Importing Canon MTS video into Final Cut Express

April 23, 2010 1:10 am /

As a new Mac owner, I recently purchased Final Cut Express 4 to see if I can transition from my Sony Vegas Pro 8 setup on the PC. The Sony Vegas Pro 8 software will run the Canon MTS files natively, which is a very convenient for quickly editing files. As I was importing the files onto the Mac, I noticed that Final Cut Express 4 wasn’t recognizing the video format. It was displaying “Error: Unknown format” messages.

Solution: The workaround is to use iMovie ’09 to import the video files from the camera. Connect the Canon camcorder to the Mac via USB cable. Open up iMovie ’09 and go to File->Import from Camera. It should recognize the files and allow you to convert to a MOV format movie. You have the option to use the native resolution or encode to a lower resolution file. This should allow you to then open the newly encoded MOV file into Final Cut Express 4.

Posted in: Canon Cameras / Tagged: , ,

One Thought on “Importing Canon MTS video into Final Cut Express”

  1. clarkysdonga on May 7, 2010 at 11:26 pm said:

    I spent the entire night trying to get compatibility of .MTS files shot on a Canon HFS11 into FCE 4 (FCE 4.0.1 to be exact) without using iMovie.

    I shot 3 months worth of footage on the HFS11 and would daily dump the AVCHD folders into date folders (ie 06_01_10, 07_01_10, etc etc) for organisation and for space.

    PROBLEM

    Since I had all the .MTS files off the camera I didnt know if I could use Log and Transfer to bring them into FCE but it is possible. Like other forums many people suggested you had to have the folders exactly like they were on the camera. This is true, unless of course you have deleted some files or if any become corrupt then the structure isnt exactly the same. For me I had deleted any junk files using a fast .MTS viewer (called a windows 7 machine!) without realising it was going to affect the ‘import’ process in FCE.

    SOLUTION

    I found that the files in the CLIPINF folder (.CLI files) were matched to the .MTS files in the STREAM folder. So if you delete any .MTS files I guess Log and Transfer reads the INDEX.BDM file or the .CLI files and says hang on, something is different. So I went through my .CLI files and found the names missing from the .MTS files and duplicated a colour bar clip I made and renamed it to the missing files. Viola, and FCE 4 could ‘import’ them.

    Does this help anyone or did everyone already know this!!! I couldnt find the solution anywhere on the net. Im also going to try swapping files and deleting other files to see if you can get a very basic folder structure for anyone who has just the .MTS files.

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