Ive been editing an avchd project in vegas on a
duo core 3.0 ghz processor and 4 gigs of ram in xp.

For the most part until recently it would run the clips (1920x1080) at full frame rate
and at cut points drop a few frames for a few moments then go back up to 29.97.

These frame drops were driving me crazy never knowing how an edit exactly looked because it always slowed down so I decided to build a smokin new comp.


Just put it together a couple weeks ago..

i7 quad core 2.66ghz (overclocked to 4.2)
6 gigs of 1600 ram
Evga x58 MB
evga 260 216core video
64 bit vista

Granted my overclocking might not be nearly perfect yet, but
its incredibly disapointing that in vegas the avchd files are STILL
barely staying at full frame rate.

I was optimistically hoping id be at full frame rate AND get very good frame rates
with magic bullet on. Not even close.

Does this sound right that this power hungry format is still struggling with
this pretty dang high end comp?

Im very frustrated at this point and pretty much have resigned
to having to transcode all my footage and reedit it in format that isn't so power hungry.


I downloaded a trial of VASST upshift which converts to mpg2
which is definitely the least amount of resolution loss that ive seen.
But reading online people seem to say thats still a power hungry format and its not a
very bright solution. (the trial only lets you do 10 seconds at a time so its difficult to know
if an entire project will be power hungry)

Any good solutions that are affordable for the home user?
Whats the best format to transcode avchd files to edit in vegas?

I tried a trial of cineform awhile back and the picture quality was noticably
degraded to my eyes compared to the raw avchd file (both avi and mov)

Any help would be great
thanks

Vegas doesn't use the video card, so toss that performance right out. What kind of drives are you using in the machine?

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Its definitely not that :)

Its definitely not that :)

You're right about that! :)

Chris,

My next step would be to load the Windows Task Manager ---> Resource Monitor and look at how the cores are being loaded, how the disk I/O is being stressed, and how memory is being used. The bottleneck(s) should become more apparent.

If you are committed to transcoding, then my vote for the answer to your original question "Affordable transcoding software?" would be TMPG Express 4. Given the ultra-high performance of your hardware, it should not be neccesary to transcode in order to handle AVCHD. Is your complaint regarding the lack of full frame rate during preview?

Larry

Larry, thanks for the tip's. I'll look into trying to find out whats being stressed the most tomorrow morning.
My complaint is exactly as you say, lack of full frame rate during preview.
In Vegas im only on "preview" level.. half res.
I've tried my stock settings (not overclocked) 2.66 quad and
half the time im getting 15-25 frames, then other times im getting high 28's low 29's (not quite full)
I just dont get it personally.

The way it is now, its just become totally impossible to be creative.

Chris,

My next step would be to load the Windows Task Manager ---> Resource Monitor and look at how the cores are being loaded, how the disk I/O is being stressed, and how memory is being used. The bottleneck(s) should become more apparent.

If you are committed to transcoding, then my vote for the answer to your original question "Affordable transcoding software?" would be TMPG Express 4. Given the ultra-high performance of your hardware, it should not be neccesary to transcode in order to handle AVCHD. Is your complaint regarding the lack of full frame rate during preview?

Larry

Have you tried using the tool which selectively pre-renders a portion of the timeline? It creates .avi files which will preview faster. There is also a dynamic RAM preview method.

Also, posting on the Vegas forum has been very effective to get great Vegas help. Many extremely knowledgable people.

There's also a setting in vegas to use 2 cores or 4 cores. Might be worth making sure it's set to 4.
Bob C

Panasonic has a free AVCHD to DVCPROHD mxf conversion program if you are using the HMC150.

Using Vista might have something to do with it because it is very power hungry. Make sure to close down any unnecessary operations that Vista is running in the background.

Raylight (http://dvfilm.com/raylight/index.htm) AVI is another intermediate codec that you could try out.

Best,
Andy

In Vegas I have it set to 4 core and dynamic RAM preview is at max.
(if I play the same 20 seconds in the timeline over and over, by the 3rd-4th pass I get full frame rate on the cuts)

-----
Started testing While playing back a timeline and watching the resource monitor:

I stopped all the overclocking to do these tests (running quad 2.66)and it seems that the CPU never goes above 31% when playing back a timeline. So im guessing thats not the problem.

