How to import video from Canon Vixia HF100 to your PC without PixelaMixer

At the moment Canon Vixia HF100 is the best consumer HD flash camera. It’s not perfect, I found plenty of glitches and inconveniences like

  1. Sometimes it takes up to 15 seconds to switch the mode (Play/Record)
  2. The navigation is not very intuitive
  3. The official video backup process via Pixela Mixer (i.e. you need to install a piece of commercial software before you will be able to get your video from camera to computer)

Despite all those and many other issues it is still the best. The video quality is just outstanding, it’s like having whole Hollywood in your pocket. While I can do nothing (so far) with #1 and #2 annoyances #3 is easily solvable. You don’t need to install this special piece of software called PixelaMixer. In fact I didn’t even try it after reading couple reviews saying it’s no good at all. You can just connect the camera to the PC or insert the SD card into the card reader and copy .mts files from <drive>\private\avchd\bdmv\stream to your backup device. Then you can process the files with whatever software you prefer.
If you also want to backup the images then get them at <drive>\DCIM, as usually.

3 thoughts on “How to import video from Canon Vixia HF100 to your PC without PixelaMixer

  1. Thanks for the info, I have navigated to the stream folder and found the movie clips in there, however when I try to copy them to my computer, nothing actually happens. It just sits on the copying screen for ages and the speed is 0kb/s?

    1. Hi Tim,

      The files you see on the SD card are regular files and there is no magic involved in copying them.
      Check you firewall settings, antivirus settings, SD card reader specs (some of them are unable to work with larger cards correctly). Let me know the card reader model, your OS and card name if problem persists.

      Andrey

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