This document will cover some of the more common video file types and formats that modern digital video cameras use. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but should give an indication of the most popular ones and what issues they may have.
AVCHD - .MTS files
AVCHD has become one of the more popular HD video formats and is widely compatible with more recent editing softwares such as Final Cut Pro, Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere and iMovie. These softwares should detect the AVCHD files on the camera and convert them accordingly.
Other editing softwares that can't detect cameras with AVCHD files, such as Windows Movie Maker, need the files to be converted to compatible formats first. (Windows Live Movie Editor supports AVCHD.)
AVCHD is a compressed HD format, so most editing softwares will need to convert them before editing, and these converted files can take up a lot of space.
AVI - .avi files
Many cameras, particularly stills cameras, will record to .avi format. This format is mostly compatible with Windows Movie Maker and PC-based editing softwares. To use on Mac software like iMovie or FCP, use MPEG-Streamclip to convert to something more compatible.
MOV - .mov files
Another popular format is the Quicktime .mov format, which is more compatible with Mac softwares. To convert these files for use in Windows Movie Maker, follow this link.
MPEG - includes .mpg, .mpeg, .mod, .mp4
Mpeg cameras are very common, usually they are Standard Definition but record to hard drives or memory cards. Often they are in either MPEG2 or MPEG4 format, and they occasionally work natively in editing softwares, but often not.
These files are best converted using either MPEG Streamclip or Prism, and converted to something similar to DV quality.
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