Physical memory is at 36% during playback

The only thing that seems to be a ton of activity is the hard drive.
In the resource monitor its showing a ton of vegas.exe's during playback (im assuming thats each separate clip and appears to be just that)
In that disk activity area there are files being read that I havent even opened in days.
Looking into this more I found out vista has a program called "superfetch" which guesses
what programs you want to open in the future and basicly reads them and gets them ready.
Well that sounded like a very good chance that was what was going on, but disabling that
I still dont get full frame rate.

I then opened up a new vegas project and just dropped 1 avchd file in it and cut it into
3 parts, so there wouldnt be a ton of clips running on the hard drive. Still not full playback.

----

Do you only have one hard drive? If so, that's likely at least part of the problem.

You can pick up a second hard drive for fairly cheap. Look up the WD Black series, or a Seagate 7200.11 on Newegg or wherever you bought your new stuff. You can get a good drive for like $60. I'd suggest imaging your current drive to the new one (which would put Vista, your installed programs, and the system page file on that drive), and then using your nice fast 10k RPM drive for your movies.

hey chris, thanks for the reply.
I have 3 drives in this current computer.
The Raptor as my system
and 2 sata 3.0's 7200rpm

I put the sync'ed wav files on the non system drive
and the avchd video files on the raptor system drive.

I do understand what you're saying, but this morning I simply put one clip
in a vegas timeline and it couldnt play it back at full speed consistantly.

I dont see how a 10,000rpm drive couldnt handle that.

But anyway, that aside, before even this morning ive tried moving ALL the vegas files
to the other drives as well and it did not solve the problem in fact seemed worse so i moved
them back to the raptor.

I do notice people saying there are differences in sony's avchd codec and
canon's (i have the canon hf100 camera)
Even though its playing back almost fine in vegas could that be a problem?
i dunno.

Chris...I posed this question earlier but only see this partial reply:

"In Vegas I have it set to 4 core and dynamic RAM preview is at max.
(if I play the same 20 seconds in the timeline over and over, by the 3rd-4th pass I get full frame rate on the cuts)"

Have you tried using the tool which selectively pre-renders a portion of the timeline? It creates .avi files which will preview faster.

larry, unless im not understanding what it does clearly,
thats not really an option for me.
I cant be constantly rendering, waiting the time while i edit for it to render, only to have to do
it on everytime i change things on the timeline.



Chris...I posed this question earlier but only see this partial reply:

"In Vegas I have it set to 4 core and dynamic RAM preview is at max.
(if I play the same 20 seconds in the timeline over and over, by the 3rd-4th pass I get full frame rate on the cuts)"

Have you tried using the tool which selectively pre-renders a portion of the timeline? It creates .avi files which will preview faster.

Chris,

I own and use essentially all of the AVCHD editing programs and run a very fast Penryn QX9650 Extreme Quadcore and here is my take on what you are experiencing:

All of the AVCHD editors, if used to alter frames (as opposed to splice clips together and trim clips and do things which leave frames intact) are unable to preview anything close to real-time full-rez using existing general purpose computers. As an alternative, given the state of the current art, they can either:

1. Get a substantial boost from a hardware (PCI-Express card) device like Matrox makes for accelerating certain previews for HDV, at a cost of $1000+ for the board.

2. Create a smaller (as in lower resolution) proxy file for previewing, which will run at full frame rates.

3. Preview in full rez but at diminshed frame rates.

4. Require a "pre-rendering" step such as Vegas where the full rez and full frame rate subset of the movie can be seen, but only after a substantial waiting time for the "pre-rendering".

There is, to my knowledge, no "5th" option, but I will totally admit that an overclocked Nehalem i7 with a Raptor or uberfast SSD and DDR3 might pull this stunt off succesfully for full frame and full rez. If so, I may want to own one.......

For the time being, nobody, to my knowledge, makes the Matxrox-style hardware accelerator card which supports AVCHD, but Canonpus or others must be working on it. Perhaps such a card or cards do exist and I am unware of them. There are AJA / Kona cards supported by Vegas but they do not, to my knowledge, permit full rez full resolution preview, until the new clips have been rendered.

This is my view of how things work, and I certainly may be wrong, and it would be wonderful to hear of other people's experience to achieve true real-time nirvana with AVCHD. I know that the Matrox approach has numberous significant compromises, incidentally, most significant of which of which are the facts that it only has Matrox code to provide certain effects and filters and only works with a certain NLE (Adobe Premiere). Thus it is far from being a truly great solution for HDV, which has been around for over 5 years.....so I am doubtful that a breakthrough hardware board is imminent for AVCHD which is still essentially a comparatively recent consumer format. But who knows........CES is this week in Las Vegas and NAB isn't too far off either....... (-8


Larry

See my prior post above Chris.

