MTS - The file extension for AVCHD video. MTS does not play well with Plex. MTS video appears on top on the timeline suggesting that Plex isn’t correctly reading MTS metadata time. While playable, a thumnail isn’t present. MTS files tend to be really large as well. ExifTool isn’t able to alter metadata on MTS video.
To workaround these issues, I converted the MTS files to the friendlier MP4 format. The size of the the resulting MP4 is around 10% of the MTS file size. XMedia Recode does a solid job of the conversion. However, the process is slow. Metadata time has to be reset before the MP4s are inserted back into the Plex library.
To avoid interlacing issues, it’s important to copy rather than convert video. The resulting file will not reduce in size much, but the video quality will be retained. The other bonus is that XMedia Recode operates quickly in this mode.
