HD video from Lumix - some not playing on PC, corrupt?

[TheLemur]

We've recently bought a Lumix camera for the HD video facility. We downloaded VLC media player in order to watch the HD video clips on our PCs.

There seems to be an intermittant problem in that some of the videos (.MTS files) just do not play on the PC. Most transfer across and play fine, but some great ones from this weekend just won't play. There's no error message and they're playable on the camera, but transferring to 2 PCs we get the same issue... the file size is large so there is data there but they just won't play on double click

I imagine the files are corrupt in some way? So my questions are (1) Is there another player that might be able to read them or some free software so we can try to recover the corrupt files? (2) How can we stop this from happening in the future - is it likely to be a memory card issue or a camera issue? (or a user issue?!) Many thanks if you can shed any light!

Did you copy from the memory card onto your hard drive before attempting to play ?

Must admit no knowledge of .MTS files but a very short search using metacrawler.com for "playing .MTS files" came up with a few possible apps.

One website selling a file converter is www.convertmtsfiles.net/ which may allow a few test runs (they charge US$ 35 - about 24 quid I think). The software offers conversion to lots of popular formats but only from .MTS (which seems a touch limited).

A further look found a forum page with a number of users seeking solutions for converting or playing on Windows and having problems. One person recommended Aunsoft Studio www.aunsoft.com/video-converter/ which again costs US$35 but clearly offers a free trial.

They mention conversion of Mkv and support for Nexus One and other mobile phones. I am putting this on my personal 'wish list' as it seems quite versatile and includes formats I've rarely seen mentioned on similar software.

Have a search, never know you may well find a cheaper or free option (and remember to 'bump' this at the weekend to see if someone else spots it and has suggestions.

You might also find it worth posting something in the Products section to see if someone else has the Lumix themselves. Good luck.

My Lumix is an old TZ3 that records stuff in VGA so I don't know anything about MTS.

But I do know VLC can be a bit flaky.

Do a google for MTS compatible players or codecs you will no doubt find some free ones.

However I'd be surprised if the camera was not packaged with a CD/DVD that contained something to play back that file type.

If nothing plays em and they are corrupted
I'd format the card if I was you and if it happens again take it back for a replacement (the card that is).