Can anyone help with editing/converting AVCHD/.MTS?

I recently shot a good deal of footage with my university's AVCHD camcorder for a film project. However, our entire fleet of Macs is down, and I only have Premiere 7.0, which does not support AVCHD/.MTS files. Does anyone know of a freeware video converter with good quality? I tried several freeware converters off of Google, including Handbrake, Prism, and the creatively named Free HD Converter, and while Handbrake's output was good, Premiere refused to accept the files. Can anyone help me with a freeware conversion program or something? I'd like to edit a quick trailer together by this weekend, and the Macs won't be up for 6 more days, so I wouldn't mind just converting to AVI and doing that in Premiere 7.0. Thanks!

 

Must you absolutely edit in Premiere? I dumped that program back in '05ish and have no use for it. There is only a handful of files it will accept.

 

Well, all I have access to is Nero, Premiere 7.0, and Windows Movie Maker...so Premiere's the best option, I think.

 

Premiere has gotten pretty good in recent years and the integration with other Adobe projects can be a great help. Having said that I still edit on FCP out of habit though having checked out the new version I'm staying with 7 at least until Apple makes X more pro-friendly. Don't get me wrong, X has great potential but it's just not there yet.

As for free convertors, try Handbrake.

EDIT: Oops I just saw that you tried Handbrake. If worst comes to worst you could always transcode using VLC though the quality won't be great.

 

What codec can I use in Handbrake to make the AVI files Premiere-friendly?