Greetings all!

I figured this would be an appropriate thread to ask these questions. Maybe answers have been posted already, and if so could you point me to them:

I'm trying to figure out what's the best tool for editing AVCHD and/or AVC h.264. I'm a Premiere Pro user, but I keep hearing that Premiere - and Windows in general aren't properly equipped to handle these formats. I've also heard that there are plugins or other tools that can add or enhance this functionality.

I've heard that Edius can handle pretty much anything you throw at it - including AVCHD/AVC h.264. I have a Powershot TX1 - cool toy, does 720/30p and records MJPEG .AVI files, which Premiere HATES, but Edius handles with ease.

I need some clarity on which is the best editing tool or plugin for editing this format. I'd like to download some footage - both AVCHD and AVC h.264 and try itout for myself. This would greatly help in determining which camera I buy in the very near future.

Thanks,
Colin

Sony Vegas handles the AVCHD files coming from my Canon HG20 just fine - I've got a quad-core desktop, but the thing about Vegas is that you can decrease the quality of preview playback on the fly if you need to view it more smoothly. Rendering out is pretty quick too.

In Edius the way to go is is to use the AVCHDtoHQ converter (free download) and then edit with the HQ codec. This provides fluid performance. Recently Grass Valley (the owners of Edius) released a card called FireCoder Blu which uses hardware to speed up encoding for output to HD or SD. You will get more informed comment from early adopters on the Edius forum.

Hi Colin and welcome to this forum devoted to AVCHD.

There are about a dozen AVCHD editing programs on the market for the PC ranging in price from $50 to over $1000, offering a very wide range of functions and features.

The "best tool" available can only be selected after you better explain your needs, your level of expertise, your desired outputs (BluRay, web, AVCHD disks, etc.) and most critically, your computer hardware. AVCHD is especially demanding of computer resources for AVCHD editing.

Here is a good starting point for getting up to speed:

AVCHD - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD#Editing)

Larry

P.S. I too own a Canon TX-1 for pocket HD movies along with a lot of other photo and video gear and AVCHD editing software. Considering how small the TX-1 is, it is an amazing camera.

When editing AVCHD files how do you go about mixing framerates?

eg: If you are working on a 30p project, will dropping a 60p clip onto the timeline automatically make that clip play in slow motion? What about if I drop that same 60p clip into a 25p project. Will that make it play even slower, or is it just not possible/compatible?

Having only ever worked with DV at 50i, (or 25p - same thing, basically) I can't get my head around this idea. It's like now there is just too much choice and confision!!

Most NLE's will adjust video clips to the project settings. No 60P is not slower than 30P the action takes place in the same time, there are just twice as many frames recorded in 60P as for 30P so the motion is a lot smoother. The more frames per second the smoother the motion. IF you put a 60P clip in a 30P project you will just loose some of the smoothness of the 60P clip as half the motion information will be discarded in some way to interpolate to 30P.
Interlace video(50i or 60i) has the temporal motion of the faster frame rates of 50P or 60P but only half the vertical resolution is recorded in each field. Consequently 50i is not the same as 25p and neither is 60i the same as 30P. A frame is made up of two fields but unfortunately the consecutive fields in interlace video do not come from the same frame!!!!

Ron Evans

Thanls Ron.

I know that 50i and 25p are not the same thing, when I said they are are the same I meant I dont have to treat them any differently in my editing workflow.

Thats a shame, I thought 60p could be used like overcranking to get smooth slow motion.

Colin,
I'm editing AVCHD on Adobe Premiere CS4 on Windows Vista. Installing the professional version of CoreAVC decoder helped lots ($14.95 to buy) since it makes Windows Media Player capable of playing the original AVCHD .MTS files for easy preview and smoothed my AVCHD playbacks in Premiere. My workflow is using Windows to copy the .MTS files out of my Canon HG21's hard drive folder onto my local PC. Premiere CS4 will attach directly to the original .MTS files, no transcoding needed, since CS4 version supports AVCHD now, although be sure to update it with the latest Adobe patches as new tweaks released recently improve AVCHD and other issues. I do not find using the Pixela ImageMixer software that came with my Canon camera to be useful. You do need to install Pixela in order for Windows recognize and read the camera's hard drive, since the needed device drivers aren't native in the current Vista version. Pixela installs the USB drivers; when you attach the USB 2.0 cable from camera to PC then Pixela will auto start, but just close it down and use Windows to copy the files from camera hard drive to PC hard drive, as I find this much faster and easier.
Jonathan

First of all, thanks for the warm welcome Larry, and to everyone else also.

