Cut AVCHD

How to Cut AVCHD Video Online

1. Upload Your AVCHD File: Drag and drop or click "+ Select File" to add a .MTS or .m2ts clip pulled from a Sony, Panasonic, Canon, or JVC camcorder's SD card. If you copied the full PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM/ folder, upload the numbered stream file (e.g. 00000.MTS) directly. Batch uploads are supported.
2. Set Start Time and Duration: Enter the start point and either the duration or end time. Both seconds (e.g. 8.5) and HH:MM:SS.sss (e.g. 00:00:08.500) are accepted. Scrub the preview to find the exact moment before locking it in — useful for cutting the camera's record-start and record-stop dead air off the head and tail of a take.
3. Pick the Output Container (Optional): Keep the AVCHD/MTS wrapper so the clip stays in the format your camcorder workflow expects, or switch via the dropdown to MP4 or MKV if you plan to drop the clip into an editor or share it online. Either way the cut is frame-accurate and the video is re-encoded at the visually-lossless default preset.
4. Cut and Download: Click "Cut". The selected segment is extracted on our servers — no sign-up, no watermark, no re-upload to a third-party cloud.

Why Cut AVCHD?

AVCHD is the consumer HD camcorder format jointly developed by Sony and Panasonic in 2006 and amended in 2011 (AVCHD 2.0) to add 1080/50p and 1080/60p Progressive mode. Inside the wrapper, video is always H.264/AVC, audio is Dolby Digital AC-3 (or, on some pro models, Linear PCM stereo), and the whole thing is packaged into an MPEG-2 Transport Stream — the same container Blu-ray uses, which is why on-camera files use the .MTS extension while desktop copies and Blu-ray rips use .m2ts. AVCHD also defines a strict folder structure (PRIVATE/AVCHD/BDMV/ on most solid-state Panasonic and Canon bodies, root-level BDMV/ on DVD-based and many Sony models) with CLIPINF, PLAYLIST, and STREAM subfolders that hold the metadata an AVCHD-aware player needs to seam-stitch a long take across multiple stream files.

Common reasons to cut without converting:

• Trimming camcorder dead air — Sony Handycams, Panasonic AG-AC30, and Canon XA-series cameras record one continuous clip per take; removing the lead-in and tail-out before importing into Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or Final Cut Pro saves editor scrub time and proxy storage.
• Rejoining ~4 GB FAT32 splits — AVCHD camcorders write to FAT32-formatted SD cards and auto-split a single take at the 4 GB file size cap. Cut out the seam after concatenation to produce one clean take.
• Pulling a highlight out of a long event — extract a 30-second clip from a 20-minute wedding ceremony or recital at source-matching quality without processing the whole take.
• Sampling for proxy editing — cut a short slice to use as a transcode test before committing to a full conversion to MP4 or MKV for the rest of the project.
• Reducing upload size — share a single moment on Drive, Frame.io, or YouTube instead of the multi-gigabyte original camcorder file.
• Cropping interview b-roll — pull a usable take out of a longer recording while keeping audio and video locked in sync.

AVCHD vs Raw MTS vs M2TS — What's the Difference?

Property	AVCHD (full folder)	.MTS (loose file)	.m2ts (Blu-ray / desktop)
What it is	Complete camera capture: BDMV/ + CLIPINF/ + PLAYLIST/ + STREAM/	One stream file from inside STREAM/, copied off the card	The same stream file, renamed (long filenames allowed)
Filename style	8.3 (00000.MTS, 00001.MTS)	8.3 (00000.MTS)	Long filenames (vacation_day3.m2ts)
Container	MPEG-2 Transport Stream (BDAV)	MPEG-2 Transport Stream (BDAV)	MPEG-2 Transport Stream (BDAV)
Video codec	H.264/AVC (always)	H.264/AVC	H.264/AVC, MPEG-2, or VC-1 (Blu-ray)
Audio codec	Dolby AC-3 or LPCM	AC-3 or LPCM	AC-3, DTS, LPCM, +HD audio on Blu-ray
Multi-clip seam metadata	Yes (PLAYLIST .MPL stitches splits)	No (stream only)	No (stream only)
Typical origin	Sony / Panasonic / Canon / JVC camcorder SD card	Single file pulled off the camera card	Blu-ray disc rip or desktop copy of .MTS
Renaming .MTS ⇄ .m2ts	N/A — folder structure	Safe; byte-identical	Safe; byte-identical

The three are byte-identical at the stream level — renaming .MTS to .m2ts (or back) changes nothing inside the file. The AVCHD folder wrapper adds playlists and clip-info metadata so the camera can seam-stitch a take split across two stream files; if you only have the loose .MTS, you lose that stitch metadata but the audio and video are intact.

