Jaunty 9.04 - Convert Sony Handycam (AVCHD) .mts files to x264

[budluva04]

Here is the tutorial I wrote on my site....now i'm writing it here, sorry, didn't know I could just post a link. Enjoy.

ORIGINAL http://blog.thefrozencanuck.ca/?p=12

I have a Sony Handycam HDR-XR100 and it's my first videocamera, and it takes great HD video, but I couldn't get it to play on my Xbox 360, or my computer, as the video the camera outputs is interlaced and in .MTS format. So I'll tell you how I figured out how to convert the .MTS files to .MP4 that will playback fine on your PC or Xbox 360. I found alot of information from this post, thanks to the author.

I will be using Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 and FFMPEG for this tutorial. First we need to compile FFMPEG with x264 support.

1) Make sure any previous installations of ffmpeg and x264 are removed.

sudo apt-get purge ffmpeg x264 libx264-dev

2) Download packages and install

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion git-core checkinstall yasm texi2html libfaac-dev libfaad-dev libmp3lame-dev libtheora-dev libxvidcore4-dev

3) Download the latest version of x264 from GIT, then compile

cd ~
git clone git://git.videolan.org/x264.git
cd x264
./configure
make
sudo checkinstall --fstrans=no --install=yes --pkgname=x264 --pkgversion "1:0.svn`date +%Y%m%d`-0.0ubuntu1" --default

4) Download the latest version of FFMpeg from SVN, then compile

cd ~
svn checkout svn://svn.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg
cd ffmpeg
./configure --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-pthreads --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-x11grab
make
sudo checkinstall --fstrans=no --install=yes --pkgname=ffmpeg --pkgversion "3:0.svn`date +%Y%m%d`-12ubuntu3" --default

5) Convert your .MTS to .MP4 (Single Pass)

ffmpeg -i INPUT.MTS -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -ac 2 -vcodec libx264 -vpre hq -crf 22 -threads 0 -deinterlace OUTPUT.MP4

Change your INPUT and OUTPUT, and you can play around with the ffmpeg preset's (-vpre) the availabe presets are default, normal, hq, and max.

*** NOTE FOR XBOX 360 PLAYBACK ***
Playback requires the Audio stream be 2 Channel AAC (-ac 2)

To remove all packages and the changes made to your system from my how-to...

sudo apt-get purge x264 ffmpeg build-essential yasm subversion git-core checkinstall texi2html libfaac-dev libfaad-dev libmp3lame-dev libtheora-dev libxvidcore4-dev

Thanks, have fun with your videos. Don't be afraid to play around with the setting's either. And please feel free to post you comments/suggestions, thanks...until next time!