What is the difference between .mts and .mp4 video files, and which is better to edit?

Question

I know that .mts video files use MPEG-4 video compression. But why then don't they just have the .mp4 file name extension?

Since they don't, this means they are not digitally nor conceptually equivalent, given that one is just an advanced version of the other ("Advanced Video Coding High Definition (AVCHD) format" if that means anything), so what really is the difference between .mts and .mp4?

• And what does it mean for editing .mts files in a video editor? Is there some sort of advantage to cutting and adding effects to them compared to .mp4

Answer 1

mts and mp4, in this case, are file containers. In each mts video/audio frame has a presentation timestamp or PTS embedded in a packetized elementary stream or PES whereas mp4 video/audio frames don't. Each frame, in mp4, is a raw video/audio content depends on the encoding configuration, and it does not have a timestamp; the timestamp is the frame number/count divides by the frame per second.

I am not sure where does the statement or question

for editing .mts files in a video editor

come from, but if I evaluate video contents against audio contents, I need to extract timestamps for those target video and audio contents. If the file contatiner is mp4, it would be pain in the neck since I need to know the frame number of the target contents and estimate the timestamps of them.

But it's just the challenges of handling/validating stream content from scratch; talking of video editing, even Kdenlive and Openshot can handle a mp4 file well. I think the statment was about the early version of video editor, not for today.