Mountain Lion AVCHD Content is marked as private

+1

it's very annoying...

I am working on an AppleScript to try and have it navigate to the directory with the MTS files. Getting closer, will post when done.

The OSX implementation wouldn't be bad *IF* you could preview the MTS files and not have to reclick private everytime or load them all up. Also, sometimes you want to copy, move or delete those MTS files and this just seems to not give you any of that.

you can easily right-click and show package contents and drag those files out..

but as far as ISO's are concerned i'm screwed

For me it's just a whole bunch of unnecessary steps. I use a Sony FS100 and the files are 3 directories deep, so I have to do show package contents I believe 3 times. Since I save the entire card structure for a variety of important reasons, when I have a shoot that has 4 to 6 directories of files, it's a pain to do this 12 to 18 times.

Okay, I have successfully written an AppleScript that does what I want, however, now I have a new problem as there appears to be a bug in Mountain Lion that is preventing me from making this the default behaviour for ALL 'PRIVATE' directories. I can associate it with one directory but each new card I bring in, the PRIVATE folder isn't associated with the script.

I've tried looking through the actual com files to see if I can change the behaviour, but I am not finding anything.

Here is the Applescript that you associate with the PRIVATE previous directory. For the FS100 file structure, this opens up to the directory containing the MTS files.

Hopefully someone else can help us with the association part that is broken.

(1) Open up the app 'AppleScript Editor' that is installed with OSX.

(2) Paste in this script:

on open of finderObjects

repeat with i in (finderObjects)

tell application "Finder"

open folder ((i as text) & "AVCHD:BDMV:STREAM")

end tell

end repeat

end open

(3) Click the 'Compile' button to make sure everything is okay. This script works on the top-level file that used to be a directory. So in my case, I will be double clicking on 'PRIVATE' which if I show contents, contains AVCHD at the next level. Knowing this, you can descend down into the directory you want and replace "AVCHD:BDMV:STREAM" with what you need for your camera card structure.

(4) When you save or export the script, make sure you save it as type 'Application'. I call my script "Open AVCHD Folder" and I placed it in the Utilities under Application so I would not forget where it was. If you do place it here you will need to 'Authenticate' probably.

(5) Go to the file that used to be a directory in earlier versions of OSX (In my case 'PRIVATE') and right click and select 'Get Info'. Find the section for 'Open With:' and select the drop down menu and choose 'Other...'. At the bottom, Set 'Enable:' to 'All Applications' then go to the AppleScript binary that you created. Also, make sure you select the 'Always Open With' checkbutton at the bottom. You will see a message that it is not sure if it can open this sort of file, but it can (if you coded it correctly with any changes you made). Select Add.

(6) I tried to use the 'Change All...' button below 'Open with:' but it returned an error. As far as I am concerned, this is a bug with OSX. This will prevent you from getting this as a default behavior for all PRIVATE directories.

Until we can work around the Chnage All bug, this is still more steps and not a full solution.

I'm thrilled that OSX finally supports AVCHD playback natively via quicktime. But this implementation is so half-assed, why did they even bother.

As far as I can tell, you're limited to opening up "private" in quicktime, waiting for all the thumbnails to generate, and then play exactly one clip. If you want to play the next clip, you need to close quicktime and start over. Seriously??

Is there no way to at least play the clips sequentially, like every other media player on the planet??

has anyone tried simply uninstalling quicktime?

since the avchd "view" is based on it... :S

i'm just curious and since i don't really use qt except for watching a trailer now and then it wouldn't be such a biggy to get rid of it

Could you please clarify OSX supporting AVCHD. I've only ever known AVCHD to be in .MTS format. I tried using quicktime to open a MTS file.........no success.

MTS files live in a directory structure. OSX recognizes that directory structure and instead of letting you decend into it, it brings up a thumbnail view where you select which clips you want to view in quicktime. As stated, it's not like a browse, it's to open a number of them at the same time. Horrible implementation.

Worse, if you have just an MTS file, it cannot (quicktime) handle that file alone. You have to have the WHOLE directory structure.

Hopefully someone will feed this back to them so they can fix this HORRIBLE implementation.

I already submitted Apple Feedback with this issue, but maybe if more people do the same it'll get some traction.

This should be something easily fixable in a patch. I guess a short-term solution would be to re-wrap the .mts files as .mov, which is exactly what happens when you import AVCHD clips into iPhoto or Aperture. It just re-wraps the files but doesn't transcode.

Oddly enough iMovie still requires transcoding.

Speaking of iPhoto, with the latest release it can directly access the clips within the directory structure. 3rd party apps like Lightroom no longer can see the .mts files, from what I've read on the net.

@Grimepoch: Your script works great and I was very pleased to have a work around for this issue. I've been using the the internal memory to record video, but I just picked up a new SDXC card that formats as exFAT. I've formatted it as FAT32 manually but the camera (Canon VIXIA HF S30) reformats to exFAT. Any chance you're working on a version for exFAt formatted cards??

Thank you so much for the workaround. It was maddening not to be able to open and access the .MTS files. I didn't want a program that would convert the files to a different format (and possibly decrease resolution/sound quality). Adobe Premiere Elements will import and use .MTS files, and I have MPlayerX to preview them, so there's no need to convert them for my purposes.

Hopefully Apple will fix the problem with Mountain Lion soon, and we won't need the workaround any more. Until then ... Thanks!

@grimepoch - your script has saved me so much stress and hassle. I needed an extra 10 seconds of footage for a project and was retransfering after upgrading to Mountain Lion only to find apple are outrageously narrow minded and have made AVCHD folder structures all packages for Quicktime.

I just had to customise it for a sony by removing the AVCHD path to give:

on open of finderObjects

repeat with i in (finderObjects)

tell application "Finder"

open folder ((i as text) & "BDMV:STREAM")

end tell

end repeat

end open

I owe you a beer thats for sure!

Thanks grimepoch, I did a video of a working example of your script:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZlTzddiEOk

So glad this worked out for your all! Hopefully they will see the error of their ways and revert back at some point to something that makes more sense than what they've done.