I have been using the AVCHD format from my panasonic cameras now for nearly 3 months now. After first sh__ing a brick from how intense this compression format is on my cpu, then having troubles just working with the files in PP CS4, to dealing with GIGANTIC decompressed footage and the purchase of nearly 4TB just to store footage. I have now come to a new and complexing problem. After editing and working with a clip for a couple days, I viewed the edited and rendered sequence only to notice "jumps" in frames. I figured, well that's odd, tweak it a little and rerender. Same "jumps" appear. Even odder I thought. So I then revisit the original footage at FU$^ the "jumps" seem to have effected the original clips. What is causing this, and what can I do other then manually remove the "jumped" frame?

On a side note, after exporting a sequence longer then 5 minutes, additional jumps appear in the exported mpg. These jumps are not present in the original footage or the rendered footage on the timeline.

Clint,

The first culprit that comes to mind for me is the computer and processing power. I have Canon HF100s and ordered a new Dell quad core to edit that stuff. I didn't pay attention to Pinnacle's advice that for 1920x1080 17Mbps it would take (with their software) a quad core with a minimum clock speed of 2.66Ghz. My machine has a Q6600 which runs at 2.4Ghz, a tad slower.

I could edit 1440x1080 12Mbps but it was sluggish, a change of graphics card to Nvidia 8800GT 512MB helped and I can edit the 1920x1080 now but only with extreme patience.

I don't know what you have, the Adobe Premiere is supposed to be a bit less demanding of CPU resources but like you, I think I suspect the processor, especially if you are trying to edit on a dual core machine.

I'm watching Dell's offers on their XPS Studio line with the Intel Core i7 processor.

I wish I had a suggestion to offer on your situation. Not knowing what format you are trying to render to, you might try MP4 or HD WMV at 1280x720 which still can look great.

Good luck

My experience has been the same as yours and Bruce's. Not until I got this QX9650 3.0 quadcore did AVCHD from my HF100 edit properly and play properly.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen other people posting with issues that directly or indirectly arise from having an inadequate computer for AVCHD. Some of them stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the issue and others do the upgrade and discover that their problems magically disappear.

To be fair, I should state that some editing software creates proxy files which allow for smooth editing of AVCHD using lesser performance computers, but even these programs typically have a lot of background processing and transcoding going on in order to create and maintain the proxy files, followed by long rendering times when the final output files are created.

There is no free lunch with this stuff. Thankfully the latest software updates are beginning to use the video cards and other special purpose hardware to handle the workload. This boost is long overdue.

Larry

Hello, Larry and Bruce . .

I've been in and out of the forums over a few months reading and reading. I am trying to get the right start on editing the several hours of AVCHD that resides on my Sony HDR SR8 since last December. I then want to author either avchd menued disks to -rDL and/or menued BluRay, if possible. I am also considering rendering files to thumb drives to take advantage of future technology purchases; e.g., WD player . . . Anyway, with European and New Zealand trips in the offing and a few weddings that my nieces have asked me to shoot, I really would appreciate advice and comment on how I'm doing with hardware acquisition, software selection and setting up my hard drive arrays for optimum efficiency and speed.

Let's start with the editing computer which arrives on next Wednesday:

>INTEL, Core™ i7-940 Quad-Core 2.93GHz (overclocked to 3.8 GHz) , LGA1366, 6400 MT/s QPI, 8MB L3 Cache, 45nm, 130W, EM64T EIST VT XD
>ASUS, P6T Deluxe/OC Palm, LGA1366, Intel® X58, 6400 MT/s QPI, DDR3-1600MHz (O.C.) >12GB /6, PCIe x16 SLI CF /3, SATA 3 Gb/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN /2, FW /2, ATX
>CORSAIR, 12GB (6 x 2GB) XMS3 PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz CL9 (9-9-9) 1.5V SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC
>BFG TECH, GeForce® GTX 295 576MHz, 1792MB GDDR3 1998MHz, PCIe x16 SLI, DVI /2, HDMI
>WESTERN DIGITAL, 300GB (WD3000HLFS) WD VelociRaptor™, SATA 3 Gb/s, 10000 RPM, 16MB cache(this will be my system drive)
>WESTERN DIGITAL, 1TB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD1001FALS), SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 32MB Cache
>HIGHPOINT, RocketRAID 2310 SATA II RAID Controller, 4 ports, Levels 0/1/10/5, PCIe x4, + KINGWIN, ESAC-02 eSATA Bracket Cable, 15", Retail 2 $8.96 $17.92 (this is to attach Sata drives for reading, writing???? need advice here)
>SIIG, U-91RW12-S4 Black 1.44MB Floppy + 9-in-1 Card Reader/Writer, Internal USB 2.0
>LG ELECTRONICS, GGW-H20L Black 6x/8x/24x BD/DVD±RW/CD-RW Blu-ray Disc™ Burner w/ Lightscribe, SATA
>Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit Edition w/ SP1, OEM

