AVCHD - Playing Back AVCHD Video

Playing Back AVCHD Video

Recorded AVCHD video can be played back in a variety of ways:

• Direct playback — video can be played on a television set from a camcorder through HDMI or component-video cable.
• AVCHD disc — AVCHD video, recorded onto DVD can be played on most Blu-ray Disc players or on a PlayStation 3 gaming console.
• Blu-ray disc — AVCHD video, recorded onto Blu-ray disc can be played on most Blu-ray Disc players (see table below).
• AVCHD memory card — AVCHD video, recorded on an SDHC or Memory Stick card can be played on select Blu-ray Disc players, HDTV sets, on a PlayStation 3 gaming console and on some other set-top media players.
• USB playback — video files, recorded on an external storage device like a hard disk drive or a USB "stick" can be played on select Blu-ray Disc players, HDTV sets, PlayStation 3 gaming console, set-top media players and from a computer.
• Computer playback — any media and target format that is supported by a particular computer hardware and software can be watched on a computer monitor or TV set. Presently, the open-source VLC media player plays AVCHD video files and a wide variety of additional formats, and is freely available for most modern operating systems (including Linux, Mac OS X, MS Windows) and some mobile platforms. Since Mountain Lion, Mac OS does support native AVCHD playback via the default media player, QuickTime. Some Windows 7 editions can import and play AVCHD video natively, having files with extensions M2TS, MTS and M2T pre-registered in the system. (Windows 7 starter edition does not support AVCHD files out of the box, and so requires a third-party player.) In editions of Windows 7 that do support AVCHD files, Windows Media Player can index content in these files, and Windows Explorer can create thumbnails for each clip. Windows 7 does not support importing of AVCHD video metadata such as thumbnail images, playlists, and clip index files. Joining AVCHD video files during the import is not supported either.