AVCHD Bitrate and Recording Mode Reference

Mode	Resolution	Max Video Bitrate	Audio	Hourly File Size
PS (AVCHD 2.0 Progressive)	1920x1080 / 50p or 60p	28 Mbps	AC-3 stereo or LPCM	~13 GB
FX	1920x1080 / 60i or 24p	24 Mbps	AC-3 stereo	~11 GB
FH	1920x1080 / 60i or 24p	17 Mbps	AC-3 stereo	~8 GB
HQ	1280x720 / 60p	17 Mbps	AC-3 stereo	~8 GB
HA	1280x720 / 60p	13 Mbps	AC-3 stereo	~6 GB
LP	1440x1080 / 60i (anamorphic)	5 Mbps	AC-3 stereo	~2 GB

The AVCHD 1.0 spec caps non-DVD media at 24 Mbps; AVCHD 2.0 (2011) lifted that to 28 Mbps for the new Progressive 1080/50p and 1080/60p modes. DVD-based AVCHD camcorders are capped lower, at 18 Mbps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will cutting an AVCHD file lose any quality?

Not visibly. The cut decodes the kept segment and re-encodes it at the visually-lossless default preset — there is no stream-copy path, so the output is not bit-identical to the source, but at the default settings it is visually indistinguishable from the 24-28 Mbps original. The upside of re-encoding is precision: the cut starts on the exact frame you request, regardless of where the camera placed its I-frames.

Why does my cut start a fraction of a second earlier than the time I entered?

With XConvert it shouldn't — the cut re-encodes the kept segment, so the output starts exactly at the time you entered. The snap you're describing is how stream-copy cutters behave: they rewind to the nearest preceding keyframe, and AVCHD encoders place an I-frame roughly every 0.5-2 seconds, so those tools can start up to ~2 seconds early. Here the cut is frame-accurate, the same way desktop NLEs handle in/out points.

My camcorder split one long take into multiple ~4 GB MTS files. Can I cut a clip that spans two of those files?

Not directly — the split happens at the FAT32 4 GB file size limit, and the resulting .MTS files are independent stream files. The AVCHD spec guarantees they are codec-compatible and align at a GOP boundary, and the PLAYLIST/*.MPL file in the original folder structure tells AVCHD-aware players to seam-stitch them. To cut a clip spanning the seam, concatenate the two files first (with ffmpeg -f concat, mkvmerge, or any editor) and then cut the joined result. If you uploaded the full AVCHD folder, the player metadata is preserved but online cutters work on individual stream files, not folders.

Should I keep the file as AVCHD/MTS or switch to MP4 or MKV after cutting?

Keep AVCHD/MTS if the clip is going back to the camcorder card, an AVCHD-aware player, or any workflow that expects the original transport-stream wrapper. Switch to MP4 for editing in Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut, or sharing on YouTube/Vimeo — the audio gets re-muxed (often AC-3 stays, depending on the editor's tolerance, or it converts to AAC). Switch to MKV when you want a flexible container that natively holds AC-3 and any subtitle or chapter tracks you add later.

What's the difference between cutting AVCHD here and using the MTS cutter or M2TS cutter?

The three pages target the same underlying stream — they exist so you can land on whichever extension matches your file. Internally the cut is the same operation because .MTS, .m2ts, and the contents of an AVCHD STREAM/ folder are byte-identical MPEG-2 Transport Streams with H.264 video and AC-3 audio. If you have the full AVCHD folder from your camera, use this page; if you have a single loose .MTS off the card, cut-mts is the direct match; if you have a .m2ts from a Blu-ray rip, use cut-m2ts.

Will the AC-3 audio survive the cut?

The audio comes through in sync, though it is re-encoded along with the video at a bitrate matched to the source — AC-3 is the mandatory audio codec for AVCHD camcorders (LPCM is allowed but rare outside pro bodies). If you switch the output container to MP4, note that some editors and browsers prefer AAC — pick an AAC output if your downstream player rejects the audio track.

Can I cut multiple non-contiguous segments out of one AVCHD file in a single pass?

This page produces one segment per upload. To pull two or three highlights from a single take, run the cut once per segment. To stitch the resulting segments back together, use a desktop tool such as ffmpeg -f concat or mkvmerge — keep the same codec, resolution, and frame rate across all segments (which is automatic if they came from the same source clip) so the join can stream-copy without re-encoding.

Why is my AVCHD playback choppy on some computers but smooth in the camera?

AVCHD is a transport-stream format designed for hardware decoders; some software players struggle with the packet-aligned structure, the variable-bitrate H.264 streams up to 28 Mbps, or interlaced 60i material that the player has to deinterlace on the fly. After cutting, try playing in VLC or mpv (both handle AVCHD natively) — if those are smooth, the original was fine and your previous player was the problem. For older hardware, compress the AVCHD to a lower bitrate or convert to MP4 with H.264 baseline profile for broader compatibility.

Is there a file size limit for online cutting?

The cut runs on our servers, so the practical limit is upload size and connection speed and how long you're willing to wait. A 4 GB FAT32-split AVCHD clip uploads and cuts comfortably; larger concatenated multi-segment takes pushing 10+ GB just take longer to upload, since the cut itself runs on our servers. For lower-spec laptops, cut one source file at a time or trim AVCHD by simple percentage instead of by timecode.