I prefer to edit with Premiere and I recently upgraded to CS4, so I take some comfort there. I'm working with Vista (Ultimate 32) mostly on a laptop (3GHz Core2 Duo Extreme, 4GB RAM). I'm doing mainly post and also motion gfx. Footage comes to me from P2 and XDCAM EX, and those mainly off HVX200s and EX1s or 3s. We do alot of music video with those here in Jamaica. There are a couple of RED ONEs, but that's another topic.

The main reason for the dilemma is getting (another) ultracompact camcorder for guerrilla-style, run&gun docu-type stuff. I love my TX1 dearly, but the audio can't cut the mustard in some cases. Since posting here, I've done a bit more research on both AVCHD and H.264, and also on camcorders. What has my interest piqued right now is the Sanyo Xacti HD2000 (due out next month - Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000 camcorder review (http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/reviews/review.phtml/3806/4830/sanyo-xacti-vpc-hd2000-camcorder.phtml#comments)). Aside from having an external mic jack and capturing 1080/60p, it makes H.264 (.MP4) files, and I've heard more positive with this as opposed to AVCHD - thanks to Jonathan for that AVCHD info however. Very useful.

As I narrow things down in my research (here and elsewhere), I'll be glad to post what I find, although everyone so far seems very knowledgeable in this area.

Side note: Larry, Sanyo is touting their new Xactis as "Dual Cameras" - both photo and video. Strange to me since I've had my TX1 for over a year now and it's always done that. That fact may make my next question even stranger... what codec does it record .AVI files in? I see them as MJPEG files, how is that different (if at all) from AVCHD?

Colin,

The TX-1 avi files are MJPEG compression, a method developed in the early 1990s, relying only on compression of individual frames of the video. It is essentially JPEG image compression on a frame by frame basis, takes relatively little computing power, comparatively large and fast storage requirements, and simplicity in both compressing and decompressing. Each frame of the video is complete just as in movie film, and MJPEG is comparatively easy to edit for this reason.

AVCHD and other variants of mpeg (as opposed to MJPEG) compression add an additional, important element, which is to compare frame by frame and find only changing elements of the stream of video. They achieve much greater compression by allowing this changing 'motion' component to be highly compressed as "difference frames". An AVCHD file contains "groups of pictures" (called GOPs), each of which has a reference full frame followed by smaller 'difference' frames. The space saving is substantial compared to MJPEG, but requires much more processing both in the camcorder to construct the file, and then again in the computer or set-top player to decompress it for playback as whole frames. The files are considerably smaller, and require less speed in the recording device compared to MJPEG. The distinction I have just made is often summarized by saying that MJPEG only uses INTRAFRAME compression whereas mpeg (1,2,4,h.264, etc.) uses both INTRAFRAME as well as INTERFRAME compression.


I will check out the new Sanyo. The last model I looked at was weak in the low light area, but did very nice looking HD outdoors.

Larry

P.S. The comment by Adrian regarding frames versus fields on the link you provided is, exactly as you stated Colin, incorrect. I submitted my own comment on that site to confirm your correct statement.

Thanks again Larry,
After your explanation, I feel a bit sheepish about my nice new powerful laptop! I will say that Windows Media Player handles playback the MJPEG .AVIs just fine, but Premiere Pro CS4 totally chokes on them! Edius 5 handles them alot better but still not perfect. Jonathan pointed out a codec he installed that gave him better performance with AVCHD. Could there be something like this for MJPEG? For H.264 also (even though this format behaves the best of the 3)?

I've been checking out all the specs on the new Sanyo, but I'd love to hear the opinions of others here and especially you, Larry, since you clearly have a broad and deep knowledge and experience in this area.

Re: Adrian's comment on that Sanyo review. I though it a bit odd what he was saying, so I decided to research a bit and clarify, since he genuinely seemed to want to contribute. I just prefer to see the correct info out there!

Colin

Colin,

Regarding your laptop MJPEG performance:

MJPEG from HD sources requires a huge I/O data transfer rate compared to AVCHD, since TX-1 MJPEG has over twice the speed of AVCHD. 4GB holds around 13 minutes of MJPEG and 30 minutes of AVCHD.

Thus, you need fast disks and a fast bus, both of which are less so on laptops compared to desktops.

You can improve things with more RAM, faster hard drive, and using maximum performance settings on your laptop power / speed / performance control panel.

