AVCHD, M2TS, HD Camcorder Video Conversion Tutorial

If you've got an new HD camcorder like myself that records in AVCHD, you may have reason to convert the files into something a little more digestable. I'll show you how to convert a M2TS video file into the format of your choice. For this example, we are going to convert it to an MPEG4 (H.264) standard. All the tools we are going to use here are free. You are going to need the following software to follow this tutorial:

Avisynth
DGAVCDec
MeGui

We're going to assume you have already copied the file to your hard drive.

1. Start 'DGAVCIndex.exe' and you'll see the following window:
   



2. Use the 'File' menu to open your M2TS file. In this case, we are using 'Example.m2ts'.



3. In this case the file has a resolution of 1440x1080, is interlaced, and is a 16x9 image squeezed into a 4x3 frame, but all we care about at this point is demuxing the audio and creating a '.dga' project file. Click on 'Audio' and select 'Audio Demux' to get the following window:
   Now select the audio stream shown and then click 'Set' and 'Done'.
   


4. Now it's time to save the .dga project file and demux the audio. Choose 'File' and 'Save Project'. Save your new file in the same directory as your video file and name accordingly. In this case, we are saving 'Example.dga'. The audio in this case is AC3 and a 'Example...ac3' audio file is generated in addition to the '.dga'



5. Close DGAVCIndex, we are done with it now. Open Notepad or your favorite text editor and create a '.avs' file for use with Avisynth. In this example, I created a 'Example.avs' file and pasted only the following text:
   
   LoadPlugin("E:\DVDTools\dgavcdec100a18\DGAVCDecode.dll")
   AVCSource("E:\Example.dga")
   Load_Stdcall_Plugin("E:\Program Files\megui\tools\yadif\yadif.dll")
   Yadif()
   Lanczos4Resize(1280,720) # Lanczos (Sharp)
   
   Be sure to modify the path locations to the appropriate locations.
   'DGAVCDecode.dll' can be found wherever you installed 'DGAVCDec'.
   The 'Load' call and 'Yadif()' lines are only needed if the video you are converting is interlaced. If it is progressive, you can exclude both of these lines.
   Determine whether your videos are interlaced or progressive by looking at your camcorder settings. If the video resolution is AAAxBBBi, it's interlaced, and if it's AAAxBBBp, it's progressive.
   The 'Lanczos' line is only needed if you are resizing the video to a different resolution. In my case, I am watching the videos on a 720p television, so no use wasting the bandwidth on a file that's scaled by the TV anyway.
   


6. Now open MeGui and load the '.avs' file and load the '.ac3' file. Choose your file format of choice and hit 'AutoEncode' and choose your bitrate. I encode my 720p conversions at 3000 kbits/sec and have been very happy with the quality. Feel free to experiment with your own choice of bitrates.