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Author Topic: Creating thumbnails from AVCHD .mts files?  (Read 8609 times)

phitsc

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Creating thumbnails from AVCHD .mts files?
« on: December 14, 2011, 03:16 PM »
Anyone know some software that can create a thumbnail image (jpg) from .mts files (AVCHD)? Doesn't have to be free, but shouldn't be too expensive either. It should be able to batch process or handle a whole directory tree structure. Should run on Windows or Linux.

IainB

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Re: Creating thumbnails from AVCHD .mts files?
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2011, 04:39 PM »
You could take a look at Sony's PMB (Picture Motion Browser).
That shows thumbnails of .mts and most other video files.
The thumbnails are different (for the same file) to what I get in thumbnal view of xplorer² - which also shows thumbnails of .mts and most other video files.

I use PMB to manage my stills and video images. It came bundled with the Sony camera that I bought, and checks and updates itself when online.
PMB seems to be very good at what it does. It treats the images directory/subdirectories as its database. You can have a view that shows you all the thumbnails it has of the videos, regardless of whatever format (including .mts) those videos have. You can view just still images, or just videos, or both. The file properties within PMB seem to use the same thumbnails.
PMB analyses all the media files and creates thumbnails. Some of the thumbnails are in .THM files that my xplorer² can display, and I think others (not sure if it is just the .MTS ones) are in a proprietary format in .MOFF files that xplorer² does not seem to be able to display.

There's a whole suite of software with PMB, including some for editing videos - the latter is the best I have come across so far, in terms of preserving the HD video. (Some video editors seem to output a reduced quality of definition from the original.)

EDIT: I was playing about just now, and irfanview told me that the .THM files are actually misnamed .JPG files. So I changed the extension to .JPG, and found that they behave like .JPG files and contain the EXIF data of the camera (Sony DSC-H55 Cybershot) that took the video for that thumbnail.
So you could convert .THM files to .JPG just by changing the file extension in batch mode.
Still fossicking for more on .MTS and .MOFF file extensions. If .MTS files can be viewed as a thumbnail in xplorer², then I presume that they can be saved as a .jpg file, but I am not sure how to do this.
« Last Edit: December 14, 2011, 05:26 PM by IainB, Reason: Added note re .THM--> .JPG format. »

JavaJones

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Re: Creating thumbnails from AVCHD .mts files?
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2011, 04:54 PM »
I believe Media Player Classic - Home Cinema can do this. You can have it output either a JPG of the current frame or a "contact sheet" of frames if I recall correctly. Splayer, based on MPC, has similar options. Both should support MTS playback and have playlist options which should make it fairly easy to achieve batch-like output. If you want a commandline utility, Avisynth may be able to handle it (not sure though). Also Media Coder has a commandline option, though beware it uses Open Candy.

- Oshyan

phitsc

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Re: Creating thumbnails from AVCHD .mts files?
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2011, 03:24 PM »
Thanks guys. Will check them out.

4wd

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Re: Creating thumbnails from AVCHD .mts files?
« Reply #4 on: May 07, 2013, 12:20 AM »
Nod5 created a script for doing it here and fredkremenko did one here.

Should still work unless the interface of MPC/MPC-HC have radically changed.

EDIT: One day I'll learn to look at the preceding post dates more carefully  :wallbash:
« Last Edit: May 07, 2013, 01:46 AM by 4wd »