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Video file formats questions


Freddy
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I am new to video with the A7rii. I find that my videos are stored as .MTS files. To copy a video to my computer and to view it, it is enough to just copy the .MTS file. However, the camera has stored  a number of small files in other formats as well. What is their use, if any? Can I safely delete them?

 

The files have the following extensions: .DAT, .BDM, .MPL, .CPI, .XML and .BIN.

 

Below a dir of my memory card. I left out the .JPG and .ARW files (stills).

 

 Volume in drive L has no label.

 

 Directory of L:\

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          PRIVATE

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          DCIM

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          MP_ROOT

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          SONY

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          AVCHD

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          M4ROOT

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\SONY

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

28-11-2015  10:17    <DIR>          SETTING

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\SONY\SETTING

 

28-11-2015  10:17    <DIR>          .

28-11-2015  10:17    <DIR>          ..

28-11-2015  10:17    <DIR>          7RM2P

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\SONY\SETTING\7RM2P

 

28-11-2015  10:17    <DIR>          .

28-11-2015  10:17    <DIR>          ..

28-11-2015  10:17             1.152 CAMPRO01.DAT

               1 File(s)          1.152 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\AVCHD

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          BDMV

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\AVCHD\BDMV

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

01-01-2016  12:34               142 MOVIEOBJ.BDM

01-01-2016  12:34               720 INDEX.BDM

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          PLAYLIST

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          CLIPINF

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          STREAM

               2 File(s)            862 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\AVCHD\BDMV\PLAYLIST

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

01-01-2016  12:34             2.260 00000.MPL

               1 File(s)          2.260 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\AVCHD\BDMV\CLIPINF

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

01-01-2016  12:12               718 00000.CPI

01-01-2016  12:12               634 00001.CPI

01-01-2016  12:14             1.074 00002.CPI

01-01-2016  12:14               634 00003.CPI

01-01-2016  12:15               694 00004.CPI

01-01-2016  12:19               942 00005.CPI

01-01-2016  12:21               952 00006.CPI

01-01-2016  12:25               850 00007.CPI

01-01-2016  12:34             2.596 00008.CPI

01-01-2016  12:34             4.946 00009.CPI

              10 File(s)         14.040 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\AVCHD\BDMV\STREAM

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

01-01-2016  12:12        19.365.888 00000.MTS

01-01-2016  12:12         1.081.344 00001.MTS

01-01-2016  12:13        98.893.824 00002.MTS

01-01-2016  12:14         1.277.952 00003.MTS

01-01-2016  12:14        12.288.000 00004.MTS

01-01-2016  12:15        70.090.752 00005.MTS

01-01-2016  12:19        50.921.472 00006.MTS

01-01-2016  12:21        47.579.136 00007.MTS

01-01-2016  12:25       425.656.320 00008.MTS

01-01-2016  12:34       983.433.216 00009.MTS

              10 File(s)  1.710.587.904 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\M4ROOT

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          CLIP

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          SUB

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          THMBNL

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          GENERAL

25-11-2015  10:46               406 MEDIAPRO.XML

25-11-2015  10:46                 7 STATUS.BIN

               2 File(s)            413 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\M4ROOT\CLIP

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\M4ROOT\SUB

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\M4ROOT\THMBNL

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\PRIVATE\M4ROOT\GENERAL

 

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:46    <DIR>          ..

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\DCIM

 

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          ..

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          100MSDCF

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\DCIM\100MSDCF

 

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          ..

Directory of L:\MP_ROOT

 

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          ..

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          100ANV01

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\MP_ROOT\100ANV01

 

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          .

25-11-2015  10:53    <DIR>          ..

               0 File(s)              0 bytes

 

 Directory of L:\System Volume Information

 

28-11-2015  13:51                76 IndexerVolumeGuid

17-12-2015  12:54                12 WPSettings.dat

               2 File(s)             88 bytes

 

     Total Files Listed:

             152 File(s)  5.034.428.799 bytes

              54 Dir(s)  122.713.931.776 bytes free

 

Kind regards, happy New Year  and thanks for your explanations, Freddy.

 

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I am new to video with the A7rii. I find that my videos are stored as .MTS files. To copy a video to my computer and to view it, it is enough to just copy the .MTS file. However, the camera has stored  a number of small files in other formats as well. What is their use, if any? Can I safely delete them?

 

This is a common question. In short the best practice is keep the entire folder tree together. There is important metadata in those other files. FCPX can import directly from the high-level folder -- it automatically knows where the video files are so you don't have to navigate down. I don't recall Premiere's behavior on this.

 

For more background on this, see this brief tutorial video "Codec and containers":

 

 

The .MTS files imply you were recording AVCHD. The A7RII can record either AVCHD or XAVC-S. In general you want to use XAVC-S, not AVCHD. It is just easier to deal with, especially on Mac computers.

 

If you don't like the cumbersome folder structure you can re-wrap the AVCHD files into a series of .mp4 or .mov files using ClipWrap or similar tools: http://www.divergentmedia.com/clipwrap That allows you to just store the video files themselves but entails an additional processing step.

 

ClipWrap is Mac only. There is a long discussion of Windows alternatives on this thread at Videomaker.com: http://www.videomaker.com/forum/topic/avchd-rewrap

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