How to Recover Deleted MTS Video Files on Mac ?

“I had some videos recorded on my camcorder that I transferred on my Mac. But, now I’m unable to find them. Please help.” Know more in detail How to Recover Deleted MTS Video Files on Mac ?

We all store our data and files from various devices like camcorder, iPhones, etc. on our Mac computers to access them easily at one place. However, sometimes we have to face unexpected data loss situations due reasons like accidental deletion, corruption, malware, etc.

Data loss can be a devastating scenario for anyone but you should not worry as there are ways to recover deleted MTS files and other data on your Mac. Before moving onto performing MTS video file recovery on Mac, let’s first understand what MTS file is.

What is an MTS File?

HD Camcorders from various brands like Sony, Panasonic, etc. record videos in high definition video format called AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition). These files use MTS (MPEG Transport Stream) or M2TS (MPEG-2 Transport Stream) as their file extensions.

MTS or M2TS file extensions are almost identical with just one difference – when an AVCHD video is recorded on a camcorder, it uses the MTS file extension, whereas, when either the camcorder video is imported onto a computer for editing or the video is imported from a Blu-ray disc, its extension changes to M2TS. In simpler words, MTS is used while recording videos on a camcorder and M2TS is used for storing camcorder videos on a Blu-ray disc.

However, both these files extensions can also be used interchangeably.

MTS video files can be opened using variety of supported media players like –

• VLC Media Player
• Microsoft Windows Media Player
• Eltima Elmedia Player for Mac

Ways to Recover Deleted MTS Video Files on Mac

Now that we know what an MTS video file is, let’s move further and see some methods to recover deleted MTS video files on Mac.

Method 1: Check Trash

If you have accidentally deleted your MTS/M2TS video files present on your Mac, you can easily recover them by going to the Trash. Here are the steps –

• Click on Trash icon in the dock.
• Look for the deleted MTS files and restore them.

Method 2: Using an External Backup

If you have created a backup copy of your files and data present on Mac on either an external storage drive or iCloud, you can use it to recover your deleted MTS files. Simply connect your external drive and locate the required files. If the backup copy of your Mac data is stored on iCloud, log into it and download the missing files back on your Mac.

Method 3: Using Time Machine

Time machine is the Mac equivalent of File History on Windows. If you have enabled Time machine feature on your Mac computer beforehand, you can easily recover your missing or deleted MTS files in no time.

Time Machine uses an external storage drive as a backup drive to regularly create backup copies of the data present on your Mac.

Carefully follow the instructions as mentioned here to recover your deleted MTS video files using Time Machine backup.

Method 4: Using Third-Party Photo Recovery for Mac

If you have tried the above mentioned methods and are still unable to get the deleted MTS files back, it’s time for you to take help of a powerful and specialized photo and video recovery tool.

Stellar Photo Recovery for Mac is a powerful software for photo recovery for mac that uses advanced data recovery algorithms to look for the files and recover them. This software supports data recovery of almost every media file format like AVI, MTS, MPEG-4, MP4, etc. from any storage device like HDD, SSD, SD card, latest Apple silicon (M1 & M2) Macs, and more.

Here is how you can use this software to easily recover and restore your deleted MTS video files on Mac –

• Launch Stellar Photo Recovery for Mac on your Mac.
• Select drive or volume or external storage media from where you wish to recover your data.
• Click on Scan.
• The software will display all the recovered files in the Preview window. You can preview them to check them.
• If satisfied with results, click on Recover.

Notes –

• If you are not able to see the required files after quick scan, you can perform deep scan, which will look for the traces of the required files in every sector of the storage drive and will try to recover them.
• If you don’t want to recover all of the files and data displayed in the Preview window, this software gives you the freedom to selectively recover files. You can simply select the files that you require and recover them.

Tips to Secure Your MTS Video Files

Data loss is unexpected but we can do our part in safeguarding ourselves from any unprecedented data loss scenario. Here are some tips that we have compiled for you to protect your files and data –

• Create at least 3 backup copies of your data on different external drives or cloud.tv
• Always check before deleting files.
• Carefully format a storage drive by ensuring it doesn’t have anything essential on it.
• Always keep a data recovery software handy in case you encounter a data loss scenario.

Bottom Line

Losing out on important files and data is tough for any user and especially for a content creator whose efforts simply vanished. From documents to media files like MTS video files, MPEG-4, JPG and more, we store everything on our computers. Hence, it becomes important for us to create backup copies of our data.

In this post, we learned about MTS video files and some ways to recover them on Mac. We also discussed about a specialized media recovery software, which can help you easily recover deleted or lost files like MTS from your Mac. We hope this post helped you get your deleted MTS files back in no time.