ffmpeg - and why it mostly won't work for normal users

Since I've got a new compact digital camera about a year ago I have the trouble that it's internal format is .MTS

.MTS ? What the heck is that? A question a lot of people will come up with as not all of us are the video cracks and sooo knowledgeable about all that stuff.

So - what would work under Linux to do something useful with all your videos having an .mts format?

Searches will lead you to ffmpeg a very powerful tool for video conversion. But unless you have a weeks time to figure out all the tecnicalities of video conversion which will drive you crazy when doing it the try-and-error way what does work?

After some fiddling and not hitting jackpot at all with direct conversions I figured out that the main problem ist how to get your command line right for ffmpeg. Normally a search on the internet will not produce the cookbook solution for your problem so I had to figure another way.

The solution was kdenlive. I'm running Debian which makes some things very easy. Do a:

Run the application and open the menu command. It contains a line for clip conversion. Neat - the conversion window even shows you the input to the ffmpeg command line. Now the videos do correctly convert into a usable format e.g. DVD-PAL (.mov) files. And kdenlive has matured into a usable video editing tool.

Nice