My Experience to Convert 1080/60p MTS to 1080/30p MOV for iMovie

I used Panasonic HDC-TM700K to recorded videos. The video plays perfectly when connected to Samsung HDTV via HDMI. However, I would like to add some transitions to the videos for better Playback. iMovie is my preferred simple editor on my iMac. However, when I tried to import the 180/60p videos to iMovie 9, I got the error message saying "iMovie does not support footage recorded in 1080-60p from this Camcorder".

Thinking that it is the 60fps not supported by iMovie, I would like to convert 1080/60p to 1080/30p for iMovie. And the video size would be smaller on Mac too. After googling and searching solutions on Apple discussion forum, I notice that neither iMovie '09 nor iMovie '11 supports 1080/60p AVCHD files. There are two applications for 1080/60p videos: ClipWrap and Aunsoft MTS/M2TS Converter for Mac. I download the free trial versions of the both applications.


Both applications would export Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) for iMovie, but ClipWrap does not include the option for changing frame rate. Aunsoft MTS/M2TS Converter for Mac offers frame rate changing option. Even though the AIC as QuickTime movie format on Aunsoft Converter does not offer 30p as output format, I can choose other profile as output. I just get through the following steps to convert 1080/60p AVCHD to MOV for iMovie.

1. Import AVCHD files to Aunsoft MTS/M2TS Converter for Mac by clicking the "Add" button. The .mts files on the Panasonic HDC-TM700k camcorder could be found via the CAM_MEM folder > AVCHD > BDMV > STREAM.

2. Choose H.264 HD Video(*.mov) format under the HD Video group, and click the "Settings" button to change video frame rate to 30.

3. Start converting 1080/60p avchd to 30p on Mac by clicking the start button.


Well, the output video size is not about a half smaller than the original one. After contacting the support staff in Aunsoft, I notice that the file size is affected not only by frame rate, but also bit rate, and the video quality will be downgraded when choosing lower frame rate and bit rat.

Anyway, the AIC seems to be a better choice, but with larger output file size. Hope it helps you to get 1080/60p AVCHD videos to iMovie.