You may find that playing the MJPEG a second or subsequent time fixes the stuttering. This indicates that RAM caching has overcome the disk and / or bus bottleneck.

Some software handles MJPEG badly. It is an older and much less common format and not likely to have modern codecs. I stopped buying Premiere upgrades since they run poorly on machines here also.

I need to learn more about the new Sanyo before offering further comments. The prior Sanyo was very inferior to the small Canon AVCHD camcorders, but this may no longer be true.

Larry

Slightly off topic Larry, but related to the comment you left on the review of the new Sanyo Xacti, another industry professional commented supporting our explanation of fields/frames. However, I subsequently was notified that Adrian - who made the erroneous comment - was awarded a prize for his comment!

Win an Intempo InSession iPod speaker dock (http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/21919/22943/win-intempo-insession-pocket-lint-competition.phtml)

How's THAT for justice!

Colin

Colin,

This is a sign of the Internet era, now that anyone and everyone can publish "facts" as they perceive them and regard them as accurate or scientific or both.

I especially liked the most recent comment on that website which states:

_________________________________

"This website discredits itself for awarding a prize to tecno-babble which is boldy and erroneously described as "science". Clearly neither Adrian, the prize winner, nor this website judge has the technical background for understanding video. Adrian has it entirely wrong!
Posted by Scott, United States"
_________________________________


Larry

BTW, I have yet to find any video samples from the new Sanyo despite looking pretty aggresively.

Larry,
I'm also looking aggressively for HD2000 footage as well. I've found some from the HD100 and HD1010, which I've played around with in Premiere and Edius, and they both seem to handle them fairly well. Certainly better than MJPEG .avi files. Haven't found any AVCHD files to throw at them as yet to make a comparison. If anyone has links to some I'll gladly grab them! Anything I find myself I will surely post here.

On that other matter, Stuart Miles replied to our "cries for justice" and retracted the prize, and he was gracious about it:

-----------
"Basically we screwed up. I could blame the intern but as we don't have one that wouldn't be fair. We try to be as open and honest on Pocket-lint and unfortunately we occasionally get things wrong.

What's great is that there are plenty of people who have sprung to help our readers fine the right answer.

Thank you for your help and support in making Pocket-lint strive to be better.

Stuart "
-----------

Adrian was not awarded the prize after all, and the wheels of justice grind slowly on! ;-)

Colin

Colin,

This is an impressive response by Stuart Miles and Pocket Lint. It's particularly refreshing to see direct and honest words and deeds.

Please reply back if you suceed in finding any Sanyo samples and I will do the same.

Larry

Colin, et al,

Engadget and Photoblog have a review of the new Sanyo HDC2000.

The summary is quite negative.

Larry

(With such fabulous and inexpensive small HD AVCHD camcorders from Canon and others, I suggest the Sanyo is not worth researching any further....)

Sanyo’s top new camcorders are much cheaper than the top new camcorders from Canon, Sony and Panasonic.

OK so maybe comparing it to the UK price of the TG3 makes it sound expensive but then again, that is the retail price and in the US, the HD2000’s price is a steal. Never mind the fact that the chip is much bigger and that it comes with a docking station that you can hook up directly to a hard drive.

The vastly superior Canon Hf100 is offered here in the U.S for $500. The Sanyo is priced at 549 pounds, and is not yet available at a discount in the U.S. Canon consistently offers much better cameras than Sanyo and this specific Sanyo makes the HF100 a far better choice in my view.



Larry

Thanks Larry,
I've seen the reviews. Not a shining recommendation at all. I was able to look at some photos and there's even a video clip:

http://img.photographyblog.com/reviews/sanyo_xacti_hd2000/sample_images/sanyo_xacti_hd2000_01.mp4

