AVCHD_Tested

A better user experience for users with camcorders

New consumer video camera's often create AVCHD (.MTS/.M2TS) files. Some media players will just hang when trying to play such a file or crash. Many programs do support AVCHD, but only in the latest git/svn release. Some have partial or broken support which may be slow, distorted, etc.

In addition, no tool currently exists for owners of AVCHD camcorders to extract their video files while retaining the metadata. All tools are currently proprietary options for Mac OSX or Windows. Users must copy the individual files and merge them if they are larger than 2GB and have been split, which does not take metadata in the process.

ACVHD is the standard for high definition video on digital camcorders and it's important that we have support for it.

Gstreamer (Totem/PiTiVi), VLC, mplayer should be tested to see if playing AVCHD is a working fine.

How to achieve this

  1. Test the applications which should support AVCHD and report bugs if they are hanging or crashing.
  2. Create a repository with test files from differenct AVCHD camcorders.

AVCHD applications in Ubuntu

Players

  • gstreamer
  • mplayer
  • vlc
  • xine

Editors

Tests

Test 1: Copy from camera

Connect the camera using USB or Firewire and copy the footage to the computer. Is it also possible to remove the footage from the camara once it is transferred to the computer?

Test 2: Copy from storage

Connect the Compact Flash, MemoryStick or SD to your computer and copy the contents to your computer.

Test 3: Metadata

Is the metadata copied correctly using Test 1 and Test 2? Is it visible in an player and/or video editing application?

Test 4: Playable

Is the video playable in VLC and Totem? Any issues with video/audio syncronization? Is the video correctly deinterlaced if necessary?

Test 5: Import to Video Editing

Is the video imported correctly into a video editing application? Any issues with video/audio syncronization? Is the video correctly deinterlaced if necessary?

Test 6: Generating an edited video

Is it possible to export video from an video editing application?

Samples

Please do NOT link to copyrighted material without permission from the copyright owner.

Sample 1

Sample ts file containing H264 PAFF video and AC3 audio.

Mplayer 2:1.0~rc2-0ubuntu19 crashes (sig 11) at the end of the file, but it plays just fine

Sample 2

http://samples.mplayerhq.hu.nyud.net/V-codecs/h264/nature_704x576_25Hz_1500kbits.h264

AVCHD related issues

Mplayer on Ubuntu is not complied with VDPAU, which is needed to use some nVidia video hardware acceleration features.

Bugs related to AVCHD

Links

AVCHD_Tested (last edited 2012-01-03 09:08:45 by gw)