commands should be installed properly. Am I missing this “xporthdmv” -part? Thx a lot!

Hello. I’m having a tough time getting this to work properly. I’m using Ubuntu 64 bit with the following error:

petah@desky:/media/SataTwo/Camcorder/BDMV/STREAM$ m2tstoavi.fifo *
using:
/usr/local/bin/xporthdmv
/usr/local/bin/ldecod
/usr/bin/ffmpeg
/usr/local/bin/m2tstoavi.fifo Starting.

xporthdmv -hn 00000.MTS 1 1 1
Unsupported Option: n
Cannot open video output file
mkfifo: cannot create fifo `/tmp/00000.yuv’: File exists
ldecod -i bits0001.mpv -o /tmp/00000.yuv
[1] 7107
ffmpeg -r 29.97 -s 1440×1080 -vcodec mpeg4 -sameq -i /tmp/00000.yuv -acodec copy -i /tmp/00000.ac3 -b 15000k 00000.avi
FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-pp –enable-swscaler –enable-pthreads –enable-libvorbis –enable-libtheora –enable-libogg –enable-libgsm –enable-dc1394 –disable-debug –enable-shared –prefix=/usr
libavutil version: 1d.49.3.0
libavcodec version: 1d.51.38.0
libavformat version: 1d.51.10.0
built on Mar 12 2008 15:36:03, gcc: 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu4)
—————————– JM 14.0 (FRExt) —————————–
Decoder config file : (null)
————————————————————————–
Input H.264 bitstream : bits0001.mpv
Output decoded YUV : /tmp/00000.yuv
Output status file : log.dec
Input reference file : test_rec.yuv does not exist
SNR values are not available
————————————————————————–
POC must = frame# or field# for SNRs to be correct
————————————————————————–
Frame POC Pic# QP SnrY SnrU SnrV Y:U:V Time(ms)
————————————————————————–
Cannot open Annex B ByteStream file ‘bits0001.mpv’

If anyone has any suggestions I’d be extremely grateful

Wes,

Thank you very much! I got it to run.

I reinstalled and followed the tutorial exactly and as long as I execute the m2tstoavi.fifo from the m2ts folder that I unzipped it works great. If I change into the folder the files are in I still get the above error, which is still a huge help. Now I just have to figure out how to change the output folder since the videos are on a separate hard drive, and the drive with the m2ts folder (aka the location that runs the file properly is on aa smaller drive. I guess I can whole swap the folder to my larger drive.

Thanks again for the help. You’ve let me move to my new build computer free from the monolithic beast of vista!

Wes,

Disregard my problem running it in the media location folder. Looks like my second disk is a read only environment. Time for some google work.

Thanks again!

Wes,

Appreciate it. All good to go. Had a dual install with OS X so I had to disable Journaling which in turn allowed me more than read permission on the disk. I’m currently chewing through the conversions. Now I just have to pick which editing software I’m going to use. What’s your recommendation?

Thanks!

Wes,

I, too, get the “xporthdmv: Command not found.” error when I try to invoke m2tstoavi script. I’m running Hardy with the latest patches.

I did notice that the compiler script threw the following errors when I ran it. I executed it as su:

Run the compile script to compile the software.
The ./configure script has ended.

cp: cannot stat `bin/ldecod.exe’: No such file or directory
chmod: cannot access `../xporthdmv’: No such file or directory
chmod: cannot access `../ldecod’: No such file or directory

Thanks!
Fraize

Hi Wes,

thanks for your tutorial. Unfortunately I’m not able to install it.
Already step 2 fails on my machine (UbuntuStudio 8.04).

> ’sudo apt-get install mplayer ffmpeg a52dec mencoder x264 faad faac libfaad2-0 libfaad2-dev subversion csh’

leads to the first error:

Description is unfortunately in german. It says said a52dec does not posses a installation candidate !?

If I replaced ‘a52dec’ by ‘liba52-0.7.4-dev’ it leads to the next error:

It says that ‘libfaad2-dev: depends libfaad2-0 (= 2.0.0+cvs20040908+mp4v2+bmp-0ubuntu5)’,
but 2.6.1-2 is atempted to be installed –> Error: corrupted packes!?

Any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks in advance for your efforts.