I'm not totally discouraged, but I am looking at other possibilities

Colin

Having spent a fair amount of time reading and re-reading comments in this thread, I must say I am significantly down the technical ladder from most. I currently have a Sony HCR SR8 hard drive HD camcorder. I have traveled with my grandchildren every year for many and I have always edited our SD trip video creating a fully menued DVD for each of them and others in the family who wish copies. I have decided this past few months to shoot everything in HD this year. I gave each of my grandchildren BluRay player for Christmas to prepare them for this next generation of DVD's, which they clamour for each year. For the opportunity to "live the process" I shot about 16 gig of video over the holiday season just past. I tried to edit this footage with the program I use (and have been using for several years thru its earlier iterations from Ulead) which is Corel Video Studio Pro X2. I first brought the clips into the computer and analyzed them using Sony's Picture Motion Browser. I realized early on that my computer is under powered for editing such huge files or even playing them - which Studio X2 won't. So, as I decide on whether or not to upgrade my computer hardware, I have a few questions with which I am hoping you knowledgable folks can help.
1. If I install my editing software on a Solid State Drive (which is touted as the "nearly instant access" drive) will my editing process from start to finish be quicker?
2. If I install a video card(e.g. ATI 4870 1 gig or Nvidia GTX) will this matter in editing, review and/or rendering the final product speed?
3. How much Ram should I have to be most effective - is 12 gig overkill . . is 6 gig enough?
4. What editing program do you folks believe makes sense for my purposes?
. . .and, finally . . .
5. If I decide NOT to get bigger better hardware, can I convert these avchd (mt2s) file to something I can edit as SD?

Thanks,

AVCHD tends to be a "beast" that requires a lot of computer horsepower. Generally you will be best off with the fastest quad core processor based computer you can make yourself afford. Not only for what is happening now but for a bit of "futureproofing" against the next generation of cameras coming along.

Faster drive access, more RAM, and a "stout" video card never hurt but the main culprit is almost always a processor that cannot handle the degree of compression and decompression AVCHD can use. Most of the NLE's are trying to "come to the AVCHD table" but many of the "big boys" dragged their feet and some implementations are a bit "lame".

Reports have Sony Vegas Pro 8 doing a not bad job, sometimes even with a dual core processor, Pinnacle Studio 12 does a very good overall job but will require a quad core running at 2.66GHz minimum for the 1920x1080 17Mbps and higher bitrates, and Cyberlink PowerDirector 7 Ultra is a bit less demanding of computer resources. You kind of have to download trial versions to see what is going to work on your machine.

I edit 1920x1080 17Mbps AVCHD on a Dell with quad core Q6600 running at 2.4Ghz (a bit under spec for Pinnacle Studio 12) and while it is some slow to do what I want it does handle it, in Cyberlink PD7 Ultra it goes a bit easier and quicker but I still prefer the features of Pinnacle Studio and do most of my editing there for now.

Changing from an ATI Radeon HD 2400 256MB graphics card (came in my computer) to an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB card did a lot to help my machine (I think the extra memory on the graphics card is what helped).

I can render (output) to standard DVD, Blu-ray compliant format on standard DVD (I have no Blu-ray burner), and several HD file formats which I can play on my TV using a small hardware HD capable media player. If I had a Blu-ray burner, both NLE packages would author and burn Blu-ray disks on Blu-ray media.

But right now I play my HD content from thumb drives plugged into the media player connected to my 42" LCD TV with HDMI cable and it looks great.

Hope you find this info useful.

I can't get my tried and true Vegas 6 to read m2ts from my new Sony HDR SR10, same with MPEG StreamClip. Vegas movie studio 9 sees them in the folder, but errors when I try to import them. Serious Magic Ultra won't read them either. HuffyUV codec worked great with my Sony HDR-HC1 files... Are their codecs I can get to make these programs work?

I have adobe cs3 suite coming next week, with Premiere. Will that edit m2ts? Codecs?

Or do I need to fork out $500 for Vegas 8 and codecs?

E6600 xp sp2, 4g ram, gt8800 512mb,

It was mentioned earlier, but I'll say it again. If your computer is up to the level needed, even some inexpensive editing programs can work with AVCHD. I recently bought the whole ensemble (about a dozen) of AVS video programs, for only $59.(U.S.). Its video editor will accept AVCHD as source material, as well as many other HD formats. I have a quad-core 2.2 GHz H-P computer with 3 GB RAM, so I have an advantage, even though it was also fairly low-priced at $850. I've been having a good time, easily and relatively quickly re-editing and publishing my HDV footage in H.264 and other types of MPEG-4. I now have the option of getting an AVCHD camcorder and spending no more money on anything that is editing-related. I'm pleased by how much better my H-264 editions convert to Vimeo's heavy compression, than when I uploaded them as .wmv files. The motion artifacts on Vimeo's player are mostly gone, with H.264 uploads, from this very low-cost editing program.

