Okay I understand - but unfortunately that won’t work with the AVCHD format - Windows can’t read it directly like it can your Nikon movies, because it’s a more compressed format (allowing high quality videos to be stored in a smaller space) and needs to be “unpacked” by software for viewing and editing. Older computers don’t have the horsepower to uncompress and play back AVCHD directly from a memory card on the fly, and SD cards aren’t always fast enough either.
Hence the advice given above to copy the contents of the card to the computer hard drive (from where it will read much faster) and then either use VLC to view the files, or one of the Movavi apps to edit them and take screen grabs.
That’s the only way it will work I’m afraid. I know it seems daunting because it’s an unfamiliar procedure, but like anything else once you have the routine it’s manageable.
Well if was already living in Charente it would all be easy, I would be happy to pop over and sit down with you and sort it - but I am still in the UK full-time looking after my mother (who is 99 next Tuesday!) so my intended move to France is dependent on how long she keeps going, basically…
So my visits to France are currently limited to when I can get my brother to cover for me.
I wonder what you mean by ‘older’? This Lenovo was bought new in January 2022, so is 2 and a half years old.
This seems to me doubly puzzling because the Panasonic is so ancient that its maker has discontinued any support, like up to date details on the disc that came with it.
Happy Birthday to your Mum though, mine lasted 'till 76 and Dad refused to follow her 'till he was 94. I am not bidding to outdo him, I can feel the prickles of confusion already now, as I may well have demonstrated in this thread.
I wasn’t casting aspersions on your machine (I had no idea what vintage it was) just making a general comment!
Yes the Panasonic is an older camcorder so a modern PC or Mac could cope with its files, but unfortunately neither Windows nor Mac OS has seen fit to support the AVCHD video format natively, so that you can pop them open in the native media players - perhaps there would be royalty payments involved, I don’t know. They’ve left it to video software to handle.
OK I have one more option for you to try, which I think might do the trick.
It’s a free Video Converter app with a fairly simple interface - you drop the MTS files in at one end and it spits out an MP4 (which you can then view in the same way as your Nikon video files) at the other.
It will convert all the files from a card in one go.
I tested it and it doesn’t seem to add watermarks or anything - some of these apps have a 7 day trial and then they expect you to pay for them.
