Converting MTS for best use in After Effects? I have a client who gave me nothing but MTS files to use in After Effects. Basically it's HD slow motion photography, shot sideways, against a greenscreen, and all he wants to do is put one 1920 x 1080 composition up against another (they are rotated 90 degrees), have em move in the slow motion he shot them as, and fade out to another.

It's more of an effect, than a movie, so we're working completely in After Effects, no need to go back to any NLE. There's also no audio.

After Effects WILL work with MTS, but it runs really slow and was going to take hours just to render out 10 seconds. So I suggested we find a way to compress them, while still keeping the quality. (Also the greenscreen needs to retain data to be keyed out)

I've tried using Adobe Media Encoder to try out these formats. Note that the source MTS is 500MB, and 4 mins.

Quicktime PNG Codec (NO, LOSS QUALITY BAD) I forget the size, deleted it.

Quicktime ProRes422 : (SEEMS QUALITY RETAINED, FILE SIZE TRIPLES THOUGH) 2GB

Quicktime Animation (NO, LOST TOO MUCH QUALITY, ALL TILING AND PIXELATED) 5GB

Quicktime Cinepak (NO, SO MUCH QUALITY LOSS THAT IT LOOKS LIKE A 256 GIF PAINTING NOW) 600MB

Quicktime H.264 (NO, BLURRY QUALITY PIXELS) 37MB

Quicktime TIFF Codec (NO, LOST TOO MUCH QUALITY, ALL TILING AND PIXELATED) 10-FRICKEN-GB

Quicktime MPEG-4 VIDEO (NO, BLURRY QUALITY PIXELS, LOOKS LIKE H.264 RESULT) 28MB)

Quicktime HDV1080p24 MPEG-2 (WE MIGHT HAVE A WINNER) 600MB

TIFF SEQUENCE (Hasn't exported yet)

FLV (Hasn't exported yet)


Yeah....so I'm not sure what to do here. Again, the final result, is a no-audio, 1920 x 1080...not sure frame rate, VLC says some crazy number like 46.3432, that retains quality and can be reliably keyed, and renders out the fastest that After Effects CS5 (or 5.5, don't remember, it's the clients) will allow, because my client needs to be able to compare compositions against each other and stuff.

Thanks, I'm going crazy here!

Also, I asked CC, but figured I'd get faster responses here.
Use ClipWrap to convert the MTS file into a Quicktime Movie file (e.g. ProRes 422 codec).  There's a free version and a paid version - both will do what you need:
http://www.divergentmedia.com/clipwrap

Handbrake will also do this, I believe:
http://allmybrain.com/2010/01/05/handbrake-can-convert-mts-files-for-mac/