I plan to use Corel Video Studio Pro x2 for editing and authoring menued DVDs or BluRays.
I have added 4 eSata ports from a raid card to the back of the computer case so I can add drives to segregate the processes involved in editing and authoring.

I would appreciate advice and comment on my hardware and software choices and on how to set my hard drive array to best achieve efficiency and speed. For example, should the Pro x2 be resident on the system drive with plug in esatas used for differnet tasks/scratch, etc.

Thanks much

Jim

Jim,

Your hardware selection should not only handle AVCHD now, but should also be able to handle the 24Mbps cams coming to market now.

Hard drive speed and efficiency is not nearly as critical as when capturing from HDV tape. With AVCHD you are simply copying the files from your camera media over to your hard drive where your editing software can find them and work with them. The rendering process is unlikely to outrun hard drives, I can render straight to external USB drives with no problem so a RAID setup would be needed only for mirror'ing a pair of hard drives for data security.

I simply mirror two external USB drives.

As far as segregating drives by function, this sounds good in theory but I believe in keeping things simple. You can often run the NLE from one drive and use another to place original vid files and render to. I suggest keeping some simply for project storage.

On Corel Video studio, the last I heard was update and development was at a standstill. The word was that it still did not handle AVCHD well and Blu-ray authoring was not there. Sony Vegas Pro 9 is supposed to be AVCHD operational and working for many and Pinnacle Studio 12 edits AVCHD natively and has Blu-ray authoring with menus to Blu-ray media built in. It will also render to Blu-ray compliant file on standard DVD media in a form that plays back on Blu-ray players or PS3. You can download a trial at pinnaclesys.com. This is one of the simplest yet fully featured NLE packages I've seen, with pretty much everything available from one interface.

As an alternative to doing expensive hardware upgrades, you could convert AVCHD to avi with something like cineform neoscene for $99. Conversion is quick and can be batched. The avi files are much easier to work with and if you are doing heavy editing changes like color, contrast, etc., the end result will look better than native AVCHD editing.

As an alternative to doing expensive hardware upgrades, you could convert AVCHD to avi with something like cineform neoscene for $99. Conversion is quick and can be batched. The avi files are much easier to work with and if you are doing heavy editing changes like color, contrast, etc., the end result will look better than native AVCHD editing.


Ron,

Is this how it works?

Transfer footage (in H.264) to the computer.
Run Cineform Neoscene and convert all that footage to an avi file (or is it multiple files?)
Do all editing in avi (I use Vegas Pro 8, will that work?)
Render out to any format I want?
How long will it take for Cineform Neoscene to convert, say 1 hour of H.264, to avi?
Is there any loss in quality going from H.264 to avi?
I took a look at their website: Do I want NeoScene or NeoHD?
Sorry for the many questions, I'm a little confused.

Thanks,

Jim,

On Corel Video studio, the last I heard was update and development was at a standstill.

I am in error on this.

Got it confused with VideoMovieStudio, a competing product acquired by Corel probably so they could "kill it off" like Adobe acquired ?Aldus? PhotoStyler so it could no longer compete with PhotoShop.

Apparently Corel will continue developing Video Studio Pro as a more prosumer product.

Yes, copy the mp4 files from the SD card to your computer. Run neoscene. Each mp4 file will create a separate avi file. You can batch convert (select multiple mp4 files for conversion). Conversion is quick. Roughly real time on my 2yr old computer (1hr footage, 1hr to convert). Edit in Vegas, render out. Lossless to my eyes.