Having spent a fair amount of time reading and re-reading comments in this thread, I must say I am significantly down the technical ladder from most. I currently have a Sony HCR SR8 hard drive HD camcorder. I have traveled with my grandchildren every year for many and I have always edited our SD trip video creating a fully menued DVD for each of them and others in the family who wish copies. I have decided this past few months to shoot everything in HD this year. I gave each of my grandchildren BluRay player for Christmas to prepare them for this next generation of DVD's, which they clamour for each year. For the opportunity to "live the process" I shot about 16 gig of video over the holiday season just past. I tried to edit this footage with the program I use (and have been using for several years thru its earlier iterations from Ulead) which is Corel Video Studio Pro X2. I first brought the clips into the computer and analyzed them using Sony's Picture Motion Browser. I realized early on that my computer is under powered for editing such huge files or even playing them - which Studio X2 won't. So, as I decide on whether or not to upgrade my computer hardware, I have a few questions with which I am hoping you knowledgable folks can help.
1. If I install my editing software on a Solid State Drive (which is touted as the "nearly instant access" drive) will my editing process from start to finish be quicker?
2. If I install a video card(e.g. ATI 4870 1 gig or Nvidia GTX) will this matter in editing, review and/or rendering the final product speed?
3. How much Ram should I have to be most effective - is 12 gig overkill . . is 6 gig enough?
4. What editing program do you folks believe makes sense for my purposes?
. . .and, finally . . .
5. If I decide NOT to get bigger better hardware, can I convert these avchd (mt2s) file to something I can edit as SD?

Thanks,

Jim,

I too am a grandfather, avid photographer and videographer, and make tons of videos for family sharing and use over many years. Here is my thinking on your questions, using the numbering you provided:

1. A solid state drive will improve performance but the true bottleneck is not disk transfer speed. The editing of video mostly demands a very fast CPU, and this is where the payoff in making a purchase will truly benefit you.

2. Some editing software uses the video card to substantially accelerate certain video editing work, but only specific software and specific video cards will work together. I use and recommend the CUDA technology from nVidia on the 8800 family GeForce card with such programs as Cyberlink Power Director 7 Ultimate, TMPG Express 4, and CoreAVC to achieve these speedups, which can offer a 2X to 3X improvement.

3. Windows 32 bit software, including Vista, XP, and Windows 7 can only see and use 4 GB of RAM and actually use a bit less than that. Any additional RAM will not benefit you. Using a 64bit version of Windows will create incompatibilities with many if not most video editing software programs and codecs and I would not suggest it quite yet.

4. To edit HD content and make disks in HD for your family to watch on their BluRay players, you will need a faster computer, in the $800 range or above, to do smooth editing and disk authoring. You will then be able to produce excellent quality HD disks which play directly on the BluRay player. This specific editing program to be used needs to be discussed with you after better understanding your level of interest in editing, the eventual hardware you are prepared to buy, the time you are prepared to invest, if any, in learning a new program, etc. There are 8 NLE choices which need to be culled down to a single choice with your guidance.

5. Although you can downconvert your AVCHD files into another format like HDV using a program like Vasst Upshift, your future movie making would be better served by recording in SD on your camcorder and authoring as you did previously, if you chose not to upgrade your computer. It makes very little sense to capture in HD, convert it with software to an SD format, and then author as SD. If you are prepared to upgrade your computer, then authoring in native AVCHD makes the most sense in my view, and you need to spend the $800 in order to do so.

If your budget is very limited and you have a lot of time to spend (waste) in converting / rendering / etc., you could convert your AVCHD to HDV, another HD format, author it using your existing hardware and Corel software, and then produce an HD disk using Corel Video Studio. This is by far the least expensive route, since the Vasst software is very inexpensive. I don't especially like this approach since it loses quality and takes a lot of time, but it should work if you are prepared to wait for things to process and want to keep your expense to a minumum.

Hope I have answered each of your questions directly Jim.

