Awesome converter software to use w/ blender

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1

I’ve been struggling with IMO piece of sh#1 … can’t say it :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: … video cam! a JVC “full HD”, what it does is shoot 1440x1080 (anamorphic)

and hence the quality is not at all full HD; and it’s so badly compressed.

that’s the second part, compression, you get a TOD and a MOD file. (reminds me of the two annoying neighbor kids in Simpsons… Ned Flanders kids)

the format is utterly useless, can’t be read by any editing software. and tried a lot of convertes until I found

Handbrake http://handbrake.fr/

it’s Open Source, and free … and converts it utterly awesome on my mac. My friend who I share the video cam w/ has windows and doesn’t have the codec issues I have.

I mean I can see it in VLC perfectly nice, (VLC can guestimate codecs and give you a clear picture, when I load it to blender it’s all scrambled and codec error)

but thanks to Handbrake I can convert to at least mp4 100% quality. So no loss inbetween that conversion. and It also converts it from anamorhpic to hdtv res. that’s nice.

so check it out if you just happens to use a JVC (fake HD) cam for you shooting and can’t get the video into blender for VSE editin’

2

You know you can use VLC to convert right?

Just make a folder of all your .TOD files, drop this batch file into the folder, run it, and then you’ve got perfectly usable .mts files.

FOR /R %%G IN (.tod) DO (CALL :SUB_VLC “%%G”)
FOR /R %%G IN (.tod.mts) DO (CALL :SUB_RENAME “%%G”)
GOTO :eof

:SUB_VLC
SET _firstbit=%1
SET _qt="
CALL SET _newnm=%%_firstbit:%_qt%=%%
SET _commanm=%_newnm:,=COMMA%
REM echo %_commanm%
CALL “C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc” -I dummy -vvv %1 --sout=#transcode:standard{access=“file”,mux=“ts”,dst="%_commanm%.mts"} vlc://quit
GOTO :eof

:SUB_RENAME
SET _origfnm=%1
SET _endbit=%_origfnm:*.tod=%
CALL SET _newfilenm=%%_origfnm:.tod%_endbit%=.mts%%
SET _newfilenm=%_newfilenm:COMMA=,%
COPY %1 %_newfilenm%
DEL %1
GOTO :eof

:eof

3

Although it’s good you’ve got a solution, it sounds pretty desperate. :slight_smile:

Handbrake is ok, even awesome, but if your JVC .TOD file is just a container for mpeg2 then it should be easy enough to demux without transcoding.

Transcoding to mpeg4 is going to drop quality, resizing to 1920x1080 is going to drop quality, maybe not visible but it’s not 100% conversion.

It’s possible to do a HDV workflow in blender without actually resizing and let your player do the resize at playback? Blender will even let you view it at 1920x1080 just pixel aspect ratio.

FFMPEG on the CLI should unwrap the mpeg2 easily enough without transcoding.

GDSMux may do the job too without transcoding.

Would you have a sample to play with? AVISynth’s my tool of choice. :slight_smile:

4

we have a camera that spits out the same stupid formats. just rename the .mod (I think it’s that one, but it’s whichever one is larger) to .mpg; you don’t need to convert it. (as long as you’re happy with mpeg)

the reason it worked with vlc is because it’s using a standard codec, just not a standard name. :slight_smile:

5

Yeah, you can just rename the .mod files. I rename them to .mpg and they work most everywhere. Actually, it would be nice if Blender recognized .mod files as mpeg files so that you don’t have to change the extension to make them load.

6

loopduplicate, have you tried just browsing and loading them? FFMPEG handles the import and I think the last time I tried, FFMPEG could recognise them.

I’m sure devs would add the .TOD file extension to the filter in 2.5 file browser to make them visible and thumbnailed.

7

VLC on MY Windows XP64 makes useless files on convert. But handbrake does work well. I still love VLC for playback, though I rarely launch media player anymore.