Bye
Hergerger

I had trouble with the frame resolution that this script assumes. It’s assuming 1440×1080, and my camera can shoot @1920×1080. If you try to process a 1920 file with this script, you’ll get “flipping” (not sure if that’s the right term) where it looks as if you had turned the old-school “vert” knob on your TV too far one way or the other.

The fix is to edit the m2tstoavi(.fifo) script. Replace 1440 with 1920, and the video will turn out fine.

Of course, the files will only have sound in mplayer, the sound, when you do have it, is out of sync by a few seconds, and the output file won’t import into Cinelerra. Time to do some more googling…

From Convert MTS/M2TS(AVCHD) to AVI

hey wes. great work :)

did you find out anything about the lossyness of this procedure.

Why is it that I can never get the ./install command to work? Here is the output:

root@ryan-laptop:/home/ryan/m2ts# ./install
bash: ./install: /bin/csh: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Can anyone help?

Small correction - Step 4 should be:
sudo gedit download

one of your first responses in this thread reads "I’m not sure if the quality is affected by the conversion process. I will look into this for you"

i should have put quotes around my 'lossyness'. converting file formats is often lossy i.e. some detail/quality is lost. i was just wondering how lossy this is. did you ever find anything out?

kbps figures dont mean much to me i'm afraid. can you *see* any difference?

Thanks for the fine set of sommand scripts; At first glance, everything seems to work. Unfortunately, I encounter 2 problems:

* Playing the *avi in mplayer works fine, howeveer, in VLC I have no sound!
* When importing the *avi into cinelerra, ist pretends to be audio only, no video!

I tried several container formats and/or seperate files juggling with ffmpeg, but I can't find any container format holding both video and audio!!!

Any hints or suggestions are highly welcome!

Does not work for me;

:~/compilations/m2ts$ ffmpeg -i samplevideo.m2ts -acodec libfaac -ab 256k -ac 2 -vcodec mpeg4 -sameq -aspect 16:9 -b 15000k -copyts output_filename.mov
FFmpeg version SVN-rUNKNOWN, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-pp --enable-swscaler --enable-pthreads --enable-libvorbis --enable-libtheora --enable-libogg --enable-libgsm --enable-dc1394 --disable-debug --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libfaadbin --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaac --enable-xvid --enable-x264 --enable-liba52 --enable-amr_nb --enable-amr_wb --enable-shared --prefix=/usr
libavutil version: 1d.49.3.0
libavcodec version: 1d.51.38.0
libavformat version: 1d.51.10.0
built on Apr 3 2008 18:39:35, gcc: 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)
[h264 @ 0x7fa34c89f8d0]PAFF interlacing is not implemented
[h264 @ 0x7fa34c89f8d0]concealing 3060 DC, 3060 AC, 3060 MV errors
Input #0, mpegts, from 'samplevideo.m2ts':
Duration: 00:00:02.4, start: 1.100100, bitrate: 16367 kb/s
Stream #0.0[0x1011]: Video: h264, yuv420p, 1440x1080, 29.97 fps(r)
Stream #0.1[0x1100]: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, 5:1, 448 kb/s
Unknown codec 'libfaac'

I have libfaac0 installed. When I replace libfaac with libfaac0 I get the same output.

same result Unknown codec 'libmp3lame'

Bingo ! That is it Wesley. I compiled ffmpeg with the instructions of your article and converted a samplevideo correctly. Thanks a lot for the support !

Good morning and thank you for your help converting .m2ts to.avi. It helped me.:-)
I would like to ask you a question:
Why do you use "Sudo" to untar?

With this command: sudo tar zxvf m2ts.tar.gz, is it possible to make it without using sudo. Because with sudo, a locked file is got. What I think strange.
Thank you for your answer.

Thanks for the very helpful tutorial. I got this to work (to the point of the sample video at least) in Kubuntu 8.04.

Just in case anyone else has this - I tripped over a small problem getting it working. The x264 section of the configure script complained that I didn't have a suitable assembler, and suggested yasm. I tried installing yasm, but the script then complained that the version wasn't recent enough. It suggested nasm, which I put in - the error went away.

I also discovered that it was necessary to delete everything and start again from the extraction from the archive after messing up step 5 by failing to sudo - i.e. simply repeating the step but using sudo didn't cure the problem.

Also, do you maybe mean 755 instead of 744 in step 7?

Anyway, thanks again for the help.