Larry

Jim, I too am a grandfather with two grandsons and my daughter now has my SR7 when I upgraded to the SR11. I also have an FX1 too. As an example my PC is a quad core Q9450, 8 G RAM, 250G boot, 250G temp, two 750G video storage for editing an several external hard drives. I run Vista 64 with no problems running Edius 5, Vegas 8, CS3, TMPGenc Xpress and Authorworks 4, Sound Forge 9 and many others. In fact I have had no problems running any of the programs I have loaded. The issue with Vista 64 is drivers for the hardware more than programs that run in 32bit mode anyway.
If you have a HD camera shoot in HD. Video especially of family is for the future and expecially as you have given them Bluray players stay HD. Don't let the present difficulties reduce the future use. Vegas 8( and I assume Platinum too) has no issues with editing AVCHD and the time it takes is purely dependent on the power of your PC. IF you are not into fancy effects or colour corrections then as Larry has said there are several programs that smart render to create a final AVCHD version though if you are only doing cuts editing it may be easier to do it in the camera and create a playlist for output in either HD via HDMI or to SD through the composite outputs. learning how to do this is also useful to show people events etc directly from the camera.
As far as converting to an intermediary file I would look at Neo Scene from Cineform that will ease the load on the PC but with bigger file sizes and stay in full HD. I use Edius which has an intermediary format called Canopus HQ also resulting in larger file sizes but an easier load on the CPU for editing, again staying in HD. Editing will be done in HD and then there is the choice of output format to taste!!!

Ron Evans

Happy Valentine's Day to all !

I just took another look and realized there was another page to the thread. I want to thank you all for your thoughtful and most appreciated responses. As soon as I return this afternoon, I will review again and respond.

By the way, I intend to buy new hardware including quad, vista 64 bit, etc. Perhaps I can respond with more detail to your queries. More later . .

I can't get my tried and true Vegas 6 to read m2ts from my new Sony HDR SR10, same with MPEG StreamClip. Vegas movie studio 9 sees them in the folder, but errors when I try to import them. Serious Magic Ultra won't read them either. HuffyUV codec worked great with my Sony HDR-HC1 files... Are their codecs I can get to make these programs work?

I have adobe cs3 suite coming next week, with Premiere. Will that edit m2ts? Codecs?

Or do I need to fork out $500 for Vegas 8 and codecs?

E6600 xp sp2, 4g ram, gt8800 512mb,

If you can live without the DVD Architect program, you can have Sony Vegas Pro 8 at B&H Photo & Video for far cheaper than $500, I think it's less than $200 there..

Vegas 8 works directly with AVCHD 'ok' however transcoding into Cineform is the way to go in my opinion.

Jon

Ron & Jon,

Do you consider for my purposes - (vacation and family event HD video (avchd) from my current Sony SR8 edited and then burned to Blueray) - the use of Neo Scene as a permanent solution. Would its use obviate the necessity of a more powerful computing platform or does the avi file size associated with this software make upgrading to quad core 3.2 i-7 processor, etc. a proper move for now?

Can I use Corel Video Studio Pro X2 or should I step up to something more sophisticated? I am probably ready to do so, but I hesitate to take on something that is significantly more labor intensive than x2.

Can I save the product of my editing and menuing for my burn to an ISO file for future copies as I have done with SD work?

One question leads toi another it seems. Your thoughts?

Jim

Hi Jim
If you are happy with Video Studio Pro X2 then stay with it and upgrade your PC to a quad core. Make AVCHD videos on standard DVD's for the family to play on their Bluray players and everyone will be happy I am sure. You will be limited to about 30 to 35 mins but you can always upgrade to a Bluray burner and make the real thing in the future. Get at least two hard drives, one for the OS and programs and the other for video storage. Get three if you can so that the output files go to a separate drive from the source files. I mean real drives not partitions.
From what you have told us a computer upgrade is the most useful thing for you to do and leave everything else the same. You can always get more ambitious in the future but a fast computer will be a must for any more complex editing even if you use an intermediate file format. You can keep iso images of the discs.

Ron Evans

Yes, I for the most part always argue that if you use a particular piece of software you are happy with, stick with it...

In this case, Corel being a very novice oriented application, what Ron is saying is really probably the way to go...

However, your computer is actually pretty decent right now and I can tell you for certain that if you used Sony Vegas Pro 8 ($200) along with Cineform NeoScene ($130), editing the AVCHD converted files via Cineform on your existing rig would work quite well. an E6600 is still no slouch and easily capable of working with this type of footage..

You could then upgrade your PC down the road to reap even more performance benefits.

Jon

If Corel X2 is simplistic, what will Vegas 8 add to toolbox of editing tools? If I buy a bluray burner, can you save that output as an ISO? I believe I'll spring for a Bluray burner as I have read that software upgrade to such players may at some point eliminate the ability to read and play avchd disks (e.g. PS3 I've heard left that ability out of the latest update).

Jim

Sony Vegas 8 can output directly from the timeline to bluray discs in the bluray format. So, for 1, if you're heart is set on Bluray, I see it as a very good option.

