How to convert HD (.mts) to DV-AVI for use in Premiere 6.5?
by Francois Arsenault
on
Oct 4, 2009 at 7:44:12 pm
Hello everyone,
I need to convert HD (1920x1080 .mts) footage to standard definition DV-AVI for use in Premiere 6.5, which doesn't support HD. What software can I use to do this?
I've experimented with a number of trial versions of conversion software, like Aimersoft, Aiseesoft, Wondershare, etc. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, none do what I need them to. There are some options for AVI, but none that seem to be exactly the same as what I get when I encode with Premiere 6.5. I see options like DivX, a few formats for gaming consoles, and a few others. But the option that has a description that's closest to what I need actually corresponds to a .dv format, not .avi, and I can't use that.
Also, since HD has proportions that are very different from the 720x480 screen size I get with Premiere 6.5, I need the resulting videos to be letterboxed. Again, I don't see any options that do this. But even if I did find such an option, there would still be a problem. See, I eventually convert the 720x480 DV-AVI clips to 640x480 WMV clips, as well as DVD (MPEG2). If the software doesn't take the horizontal picture stretch of the standard DV-AVI 720x480 footage into account, I'll end up with squished videos. How can this be avoided?
Any advice would be highly appreciated. Thank you for your help!
Re: How to convert HD (.mts) to DV-AVI for use in Premiere 6.5? by Ann Bens on Oct 5, 2009 at 10:12:59 pm
Converting to HD avi can be done with NeoScene from Cineform, but i doubt Premiere 6.5 can handle that.
Converting to SD i would not know which route to take.
I think upgrading to CS4 will be the easiest.
Re: How to convert HD (.mts) to DV-AVI for use in Premiere 6.5? by Francois Arsenault on Oct 6, 2009 at 3:31:30 am
Hi Ann,
Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, I can't afford to convert to CS4. Besides, if I really wanted to use HD, there's a copy of Premiere Elements 7 that I could potentially use. But I would much prefer to stick to Premiere 6.5 and smaller screen size, which is why I need to convert to SD DV-AVI (letterboxed), and not the other way around.
Re: How to convert HD (.mts) to DV-AVI for use in Premiere 6.5? by Francois Arsenault on Oct 11, 2009 at 2:51:48 am
Hi Ann,
Alright, I guess I'll have to get used to Premiere Elements 7 after all. But I'll have to convert the originals to a smaller screen size (with the same proportions) before I edit them in PE7. I'm worried my computer, while decent enough, might have trouble handling high-quality 1920x1080 videos.
On a somewhat different topic, I wonder how HD is handled when creating a DVD version. With SD DV-AVI, I encode the 720x480 AVI (3:2, which is a little stretched) to a 720x480 MPEG2 (also stretched), and the result when watched on computer or TV is a picture with normal 4:3 proportions (like 640x480). It's probably not the same with HD. The authoring software I use doesn't support HD, so I haven't had a chance to experiment with this. I can only assume that software that does support HD produces a picture of appropriate proportions.
I must admit that I don't quite understand the 720x480 format you get with DV-AVI. Why is it stretched? Why not capture 640x480 footage directly? I mean, why don't the original footage and the picture on a TV have the same proportions? Is it the same with HD? From the videos I've shot so far, the picture appears normal to me, unlike the stretched 720x480. If it's the case, do the proportions change when creating a DVD, or do they stay the same (resulting in a letterboxed picture, of course)?