Just to make a related comment Chris, Vegas is among the slower programs in most respects, and rendering and preview are competent but comparatively slow.

Just for laughs, download the trial of Power Director 7 from Cyberlink. You will find it to be much less robust in overall features, but if it's preview speed and quality you are after, it is most impressive.

I am not suggesting to discard Vegas. Only that you might want to try something like this option just to see how other companies deal with AVCHD.

Larry

on my near minimum spec computer, i experienced the opposite (of the programs with demos, didn't try pinnacle). vegas was by far the best performing NLE. Premiere Elements was the worst performing and the others falling in between.

not questioning your vast knowledge about these NLEs, just pointing out observations on my machine.

I do notice people saying there are differences in sony's avchd codec and
canon's (i have the canon hf100 camera)

There is a difference. Canon uses a more advanced type of AVCHD that may require more compute power. Initially, SONY Vegas couldn't play the Canon AVCHD at all. HOWEVER, that should simply mean a higher CPU load given you have fast disks.

SO, are the disks running as DMA?

PS: Canopus claims native real-time AVCHD editing is impossible IF you are trying to edit as one would HDV. H.254 requires 6 to 8 times more compute power and even a quad core will not deliver this much boost. Maybe an 8 core is needed.

on my near minimum spec computer, i experienced the opposite (of the programs with demos, didn't try pinnacle). vegas was by far the best performing NLE. Premiere Elements was the worst performing and the others falling in between.

not questioning your vast knowledge about these NLEs, just pointing out observations on my machine.

Jeff,

As regards the differences you and I experience with regard to Vegas speed, it is quite possible that the software scales itself differently on your "near minimum spec machine" versus the quadcore I use, perhaps dropping frames, lowering resolution during preview, etc. In terms of sheer speed, my experience with this specific hardware I am using ranks Nero as the fastest, Power Director 2nd place, Corel Video Studio X2 Pro as third, then ArcSoft Total Media, followed by Vegas. Premiere Elements does not support AVCHD up until the recently released version 7 which I have not purchased based on lackluster speed with HDV on prior versions.

My speed comment also reflects a fundemental issue worth also mentioning.......which is that Sony Vegas does not provide AVCHD smart rendering. As a result, the time required to do almost any end-to-end editing and authoring is hugely greater than a program like Power Director or Nero. The time difference is typically around 8.5 to 1, turning 15 minutes into two and a half hours for a typical project each time a new output is rendered.

So my perception of Vegas is heavily shaded by this major limitation.

Larry

well i spent the entire day working on this thing with absolutely zero luck.
Even reformatted the entire computer, reset the bios...started from scratch.

It is strange to me that the included free software (pixela) that came with
the hf100 is totally capable of playing back 1920x1080 avchd files smooth and dandy
and with little stress put on my system, yet vegas cant handle it. I realize
im not editing the frames in pixela, but you get my point.

The truly sad part is its sucked the life outta me creativity wise
on this project.

I wish it was just the case of a simple setting i forgot to do.

As much as i like the actual look of the hf100 and the ease of secure digital
im ditching all of it after this project. It's just not worth it.

If there are still ideas or whatnot i'd still love to hear them, but im resigning myself
to just dealing with it as is, and using the ram preview constantly.

Chris,

There's a reason that the standard Hollywood and Broadcast workflows have online and offline built in. The world works with proxies man, and for just this reason. Not only is 1080p a handful in terms of sheer data rates, but you toss in a wicked hard on-the-fly decode from AVCHD and you've got problems.

One of the things that constant amaze me on this list and similar one's is how unwilling people are to accept and embrace the workflows of larger professional post houses. It seems that many of us still cling to working with this stuff as though were were editing qcif or DV files.

So my suggestion to you is to cut half res proxies in an easy to cut format. Yes, it means you'll do an additional render to an offline format, but had you done that from the beginning, you'd be finished with your project right now.

I know in my case, I have an SD broadcast monitor hooked up to my edit/color PC, so actually working with SD or near SD sized files makes pleny of sense for me.

Look into Cineform or DNxHD and do a transcode to 960x540 or 720x405. Your material will FLY, renders will be painless, transitions will seem like nothing, and you can even get away with some magic bullet looks stuff and maintain some speed.