You want NeoScene for conversion. Download the trial version for free from the cineform site. It will stop working after 7 days.

As an alternative to doing expensive hardware upgrades, you could convert AVCHD to avi with something like cineform neoscene for $99.

The end result will look better than native AVCHD editing.

If the AVCHD starts out at 1920x1080 17Mbps will the Neoscene converted AVI's then also be 1920x1080 at the same full HD as the original AVCHD?

While I edit AVCHD natively in Pinnacle Studio 12 I never render to AVCHD as I don't feel that is a practical end product. Until I get into Blu-ray (If I do) I render to HD WMV 1920x1080 or 1280x720 both of which display great on my 42" LCD when played through a media player.

I did look at some of your sample video's on vimeo and what I saw was absolutely stunning and "eye riveting".

Yes, the neoscene converted avi keep the resolution and frame rate of the original. I've rendered out to Blueray, mp4 and m2t. Blueray looks the best to me, mp4 and m2t look a notch below, but that could be my media player. Haven't tried wmv.

Thanks, for the compliment on my vimeo videos. The underwater stuff is all HDV from a Sony FX7. The only AVCHD/mp4 stuff is the test videos from a Sanyo FH1.

I don't why I am not experiencing the same problem as the OP. I just got my HF-100 yesterday. Of course I tested it and saw if it will play back in my 1 month old Q8200 OC'd to 3.0ghz 2mb (still waiting for my 1066 ram so this was a temp). It was flawless. It even ran the clips (17mpbs) from the card reader!


FYI, here's the basic specs of the machine:

- Intel Q8200 2.4ghz but OC'd to 3.08ghz
- Asus P5Q SE-2
- 2mb of 667 DDR2 ram also OC'd to 860mhz (temp till my 4gb 1066 arrives)
- ATI Radeon 3850 512 DDR3
- 250gb Seagate SATA
- Asus DVD +-RW

The machine isn't that expensive and I was willing to take the transcoding route for AVCHD. However, to my surprise it did well on the playback using VLC. It was only floating at 35% or less cpu utilization from the task manager, sometimes in one core only and from the card reader.

But here's the kicker. I tried using Sony Vegas pro 8.0c and did some editing. It was as if it was just regular HDV! No stutter on preview panel even at best settings. I applied some color correction and some other filters and it was ok. My guess is if I use Sony glow it will bog down an bit and I must use GOOD or something else as preview.

Render times was better than 1:1, or very close to it. One clip was 1min 32sec I think, and it rendered in 1:19 with those color correction, and contrast correction. It was rendered to 16:9 DVD/mpeg2. I have already downloaded the 7 day trial version of Cineform but have not installed it yet. I was prepared to go the transcoding route but my machine seems to be ok right now without the need for it.

So, tell me guys what I am doing "wrong" because so far, I have not yet problems with my 17mp HF-100 files and my unit and Sony Vegas 8.0c.

Vegas edits native AVCHD better than most, plus you have a pretty new and powerful computer.

The Sanyo FH1 and HD2000 which record 1920x1080 60P to MP4. They are the 1st consumer cams recording 60p and the latest problem for computers and editing software. I went the cineform route after downloading the trial.

You appear to be in good shape. The overclocking to 3Ghz is likely what is helping you out there. If mine (2.4Ghz) could be overclocked I'd be in fine shape but apparently the motherboard in my Dell XPX420 won't allow overclocking.

You will enjoy that HF100. For outdoor use (where it can get hard to really see on the LCD screen) you might look at the hoodmanusa.com Hoodloupe 3.0 with camcorder strap. Turns the LCD into a bright easy to see EVF.

Or you can use it without the camcorder strap, just hold in place briefly as needed. Comes with a case and neckstrap, I use mine with my DSLR also.

You appear to be in good shape. The overclocking to 3Ghz is likely what is helping you out there. If mine (2.4Ghz) could be overclocked I'd be in fine shape but apparently the motherboard in my Dell XPX420 won't allow overclocking.

You will enjoy that HF100. For outdoor use (where it can get hard to really see on the LCD screen) you might look at the hoodmanusa.com Hoodloupe 3.0 with camcorder strap. Turns the LCD into a bright easy to see EVF.