Jon

Jon -

What about menus for the bluray disk? Is this accomplished from the timeline somehow? With X2 it is in the "share step." As an aside, my practice with SD was to edit, add titles, special effects, etc to each segment of the "annual DVD" right after shooting the video. I would then save it as an mpg vid file (e,g, Christmastime, Spring Visit, Summer Travel Adventures, etc. I would them import these mpg segments all back into X2 at year's end, go right to the share step, create the menu, then save and ISO and burn disks using double layer. How will this process be implemented with Vegas and Neo?

Jim

Well, Neo has nothing to do with the burn process and as for bluray authoring, unfortunately you'll have to wait until the next version of Sony before you can get advanced authoring of menu's. So I suppose that could be a hickup point for you.

Jon

. . . . right now I play my HD content from thumb drives plugged into the media player connected to my 42" LCD TV with HDMI cable and it looks great.

Hope you find this info useful.

Bruce:
By "thumb drives" I presume you mean USB 2.0? What kind of player do you have connected to your TV? Is it connected by HDMI or component? Can you player these same thumb drive in a capable laptop or desktop. Might this be the answer to my work with avchd which is distributed to grandchildren? It seems the thumb drive would be seriously more damge resistant. Or am I embarrassing myself because a thumb drive is something of which I am completely clueless!?

Thanks, Jim

Jim - he may be refering to the Western Digital media player (about $100), which I also recently purchased. It takes JPEGs or video from external hard drives or thumb drives, via a USB input, and plays them out to a HD TV via a HDMI port. So far, I've only used it to play JPEGs from a thumb drive, but the quality is excellent. It also comes with its own remote control, which is great for giving high-quality slide shows. It "reads" a number of different video formats, but I haven't yet had time to experiment with the video side.

The Western Digital media player is brilliant! I use it to show all my SD / HD video files in various formats. I'm not even thinking of BluRay at the moment...

Jim,
The current system build DIY 7 project is based on the new i7 processor. I built the DIY-5 system 2 years ago with astounding results and I am looking forward to the i7 system. Yesterday I bought 2 1.5T drives, an i7 (920) processor, 6 GIG of 1600 memory, an Asus MB (P6T) for just under $900. I will complete the system with a case, power supply, and appropriate video card in 2 weeks (when the bonus check arrives). You cannot beat the system anywhere else for price and performance.
Once the system is up and running (preferably) with Vista 64 (at least the business version) any of the editing suites should run great. I have Vegas 8, Pinnacle Studio, et.al but I just went to the new CS4 version of Premier. This was the editing suite that I started with years ago, went to Liquid, and then to Vegas. Vegas was one of the first to offer not great AVCHD editing. Premier CS4 has finally arrived and now supports AVCHD. My current system is ok but only just! Hence the move to the i7 processor.

Videoguys Forums :: View topic - DIY7 Update (http://videoguys.forumexperts.com/viewtopic.php?t=113269)

Thanks, Robin and Mark. I'll have a look at the West Dig Media Player. Do you mean I can "burn" my edited and menued project to a usb drive instead of a DVD or Bluray disk? This would then play like a DVD in the WD media player with HDMI to set? If so, what software enables such a "burn" to thumb (usb drive)?

Jim

Thanks, Larry - I'll check it.

This is where I think I am going with my hardware setup. Can I get opinions from anyone who will give me one on what will help my video editing and bluray authoring speeds and what might be useless in the package shown below. I suspect I will be trying vegas and, perhaps c4, in the future as my patience and time allows. I intend to secure Neo Scene and test the avchd to avi to blueray scenario described earlier. In the end I want to continue the process of shooting avchd video and creating an assortment of menued bluray or avchd disks playable on the bluray player. Sooo, for starters, how does my proposed hardware set up look? Comments, please.

• CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-965 Extreme Edition 3.2 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
• CD: LG GGW-H20L 6X INTERNAL SUPER MULTI BLUE BLU-RAY DISC REWRITER & HD DVD-ROM DRIVE (Black Color)
• CD2: Sony 20X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
• FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
• HDD: Single Hard Drive (300GB Western Digital Velocity Raptor 10,000RPM SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache WD3000GLFS
• HDD2: Extreme Performance (RAID-0) with 2 Identical Hard Drives (2TB (1TBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
• MOTHERBOARD: MSI X58 Platinum Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/ eSATA,Dual GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394a,&7.1Audio
• MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) DDR3/1800MHz Triple Channel Memory Module
• OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit Edition)
• POWERSUPPLY: 800 Watts Power Supplies BUSINESS DAYS
• LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
• SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
• TVRC: TV Tuner with FM Stereo + Remote Control (watch and record TV on your PC)
• USB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
• VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 X2 1.7GB 16X PCIe Video Card [+284] (EVGA Powered by NVIDIA

What software will take advantage of the power of this video card in particular?