Or, you can edit in full-res with an easier codec. Either way, trying to stay in an online workflow with a bad codec is going to be fraught iwith problems. Hollywood scans at 4k or 2k and cuts in SD, or half-res, with good codecs. And they have a LOT more money to throw at this than you.

perrone,
very well explained.
May I ask a naive question..


Is there a good resource or explaination you or someone else can give
that explains transcoding.
Up until now I thought it was using a 3rd party software to convert
1 file format to a different format on a permanent basis.

If you're saying to make a proxy at a lower res and work with that
how do I get back to the full resolution at the final render stage?

Well, I can tell you how I do it.

Let's assume simple case, where I have 1 long file I am going to cut, color correct, grade, and render out. Workflow looks something like this:

1. Drop original file onto timeline
2. Render half-res DNxHD or 10 bit SD sized copy of the ENTIRE timeline.
3. Remove original file off timeline, replace with new proxy.
4. Edit, correct, grade, etc. on that proxy.
5. Render a testfile for DVD or computer playback to check everything out.
6. In Vegas, do a "media replace" and replace proxy with the original file
7. Render final master
8. Render any additional deliverable formats (mpeg2, mpeg4, wmv, etc.)


A few things to note:

Because I shoot with an EX1 which is a 35Mbps codec, my transition to DNxHD at step 2 becomes my new online if I do it at full res. I lose essentially nothing so I don't need to go to a higher quality file. The exception to this is if I want to do a lot of color grading, in which case I'll go to a 10 bit proxy at half res or 720x405, and write a new master file at a high bit rate with a 10 bit codec. DNxHD is nice in that I can use real 10-bit codecs on Mac or PC at any file size. Aja and Blackmagic also have 10-bit codecs that work for this as well.

At step 5, I usually take that DVD home and check it on my TV. I also take it to our screening room and look at it on the plasmas. If the SD downres looks nice from the proxy, I know I'm in business.

Step 6 in Vegas is a no brainer. Literally a 1-click replacement. Other NLE's allow you to link the proxy files to the masters and you conform back at the end of editing. Avid and the like were built for this workflow (feature films) so it's well thought out and smooth.

Step 7. When I render the final master, it's usually in a solid format. For me, it's the lowest DnxHD file because that closely mirrors my acquisition codec. If I was coming from HDCam or HDCamSR, or film, I'd be choosing a different mastering bit rate. In my case, the DNxHD36 bitrate gives me about 17GB per hour. So my hour long projects fit onto 1 BluRay, along with an SD master in the same format, and any logos, graphics, and audio resources I used to make the disk. Depending on the length of the program, I might be able to slip a 720p computer based file (wmv or mp4) on there just in case I have to quickly hand off something down the road and I don't want to re-render from the master.

For bigger projects, batch transcode your original files into your proxy codec. Then lay out your proxies and do the entire project. Come master render time, just do a full media replacement (conform) and you're all set. The benefit of the online/offline workflow is that you've got your original files to make the master. Even if you transcodeded to a GREAT codec, you'd lose a little data, or you'd go uncompressed and be working with MASSIVE files. So offline gives the best of both worlds. A super-quick edit process with small files, and a super clean master that comes straight from the original material. It doesn't get any better than that. The only drawbacks to this workflow are the times it takes to make the proxies, and the time it takes to render the final master from the originals. Especially if the originals are in a highly compressed format like mpeg4. But both happen unattended, so you can go do something else while that takes place. I have a machine in my office just for rendering and transcoding. So I offload those jobs over there, leaving my edit machine free to edit.

I guarantee you, if you take your current project, and cut SD proxies to edit with or half-res HD files, you are going to be VERY pleased with your new system. One other side benefit, is that you don't need the worlds hottest machine any more because the only time you are really working with the big files is in the initial transcode, and at the end for the final master. So even average machines can handle working with 1080p or 2k or whatever this way.

i've read of another way of working with proxies, but don't remember the guys name that posted it.

the basic idea is this.
• make a folder called "media_originals"
• make a 2nd folder called "media"
• put all the HD files in "media_originals"
• transcode all the files to SD and save them in the "media" folder.
• do all the editing with the SD files, and when you are happy with the results, save and close.
• rename "media" folder to "media_sd", and the "media_originals" folder to "media".

now when you open the project again, because the file names are the same, the project is now pointing to the HD versions.

oh, and your question about transcoding...it is simply converting from one format to another.

Yea Jeff, I read that too. Pretty darn slick for a big project! Only problem is thatit forces you to dump all your files in one place which can be messy for file management. Just depends on how you work I guess.

