What usually works for me is to use the DOS binary copy & concatenate to combine the separate MTS files into a single file. In a DOS prompt window you can type something like this:

copy /b camerafile001.mts + camerafile002.mts + camerafile003.mts combinedfile.mts

In most all cases this will seamlessly join the files. There's always a chance that your camera does something funky that prevents this from happening, but it's worth a try.

Actually, i usually name the combined file with a .mpg extension instead of .mts because Vegas 9 complains less about opening .mpg.

I always join the files with tsMuxeR, which seems to work flawlessly.

Thanks, as indicated above, I tried Device Explorer- did not work.

Slow :)

Not very dos savvy. What would be the command to combine directly off SD card (F:\ drive) to external hard drive (Z:\)?

You didn't say what kind of camera you have - but if it is a Panasonic G-series there will always be about a half-second delay at the start of every clip for the audio track. That's why I always use a 2-second fade-in for all tracks.

Jerry: you can simply prepend the drive letters to the beginning of the file names, so you could type in something like this:

copy /b f:\camerafile001.mts + f:\camerafile002.mts + f:\camerafile003.mts z:\my_capture_directory\combinedfile.mts

If you are currently in either your F:\ drive or the output directory then you can skip the drive letter\directory name for the current location.