How do you open a MTS file on a Mac? [SOLVED]

Playing movie files on a 27" iMac with Retina 5K display is great when it's working properly, but sometimes it's not all sunshine and roses. Here is a common problem of opening and viewing MTS file in Mac computer that you might be coming across and how to fix it. You may also want to burn your quality MTS footage to a DVD or Blu-ray to enjoy on home big TV. Read more about how to burn .mts file to DVD.

Scenario

I just got a Canon Vixia HG 20 HD camcorder. When I put the videos created by this digital camera on Mac and want to access to them, it starts with the sign that Mac cannot open these files.

I search the web and it tells me that the format of the video files I have are MTS, which are the raw HD files from my Canon video camera. Actually, I don't know what the "raw" means. But the internet page shows that Mac media player cannot do anything with these raw .mts files.

If you're trying to view a MTS video in Mac, but the QuickTime player can't open it, that can be really annoying. There are two common solutions to consider here.

Option 1: Use a 3rd Party Media Player

Since the pre-installed Apple QuickTime media player is very picky about what it accepts, if you come across video files that won't open in Mac, you may use a 3rd party alternative to handle them, VLC for example. It is an amazing piece of software that plays almost everything you throw at it, including the digital files that Mac doesn't natively support. It works pretty well on Windows, OSX, Linux and mobile operating systems. Get the link and you can know more: http://www.videolan.org/

VLC media player is far from the only application you can take to play the MTS file on Mac—there are a countless of free, full-loaded apps available to get from Apple App Store.

Option 2: Convert MTS into Something More Accessible for Mac

If you don't fancy the idea of installing another media player application on your machine, and want to do more than just MTS playback for Mac, Video Converter for Mac could be just what you need. It can convert your video files, including MTS, into a format playable Mac and iOS devices, and offers a good selection of output options, including the popular AVI, MOV, WMV, MKV, M4V and MP4. You can also choose to convert the video into audio format if you just want the soundtrack.

It's particularly useful because it houses a large number of presets for popular devices and multimedia players, and allows you to queue up multiple files for conversion. It also comes with a handy video editor tool that lets you to do some basic editing before the conversion. The program runs on both Windows and Mac platform.

Now, let's take a look at how it works in converting MTS to Apple-readable mp4 file so that you can open and play it on Mac smoothly.

Step 1: Import MTS files

Once you've opened the program, you will be presented with a clean interface, from which you can either drag your MTS footage from computer and drop them to , or click "Add Files" on the menu bar to import the MTS files.

Click the "Edit" on the top, you can trim, crop, split, merge your video files as you like.

Step 2: Select a Mac acceptable format from "Profile" menu

Then open the "Profiles" drop-down menu at the lower left side of the screen, select a desired format option from "HD Video" category. Options with *.mp4, *.mov, *.m4v extension are all supported.

By clicking the "Settings" button next to "Profile" menu, you're given access to Profile Settings window, from where you can tweak the advanced settings such as resolution, frame rate, bit rate, codec, etc. This is optional.

Step 3: Begin MTS conversion

Finally, click on the "Convert" button at the bottom corner to kick off the MTS conversion process. The software will start converting MTS files in the queue to the chosen format which is playable in Mac.

The converting speed depends in the specifications of your computer, the conversion settings you set up, as well as the size of your source AVCHD MTS files.

Conclusion

Either way, both methods presented above enable you to play MTS on Mac smoothly. And the later choice—using a video converter—is even with little to no efforts. Just go try this out, there is no strings attached!