How to Play MTS Video Files & Convert to MP4

coming up on ask the tech guy Darla has some mysterious files on her hard drive will help decode the mystery next this is Troy's ask the tech guy is brought to you by LastPass the number one most preferred password manager visit lastpass.com slash twit to learn more [Music] [Applause] hello everybody Leo Laporte here another thrilling gripping edition of ask the tech guy our question comes from Darla in Montana it's kind of an interesting question but I think we've got the solution she writes four years ago I had several external hard drives on which I had numerous Home Videos HD in standard and pictures backed up when I changed computers there were several files I couldn't open all of a sudden it seems that the extensions for these files were mts m2ts and so forth she'd get the message this file isn't playable that might be because the file type is unsupported the file extension is incorrect the file is corrupt the old computer she says was on Windows Vista then upgraded to Windows 10 the new computer's Windows 10 what's going on well fortunately this is fairly easy and if this happens to you I've got a pretty quick and nearly fail as failure proof way of figuring this out but first you have to understand how Windows works the windows keeps a database of all the file extensions it knows about do C dot e XLS dot exe those are those three letters that follow a file name period dot exe period exe or dot exe and Windows determines the files purpose and type from those three letters so as a result you know if it if it looks at a file you double click it to open it his first thing it's gonna do is look up that file extension and then if it's associated with the program it will launch that program and tell the program and by the way Darla wants to open this file if you aren't a system though that doesn't know about that extension you're going to get this same error message Darla got I don't know what to do with this probably in her case the difference was the programs she'd installed every time you install a new program part of the installation process is telling Windows oh and I handle mts and mt2 as files and that kind of thing in her case I'm almost certain she mentioned it was a hard drive with videos on it that this is an mts file a particular kind of mts file that comes along with a CHD video files there is a problem sometimes when these three-letter extensions often there are there only so many right often there's an overlap so sometimes you'll get an extension dbx or something that can be used in a variety of different programs then you'll have to do a little detective work to figure it out but the first thing I do is like Google and this is what I did googled mts and I found a website and there are a lot of them that says oh yeah that's part of the AVCHD file system when you record on a lot of camcorders on a lot of video cameras on a lot of camera phones even digital still cameras if it's recording AVCHD you'll notice in the folder it's got uh several different files one of them is mts probably what happened Darla is on your old computer you had a program installed maybe was your Video Editor maybe it was a movie player that handled those extensions and you haven't installed it on the new system well good news there's a free program that handles almost every kind of video file and video extension and that's called VLC player we love this program it was I always say it was written by French schoolboys it actually was originally created at a French University it's now a free open-source program that's widely used you can get it at video LAN org VI de o LAN org download the VLC player you'll actually be glad to have it I know on a Windows machine you have multiple different media players but VLC is the smartest it can handle a lot of different formats including those MTS files now they may have been support files but if they actually contain video you just open it with VLC and you'll be able to play it back and best of all you can convert it with VLC into another file format that maybe you prefer I generally like to do that if I have a variety of different file formats for video I'll use a program like VLC player or another great one from from France called handbrake from handbrake dot fr to take those files and convert them into kind of a lingua franca my favorite right now is H dot 264 it gives you the smallest file size with the highest quality playback so it's a it's a great file format for almost all your videos and if you've got h.265 v files on your drive usually dot mp4 you should be able to play them back with almost anything so if there's data in them and there probably is VLC player a play it and if you want you can ask VLC player to convert it to mp4 so that you won't have to you know you could play it in anything you want great question Darla it happens a lot and I'm glad we can help us solve it now let's talk about our advertiser LastPass you only need one master password and LastPass takes care of the rest we use it at twit their business lineup includes single sign-on technology and goes beyond standard two-factor authentication they call it MFA multi-factor uses biometrics geolocation and another great reason the last pass security challenge it'll scan all your passwords show you exactly which passwords are putting you at risk and help you fix them visit lastpass.com slash twit to find out how they can help you lastpass.com slash twit if you have a question for me you'd like to see on ask the tech guy easy enough just email ask the tech guy at twit TV I'm Leo Laporte we'll see you next time for another tough Tech conundrum stomp tell a nasty tech conundrum email ask the TECA at twit TV [Music]

Channel: Hands-On Windows

Views: 21,323

Keywords: .mts, .mts files premiere pro, .mts file, .mts to mp4, .mts vs .mp4, .mts converter, convert, mts to mp4, .mts avchd, mp4, Handbrake, m2ts, m2ts file, m2ts to mkv, m2ts to mp4, m2ts vs mp4, m2ts video, m2ts format, m2ts or mp4, mkv, vlc, mts video, mts video converter to mp4, mts video format, mts video player, avchd, How To, diy, tech help

Id: 9gQS3qHLTZA

Length: 6min 34sec (394 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 16 2019