Or you can use it without the camcorder strap, just hold in place briefly as needed. Comes with a case and neckstrap, I use mine with my DSLR also.


To Ron:

Yes, thanks for the input on Vegas. I love the product. Wish I could try out the v9.0 pro. Last time I checked the free trial version wasn't out yet.

New stuffs are coming out all around. That is why I only got the HF-100. Cheaper now that is seems to be closing out (u$550 at BHPhoto, free shipping). I am looking for a 60p in the future, or at least the Panasonic GH1 as my main. I really love the tapeless workflow. Easier workflow for me. It requires more power in cpu but then again my PC is 3+ years already (2ghz core 2 duo) and needs an update anyway. I'll get a i5 next year when it's cheaper and when the cheaper boards come out. This is why I chose (again, the cheaper PC quad setup).

But I am now reluctant to going to a tape solution again. Even if I get a 1:1 on transcoding, I'd rather have that than 1:1 transferring from tape to PC. At least I know that the files are already in the PC with SDHC cards. Worst, I can work on the files. Or transcode file by file. But I can't do much if the files are still in tape and that is a pain for me with tape. I just have to be good with backup strategies with AVCHD files because that is the weak point of file based shooting.
---------------

To Bruce:

I suspected the 3ghz might be the reason. And you may be spot on with that. I guess 3ghz is really the nice sweet spot for AVCHD files. My guess that even 25mbps files would not be far off in performance. Of course if we can go higher the better :-) These Intel cpus overclock well (and easily) with the Asus boards. The P5Q se-2 isn't even the top or upper tier models.

Once I get my 4gb 1066 memory sticks, I might be able to go above 3.08ghz. I will be happy at 3.2ghz stable. BTW, as it is, my system is pretty cool at just 3-5 degrees celsius above ambient for the cpu using the Intel stock fan. We live in a tropical region so 28-36 degrees C is typical ambient here. Right now my cpu is at 33 degrees C. Motherboard is 32 C. I figure, 3.2-3.4ghz OC'ng would probably bump it up 3-5 degrees more.

FYI, during renders with vegas at 99-100% cpu utilization of all cores, max temp is about 46 C. I'd say that is pretty cool for a tropical climate country. :-)

And yes, I love my hf-100. I wish I could afford the newer hf-s100, but I know it would just break my heart to find out it is only U$600 by next year. :( Besides, I might just be opting for something else instead. Such is the curse of technology - constant changes. Constant upgrades.

OTOH, you can't be paralyzed by that. You just have to bite the bullet and buy what you think is best now for you. They'll also trump what you bought even if it is the latest anyway. So buy what will work for you. For me, the hf-100 and my Q8200 are nice new additions. But my eyes are set on the i5 cpus end of this year (w/c I will buy next year) and a GH1 or a decent EVIL camera that will come out this year or next year. Regardless, the hf-100 and my Q8200 are still very good units and should serve me a long time. :-)

Thanks for the feedback!

Jim,
As you have others have alreasdy commented, your computer hardware is very adequate for AVCHD editing. Although I too have extra eSATA ports added with another controller card, I seldom if ever use them, and a single SATA drive does perfectly adequate AVCHD editing, with two being optimal.

Regarding software for AVCHD editing, I own and use all of them, and can recommend Video Studio Pro X2 for light use and Sony Vegas 8 Pro for more serious use. Both work well, with each having advantages depending upon your work style, willingness / interest to learn new software, and cost.

Both offer trial versions so my suggestion would be to try both of them before making up your mind.

Not sure what camcorder you have selected but I would only add the caveat that the 24 Mbit/sec Canon AVCHD camcorders do create a temporary but significant problem since neither Sony or Corel software can retain the pristine 24 Mbit/sec bitrates when rendering to final output. I'm guessing this will be corrected soon, but who knows.

Larry

To Bruce:

I suspected the 3ghz might be the reason. And you may be spot on with that. I guess 3ghz is really the nice sweet spot for AVCHD files. My guess that even 25mbps files would not be far off in performance. Of course if we can go higher the better :-) These Intel cpus overclock well (and easily) with the Asus boards. The P5Q se-2 isn't even the top or upper tier models.


