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Question

video format on Sony cybershot dsc-tx30

by Sep 6, 2014 12:40PM PDT

I purchased new camera, sony cybershot dsc-tx30 to replace a sony cybershot dsc-tx5 that I love and have sent for repair. The tx5 video format was .mp4. When I inserted the sd card into the card reader, I saw two folders, dcim, and mp_root. The stills were in a subfolder of dcim and the videos were in a subfolder of mp_root. The micro sd card used in my tx30 had the same folders, but when I opened the subfolder of mp_root, no files appeared. I knew there was video on the card. I could view it on the camera. After downloading "Play Memories Home" from Sony, I was able to see the files. They were .m2ts files. I was able to transfer them to my husband's laptop (mine was Windows xp and didn't support the software), but the program was large and complicated and crashed his laptop, so I uninstalled it. None of my video editing or video viewing programs like Quicktime, or Windows media player recognize this .m2ts file type. Why is Sony doing this? I am angry that the reviewers on Amazon did not mention the file type of the video. Is there any way I can deal with this format without using Sony's program? Any suggestions, comments, sympathy? Anyone else had this problem?

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Answer
MP4 is more of a container than a format. Link follows.
by Forum moderator Sep 10, 2014 7:04AM PDT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_14 writes "MPEG-4 Part 14 or MP4 is a digital multimedia format most commonly used to store video and audio, but can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images.[2] Like most modern container formats,..."

So to inspect the actual video formatting we need more tools.

HOWEVER your question is why does Sony do this? You'll have to ask Sony but video formats are mostly copyrighted, patented and there has yet to be any end to the creation of new video encoding methods.

OK, what do I do? Once I have the video out I play it with VLC Player. If I want to edit it, WHOLE NEW DISCUSSION but I use a rather newest Windows 8 laptop with a raft of tools like Handbrake, VLC Player and some video editors as well.

What can really piss folk off is that it's sort of a witches brew that has not been simplified enough. I doubt it will anytime soon as when I find a simple video editor it still has us learning about video container, encoding, transcoding, getting the content onto our PC and more.

To make matters more worse, those on XP feel left behind. That ship has sailed but the nice thing about VLC Player is that one can play on just about any XP machine.
Bob
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Cybershot dsc-tx30 can shoot mp4
by newpeg Sep 10, 2014 10:29AM PDT

Thanks, Bob. VLC sounds like a good player. I discovered that my Cyberlink Power Director 9.0 will read, play, and edit the .mts and .m2ts formats. But, even better I discovered that the ts30 has a menu setting where you can choose the mp4 format! Press the Menu button of this camera, go to Settings (the icon in the upper left corner), this brings up Shooting Settings where you select Movie format. You may then select AVCHD or MP4! Yea!

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