You could use whatever sort of folder structure you'd like inside the 2 folders, just as long as they matched.

for example

project_title/
project_title/images/
project_title/b-roll/
project_title/outside/
...


and


project_title_HD/
project_title_HD/images/
project_title_HD/b-roll/
project_title_HD/outside/
...


that could help out with the organization of the project, especially on larger projects that has many clips.

im trying this as I type this post..

Im going to be interested in seeing if vegas cares
if the proxy files are .avi

and the HD files are .m2ts


If when you swap out folders that matters or not.

Won't matter at all. Vegas simply asks for the replacement file name. When I did a huge HDV project a year ago, the HD files were PNG coded quicktimes, and my proxies were cineform encoded SD-size avi files.

nope, won't matter, but if you use the same extension, with will be a seamless transition, ie, no relinking "missing" files. but that is only a very minor bullet point.

1. Get a substantial boost from a hardware (PCI-Express card) device like Matrox makes for accelerating certain previews for HDV, at a cost of $1000+ for the board.


I'm no expert - would something like the Firecoder Blu FIRECODER Blu (http://desktop.thomsongrassvalley.com/products/FIRECODERBlu/index.php) help here?
I believe it's cheaper than the matrox card?

It's not a good idea to use the system drive for your clips. The software will need to access the sectors on the system drive where drivers, OS and the application are stored and then jump to where the video is. Always better to separate the system drive from the clips drive.

While this may help, as you're dealing with AVCHD I doubt it will cure your problem.

I'm no expert - would something like the Firecoder Blu FIRECODER Blu (http://desktop.thomsongrassvalley.com/products/FIRECODERBlu/index.php) help here?
I believe it's cheaper than the matrox card?

Well, not exactly. This Firecoder card is for transcoding to and from AVCHD into mpeg2, and speeds up this process. It does not get used like the Matrox to render real-time previews during the editing process, which is the complaint which Chris has expressed.

To the extent that someone could first transcode AVCHD into mpeg2 using this card and THEN use a non-AVCHD editing approach which renders previews at a rate which is closer to real time, then this would be a solution, recognizing that the final, edited content would need to be again transcoded back into AVCHD if one were to want to author AVCHD disks.

The Matrox card is very specifically designed to speed up previews of certain specific filters and effects, and only does so with Adobe software, and does not support AVCHD. Perhaps Matrox will someday offer the same solution for AVCHD.

I'm no expert - would something like the Firecoder Blu FIRECODER Blu (http://desktop.thomsongrassvalley.com/products/FIRECODERBlu/index.php) help here?
I believe it's cheaper than the matrox card?

The preferred Edius workflow with AVCHD is as follows:
(1) Convert from AVCHD to Edius HQ for editing. A free, fast converter is available to do this. You will get smooth editing in HQ with a suitably fast pc and full preview to a monitor with one of the Edius cards.
(2) FireCoder Blu will speed up encoding back to AVCHD. At the moment it is stand alone, and said to be usable with a variety of NLEs. Eventually it will also work as an Edius plugin.

Thanks Larry, David for clarifying.
I'm also currently trying to optimise my, which software to use, which format to edit in etc (I have a low spec machine in video AVCHD terms)

just a quick update.
I made avi proxies 1280x720 from my 1920x1080 avchd files

Put them in separate folders and had vegas goto whichever folder i wanted to deal with.

Edited fine, and switched between the proxies fine.
exported proxy renders as tests, worked fine.

I goto export a 2min test file from the original avchd files,
and vegas crashes within seconds everytime.

Looking at my resource monitor everything is fine.

I made sure to change my project format from the 720 i was working in (proxies)
and changed the project back to a 1080 when i put the avchd files back in.

I had some moving text graphics which I first setup as 720, but switched those to
1080 as well.

Even though its stuttery when playing back the avchd version it doesnt seem to crash when im just previewing.

I guess the fun begins trying to figure this out.

Thanks Larry, David for clarifying.
I'm also currently trying to optimise my, which software to use, which format to edit in etc (I have a low spec machine in video AVCHD terms)

Suggest you might download the Edius trial and see how you like it. When I tried it on my very fast quadcore, the conversion speed for AVCHD to the Edius format was horrendously slow, but apprently things are better now.

Larry

The Edius file conversion utility is now at v3. A user manual is available online here:
http://canopus.vo.llnwd.net/o2/unsecure/DL/General/documentation/AVCHDconverter_HowToGuidev300.pdf