I am currently trying to import AVCHD files (.mts) in Elan, but it doesn’t seem to work. I already knew this could be a possibility since I have had this problem in the past (about 1.5ys ago), and used Adobe Encoder to get a file that I could use in Elan. However, I was wondering whether there is some other (easier) solution now that time has passed (and that this format has become somehow so widespread). I ask this mainly because the videos have an extremely good quality, but when I encode them with settings that will work in Elan, this level of good quality is lost. I have to say that my windows media player has no problem in playing these files.
I don’t recall if anyone ever reported being able to use .mts directly. And I don’t know why WMP can play the file and ELAN doesn’t, will have to look into that.
In our institute a lot of AVCHD/.mts files are converted to .mp4 by means of ffmpeg with the following parameters:
-y -acodec libfaac -ab 256k -ac 2 -vcodec libx264
followed by the input and output file.
Just for the record.
thanks for the help! I use Adobe Encoder, and encode them into mpeg2. It seems to work just fine this way, although I am having some doubts in general with respect to formats and annotation synchrony. Could it be that, due to the format to which I encoded some files (or a mistake in the process? a bad parameter?) some annotations become off sync with time?
I explain: I had this dataset from two years ago, with all files converted from .mts to .mpg. Back in the day, I transcribed speech, annotated gestures, just fine. But now I open it, and all seems to be off-sync. The annotations towards the very end of the video do coincide with the audio in the file, but at the beginning of the video they are totally shifted. I just can’t figure out what’s going on, because as you can see it is not that all annotations should start exactly 1 second before, at the beginning they do, but then progressively, not anymore. I just don’t see a way of easily solving this, so at least I want to prevent the same from happening in the future.
Yes, that old situation you describe sounds like a bad case scenario. I don’t know if this is a known, common problem nor do I know if this is unique for specific encoding software. If the total duration of a media recording is different after conversion to another format it is clear something is wrong, but if the total duration is the same but the annotations at (especially) the beginning are out of sync it all becomes mysterious.
Even the more reasons to convert to a “common” format in an early phase of the process.
my problem is the second (mysterious) one. As a matter of fact, after the initial conversion I did not re-convert the videos again, so the source was always the same, only that a year ago all the annotations were in sync, and now they aren’t when I open the files on my new computer at work. I think all my problems are due to the fact that I used an old(ish) computer that might have been too slow to properly encode the videos, and possibly annotating in that same computer might not have helped.
earlier you recommended that I convert my videos to mp4. After realising the bunch of synchrony problems that mpeg2 gives me (e.g., not playing selections properly -in several different computers), I decided to follow your advice. However, I use Adobe Media Encoder, and there the mp4 options are not optimal: quality loss is significant, and the AAC audio codec gives me problems (the sound is delayed when I play a selection in Elan). You mentioned ffmpeg, but I would like to know if you can recommend a more user-friendly interface that gives a good result (i.e., that doesn’t run on commands). I am currently trying TMPGenc, and also Handbrake.
I thought of switching to .mov instead of mp4, but TMPGenc generates 8gb .mov files (originally it’s about 1gb each), so I’m looking for a software that can generate a sleeker .mov file, or just a good mp4 or avi that doesn’t give me the audio delays. I could really use a recommendation.
Unfortunately I’m not an expert in this field, but I hear a lot of people being enthusiastic about Handbrake and I would expect TMPGenc to perform well and convenient as well.
I wouldn’t advise to switch to .mov instead of .mp4, that would again leave you with a proprietary format that you’ll have to convert sooner or later.
Maybe someone else can recommend you a tool and optimal settings?
thanks for the help anyways. Right now I am converting them to mp4 (although it takes the m4v extension for some reason) using handbrake, with the H264 codec, and slow deinterlace. After days of trying different settings, this finally looks promising: appropriate size and appropriate quality. If I am right and this indeed works, I will post screenshots with the settings, in case I can help somebody with the same problem
That would be very useful!
By the way, I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, it has been reported that for usage of .mp4 in ELAN it is best to have at least one key frame per second. But, having more reports on practical experiences in this area will be helpful.
here is how I (sort of) solved my problem. As I mentioned earlier, I exported the videos to mp4 (H264 codec)using Handbrake. In my case, so that the videos would play properly, it was important to use a Slow or Slower deinterlace (important so that no horizontal lines appear with motion), constant framerate (framerate = same as source), and a Slow x264 preset. This results in longer encoding times, but produces HD quality and quite small file sizes, compared with other encoding software. Also important, I used the audio codec AAC (ffmpeg), because using AAC (faac) (sometimes set as the default) results for me in audio delays when I play a selection in Elan.
So, all works now for me, BUT only in windows 8. I start to think that there is something odd with the latest version of Elan and Windows 7 because my other two computers (where I encounter problems) are windows 7, and on my W8 netbook it works perfectly. That, having the same exact codec packs installed and enabled. Could this be a thing to look into? At some point, I could get barely any normal format to work properly in Elan with the Windows7 machines.
Anyways, now I am happy that it works, but I would still like to find out what the problem is. Namely, why it is that Elan doesn’t work for me on Windows 7, with all the really mainstream formats & codecs that I have tried. In the next weeks I will proceed to re-encode my new dataset and I would like to be able to use those computers, instead of coding in a small netbook.
I have read in other posts that some people have strange crosshair behaviours, for example. This also happens to me when I use Elan in Windows 7, especially with the mpeg2 format that I used in the past (I thought this might help too).
I hope this post was informative, both to you and to the Elan community.
Thanks for the great technical support!
Thanks for sharing the settings that work for you.
I can’t explain the difference between W8 and W7; in principle it is the same “framework” that’s being used on both systems (but there might be implementation differences). I don’t think ELAN does anything different on W8 as compared to W7.
Would it be acceptable to you to share one of the smaller files you have, so that I can test on my W8 and W7 systems, to see if I observe the same difference? If so, I could probably create some space on one of the Max Planck file sharing facilities where you could upload the file. (Or we could use some other file sharing tool.)