You may not gain much by taking your overclocking further. Comments in various forums by folks with quad core running at about 3Ghz are having good luck with AVCHD and it sounds like you are already in that "sweet spot". And see Larry Horwitz' comment on the higher (24Mbps) bitrate on the new Canon's.


And yes, I love my hf-100. I wish I could afford the newer hf-s100, but I know it would just break my heart to find out it is only U$600 by next year. :( Besides, I might just be opting for something else instead. Such is the curse of technology - constant changes. Constant upgrades.


I have been following the HF S100 videos posted around with great interest. I think the feature of greatest interest to me at the present time is the larger "roller" for manual focus control. I missed the smaller "roller" that was on the HV20 and the joystick control of manual focus on the HF100 is something I tolerate at best.

Just the same it looks like I will stay with the HF100's for awhile, at least until the HF S100 comes down a lot. But again looking at Larry's comments (and I place a lot of stock in what he says) if I had one now, I would have to set it for the same res/bitrate as the highest setting on the HF100 (FXP I believe).



Thanks for the feedback!

Welcome. I get a lot of good info out of these discussions.

Bruce

Thanks, Bruce and Larry . .

Let me approach my question on work flow from a different perspective. Let's assume I have the hardware configured as indicated in my earlier post AND that in addition to the system drive and the 2nd 7,200 1 Tb drive, I also have 2 esata drive (raid 0 - 2 disk) arrays plugged in to the separate raid controller. Now, how would you arrange things to use your drive resources most effectively for speed. E.g.; NLE on system drive, original vid files on one esata, the other esata for renders (writing activities) and so on?

I read the comments on NeoScene. I have Neoscene and can convert my avchd to AVI. Is this step necessary for my purposes with Vid Stud Pro x2 or vegas?

How do I set the properties in the Video Studio Editor before I bring in my avchd clips? When I'm done with editing in Pro X2, what will my choices be in the share step subsequent to menuing? That is, how do I choose either AVCHD disk or BluRay disk?

Jim

Larry,

Forgot to mention, I'm still using a Sony HDR SR8 100Gb camcorder for my avchd . I will eventually get a newer cam, but I'm just not sure what is the best move. My video work is mostly grandkids, travel and a few family events for folks who ask; such as weddings, christenings, etc.

Jim

Thanks, Bruce and Larry . .

Let me approach my question on work flow from a different perspective. Let's assume I have the hardware configured as indicated in my earlier post AND that in addition to the system drive and the 2nd 7,200 1 Tb drive, I also have 2 esata drive (raid 0 - 2 disk) arrays plugged in to the separate raid controller. Now, how would you arrange things to use your drive resources most effectively for speed. E.g.; NLE on system drive, original vid files on one esata, the other esata for renders (writing activities) and so on?


I'm going to leave this mostly for Larry, I've never had the need for it before and when others were swearing you should always have a separate drive for rendering, I was always just stuck with the C: drive and never had a problem with dropped frames. Now with no tape capture it would be even less of a problem for me.


I read the comments on NeoScene. I have Neoscene and can convert my avchd to AVI. Is this step necessary for my purposes with Vid Stud Pro x2 or vegas?


Both of these were "Johnny come lately's" to native AVCHD editing but both are now supposed to be fully functional in this respect so converting AVCHD to AVI should not be necessary. I looked into Neoscene to get around my slightly slow quad core but the main NLE I use (Pinnacle Studio 12) does not read Cineform AVI, so I ordered a Core i7 920 Dell yesterday morning.


How do I set the properties in the Video Studio Editor before I bring in my avchd clips? When I'm done with editing in Pro X2, what will my choices be in the share step subsequent to menuing? That is, how do I choose either AVCHD disk or BluRay disk?


Some NLE's allow you to set "project preferences" ahead of time, or alternatively let you select "set preferences from first clip on timeline".

And when ready to burn to disk, again the authoring section or authoring program should give you a selection menu. Personally, I see no reason to burn to AVCHD format on disk if you have a Blu-ray burner. In the early stages of the HD to disk "game" AVCHD was an option for standard DVD media as long as the program length was not over 20-30 minutes because the AVCHD and Blu-ray data structure were so close.