Thanks much,
Jim

what software enables such a "burn" to thumb (usb drive)?

Jim, you just export your finished video from your NLE in whatever format you choose. I tend to use mpeg2 which gives a bigger file than H.264, but I think it looks better. You can then just drag and copy the file onto your USB drive - either a little memory stick type or something like the Western Digital Passport 500GB USB storage device which is powered from the USB socket on your PC or the WD Media Player.
Dead simple...

Jim,
That is why I suggested that you read the DIY articles. They put together a great editing system and test and review 3 or 4 video cards with the different editing suites. Some of the suites (Vegas, for example) do not appear to take advantage of the video accelerators, the others may favor one card over another.
That is why I listed the components that I bought; the i7 920, 6 gig 1600 Corsair memory, the ASUS P6T,... One well chosen video card will be more than enough. Go to the VideoGuys forum and you will save enough money to buy the suite of your dreams!
Lp

Jim - I did a few tests today with the media player. I took a DVCPRO HD clip (720p60, 100 Mbs) and used Procoder 3 to convert it into MPEG-2 and into WMV. Both files were then transferred onto a USB thumb drive, and both played very nicely with the media player onto my 40" LCD TV via the HDMI port. There is a pause/play button on the remote, and you can select which file to playfrom the main menu. Both files seemed about equally sharp, but I'm going to be doing more tests to see if one is better than another. I did note that the pause works immediately on WMV, but with a slight delay on the MPEG-2. The video play length is limited only by the size of your thumb drive or hard drive.

I recently bought the whole ensemble (about a dozen) of AVS video programs, for only $59.(U.S.). Its video editor will accept AVCHD as source material, as well as many other HD formats.

Interestingly, I have this package, and although the AVS video converter will not recognize my avchd m2ts files, the avs video editor does. It does not allow for multiple video tracks, but does allow for video overlays. It also outputs to a wide variety of formats mpeg4, h.264 avi, hd720, hd1080i, mov, and m4v for ipod.

Thanks for turning me onto this.

[QUOTE=Jon McGuffin;1012717]Well, Neo has nothing to do with the burn process and as for bluray authoring, unfortunately you'll have to wait until the next version of Sony before you can get advanced authoring of menu's. So I suppose that could be a hickup point for you.

Jon -

I just converted 13 gig +or- of avchd clips with Neo Scene. They still wont play without chop on XP and won't play as anything but audio on Vista Home Prem 32 bit. I know I need a faster processor but what cause the audio only play on Vista do you suppose? By the way I have tried downloading various codec programs to no avail ???

Jim

Jim - he may be refering to the Western Digital media player (about $100), which I also recently purchased. It takes JPEGs or video from external hard drives or thumb drives, via a USB input, and plays them out to a HD TV via a HDMI port. So far, I've only used it to play JPEGs from a thumb drive, but the quality is excellent. It also comes with its own remote control, which is great for giving high-quality slide shows. It "reads" a number of different video formats, but I haven't yet had time to experiment with the video side.

I have a Sony CX12 and Corel Pro X2 for AVCHD editing. The Western Digital player has been able to play either unedited CX12 footage or CX12 files edited with Corel Pro X2. I bought the player about a month ago - there might have been a firmware update in late 2008 that supported these formats, but I can play them now.

The Western Digital media player is brilliant! I use it to show all my SD / HD video files in various formats. I'm not even thinking of BluRay at the moment...

I agree re BluRay or DVD production. I haven't burned any disks since I got a PS3 which could play back HD video files and just about everything else. And I bought the WD player to provide the same capability on a second TV at a much cheaper price. My media storage is now all USB drives - one for each player and a third one at work as an additional backup.

I have a Sony CX12 and Corel Pro X2 for AVCHD editing. The Western Digital player has been able to play either unedited CX12 footage or CX12 files edited with Corel Pro X2. I bought the player about a month ago - there might have been a firmware update in late 2008 that supported these formats, but I can play them now.

Tom, did you edit several clips and then save project as what in the "share step?" With SD I used to create individual mpeg files from groupings of edited clips. I later imported these to share with menus. Is it the individual edited video files you are putting on usb drives?
Jim