How to play .MTS Formats on iMovie'09 ?

iMovie must import the file from the connected camera.
Do not try to open the file directly. Let iMovie "find" it.

Dislike watching my .MTS files with camcorder connected to my Mac, I usu. use a piece of third party software called Pavtube MTS/M2TS Converter to transcode MTS files into MOV for iMovie in advance.

You cannot play your mts files on your mac directly, use either of the methods described above for importing/converting for use in imovie. I personally import as described by QuicktimeKirk, but I also copy the original files for archive purposes which I can always convert at a later date as described by nichhit25 if ever they are needed again.

One suggestion I might give is to reformat your camera every few months (depending on usage) to avoid corruption of some video clips occurring.

+"You cannot play your mts files on your mac directly"+

You can, running Win7 Media Player under BootCamp... sad, but true

Yes it's true you can usually rely on windows to do something it doesn't need to do.

Back with some good news: I installed the latest version of Plex released a couple of days ago and it does play MTS/AVCHD videos!

using plex to convert from mts to mov, will i lose any quality? I want to keep it at 1080i.

you need convert it, try an video converter, i know where you can find.
http://www.mtsconverterdownload.com/index.html

Message was edited by: nonr

I'm also having a similar problem, I recently purchased a HDR-XR100, and when I first connected to my computer iMovie instantly recognised it and everything was fine, it no longer recognises it for some reason. The other day it randomly recognised it and now it doesn't again.

Apart from the fact that this looks like advertising, you obviously didn't register that the OP has a Mac and your software needs Windows

VLC is the best player for all OS's. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
But I have a problem with iMovie 9 and .MTS
Imovie used to recognize the camera and you could import all the clips. This stopped working 2 month ago! HELP!!!!

Plex is a player, not a converter. It plays AVCHD .MTS natively with no need for conversion or transcoding.

VLC is no good as it freezes and stutters terribly with 24mbps AVCHD (at leat on my 2.66GH/4G RAM MBP).

I once had an issue wiht my camera not showing up in iMovie and found that it had to be plugged into a power outlet for it to work.

I have some MTS files on a hard drive that I had to move them off the flash drive from the HD recorder while on vacation as we ran out of space, I cannot get the files to import into Imovie even if I put them on the flash drive which does import into the Mac...anyone have a solution for this? My Mac see's the MTS files but Imovie will not import them.

You can sometimes "trick" iMovie 7 and 8 into thinking a camera is connected by making a new Disk Image (Disk Utility app).
Recreate the exact file folder structure (names and nesting must match) and move the .mts file in its proper place. Launch iMovie while this new .dmg file is mounted and it may recognize be recognized as a camera.

I have this same problem on my Intel-based MacBook Pro laptop. Sometimes iMovie09 sees the .MTS files and will convert them, sometimes it doesn't and I have to use a video converter before importing the files to iMovie. (I use Voltaic, by the way -- and it's FREE.)

I had to do an archive & reinstall on the system a few weeks ago because the system upgrades simply trashed iMovie, and it worked like a charm again until yesterday.

This is a real pain in the you-know-what. iMovie seems to be really hinky.