I plan to buy the Sony HDR-CX7 camcorder.
After some tests, I realized VP8 can’t make Smart Render with AVCHD files (moreover, it’s mentioned in the VP8 comparison chart: "No-recompress for Long GOP HDV and XDCAM").
Since AVCHD format is recent, do you think we can expect VP8 to support AVCHD smart rendering in a near future or this format prohibits smart rendering ?
And what about another NLE: None of them support this feature ?

About Smart Rendering and Mpg SD file: VP8 does not support it officially but I noticed there is no recompression when mpg SD source file were encoded with Vegas. So it appear Smart Rendering is not optimized in VP8.
Let us hope Smart Rendering will be improved in the next releases.

I just did some tests with clips from my SR7. My intent was to output in AVCHD 5.1, that is edit some video and then save in the AVCHD format. V8 re-encodes everthing resulting in an encode time of almost 10 times real time. Just not usable. I upgraded anyway even though this is not really usable at that encode times. I have pretty well kept up to date now with Edius 4.5 , Vegas 8 and will upgrade to CS3 shortly. Looks like they will be used as before though. Edius for video ( the multicam is far superior to the others, you can actually see what has been done to each track and go back and re-do easily), Vegas for audio and maybe Premiere for Encore and On Location. I have ordered a Black Magic Intensity having decided to capture from the HDMI for the SR7 as most of the conversions take a lot longer than realtime!!!!

Ron Evans

Thx for the report Ron.
I’m with you, AVCHD editing is just not usable unless having a very powerful computer.
It’s paradoxical to have to invest in a very powerful computer when we bought a low cost camcorder…