I got the Sony HDR-SR10 a few days ago. I’ve seen pretty darn good footage recorded with this thing but have yet to duplicate it. The camera was in the February 2010 issue of 3D world and of the 3 cameras mentioned it was the one i could afford (thanks to ebay) that also got better reviews. The thing records in mts format which I can’t for the life of me convert to anything after effects understands while retaining quality. Granted, I am new to the camera and may be recording poorly in the first place but of the converters I’ve tried the best result I’ve gotten is about half the size of the original mts file. I’ve heard vegas pro handles them but I don’t have tons of money laying round especially if all I’m going to use it for is to make a tiff sequence. If you or someone you know knows anything about recording with this camera, converting the file to anything AE can use or just have similar issues I could use the help. thanks!

I’ve not come across MTS files before, but a quick Google yields plenty of results.
If you don’t have tons of money laying around, there is a free video converter here.

After a few days of looking and trying some things the best thing I’ve found for .mts conversion is the AVS Video Converter found here http://www.avs4you.com/
unfortunately it’s not free but you can download a trial which places a watermark in the center of the shot. It has quite a few options and the quality is pretty darn good. There is no lossless conversion which is too bad but the h.264 does the job. After Effects cs4 apparently will import .mts files without conversion. I haven’t tried this myself but that seems to be the general consensus. A free .mts player can be found here.
http://mirillis.com/splash.html
All it does is play them but it’s handy for seeing exactly what you recorded.
As far as the Sony HDR-SR10 goes the x.v. color option does wonders for picture quality. Be it HD, low light, whatever, make sure it’s on. hope this helps.

My Sony videocam creates “.m2ts” files, which can be imported directly into the latest version of Premiere (Pro CS4) and used as is.  However they are a MAJOR pain to work with as they stress out the computer like crazy.

They can also be uploaded as is to Youtube.  I have also read of people renaming the files to .mpg and being able to use them that way.

--3ds Max Design 2009 64bit, Direct3D 9, Win Vista Premium 64, 3ghz quadcore Xeon, Quadro FX1700--

I only have access to after effects here at work but I’ve heard that Premier handles them nicely. We have AE cs3 which doesn’t support either .mts or mt2s. And once I get them into AE all I’ll be doing is converting them to a image sequence which will hopefully relieve a bit of the stress on the box although I use a pretty nice one. I got the camera on ebay and the software, which i guess will convert them to .mov, didn’t come in the first shipment so I was looking for other alternatives. I did find the software for download on the sony website but it nearly destroyed my computer and I had to do a system restore to even be able to work. I got the cd now but am apprehensive to install it at work knowing what happened last time. I’ll install it at home on a computer i wouldn’t mind being out of commission for a while and see how that goes. I was just hoping to find a lossless way to get them into the pipeline i currently have access to. I mean, what’s the point of HD if i’m going to compress the crap out of it several times before I even get to work with the footage. I guess I’ll have to practice my puppy dog face and try and convince my boss to upgrade to cs4. Anyway, thanks for the comments and suggestions. Hopefully cs4 will land on a computer I can use or i’ll just have to break down and use a lossy conversion of my footage which honestly wouldn’t be the end of the world since it’s only going to be for personal vfx projects anyway. thanks again.

I was just hoping to find a lossless way to get them into the pipeline i currently have access to. I mean, what’s the point of HD if i’m going to compress the crap out of it several times before I even get to work with the footage.

Ideally you want something that will convert straight to a lossless sequence rather than a video file, much easier to work with. But not all converters do that. If you want to output to a lossless AVI first, you could install the Lagarith codec. It’s a pain having to convert and reconvert, but at least you can keep it lossless.