Someone with a Sony PS3 or Blu-ray player but no Blu-ray burner could burn to regular disk and play it back that way. But in a practical sense I see no reason to make AVCHD disks (although some may if they can count on smart rendering).

If I'm not correct with anything here, Larry should catch it.

My experience with editing and authoring using any recent vintage computers and software is that disk performance is a non-issue so long as directly connected SATA drives are used, and only 2, at most, are required.

Any software I have used which allows for designating where the work files / render files should be placed typically runs just about the same whether these files reside on the same drive as the editing program itself. Most of us normally install our software on the boot drive, typically drive C:, since this is the default location most installers chose. Any experimentation I have done in recent years to use other drives for creating work files, output files, etc. seem to demonstrate little or no benefit.

I think the reasons for this are pretty simple:

Unlike the video editing of long ago where huge files were being created, edited, saved, etc., the files created in AVCHD and HDV are so highly compressed that disk I/O is no longer a bottleneck. When you compare how very much larger the AVI files would be if you were using AVI (which I would NOT recommend for any HD work), and recall that AVI formats and lightly compressed MJPEG were the common standards used before HD video arrived, the disk performance was far more crucial than it is now. Consider that a normal HDV or AVCHD file might be moving through the editing software at speeds of maybe 10 times the nominal playback speed for the scenario where you have a fast enough CPU to render at 10X real time. This is about the fastest I have ever seen, and only occurs when smart rendering is occuring. Normally, much slower speeds are typical, with 1-3X real time. Even at 10X rates, with a video file being created / transferred from the NLE at 250 megabits/sec, you are still well below the nominal performance of a typical SATA drive, most of which can truly deliver actual rates of 500 to 600 megabits/sec (despite claims of 1 gigabit and above). My point is therefore that drive performance is not a big bottle-neck even if the "worst case" 10X speeds are being encountered, which seldom occur in most real editing situations.

RAID and multiple drives can often make a great deal of sense for production reliability, and I for one like to have all sorts of backups. I just don't personally encourage these as offering a real boost in workflow speed.

There are, to be sure, examples to the contrary. Those, for example, using HDMI capture with Blackmagic cards have a much higher data rate, and my comments do not apply for them.

Regards BluRay versus "RedRay" AVCHD disks, I feel rather strongly that the standard red laser disks make more sense for distribution to friends and family mostly due to economic reasons. The burners are $23 rather than $300. The blank disks are 20 cents rather than 5 or 6 dollars apiece. The burn times are shorter. And the disks play with identical appearance except for play time. For the content I personally deal with (mostly grandchildren/family movies, travel, etc.) I would not want to subject anyone to more than 35 minutes in a viewing session, so the standard single layer red laser disks are just great with AVCHD at 17 mbits/sec. If I had to double the time for some reason, I would still greatly prefer a dual layer conventional disk.

My bluray burner is pretty recent and pretty fast, but it takes a long time, and the coasters are just way too expensive.

Many if not most of the BluRay home players can now handle AVCHD just fine, as can the PS3, so I consider this AVCHD format to make a lot of sense.

Larry

Larry, curious why you don't recommend avi for editing HD ?

All the pros seem to agree that uncompressed avi is better for heavy corrective editing and is easier to work with. I've been editing native HDV for years because my HW/SW could handle it and I was only doing minor color correction. I'm now converting to avi because of problems editing native 60p MP4 footage.

Have you had bad experiences with avi ?

Thanks again to both Bruce and Larry.

I guess I get lost somewhere in the concept that if a drive is reading, it can't be writing? So if one separates those functions, then reading and writing could occur simultaneously. This would be faster, no? :-)

Relative to vs pro x2 . . . is it a 64 bit program? When I started to install it on my new computer today, it was installing to a folder with "(86)" in the title? I discontinued. Shouldn't I be using a 64 bit program to take advantage of all the computing power now at my disposal?

I am comfortable with VS as I used 10, 11 and 11.5 for my SD projects. I upgraded to use it with my SR8 AVCHD. In looking at the program on my Sony, I can't find where you can select avchd disk or bluray disk after creating menus? Larry, you have used the program I believe. Any insight you can share with me here?

Thanks,
Jim

Ah, the wonder of logic . . I suppose if I've been looking at VS pro x2 on my Sony, it must be 32 bit as it has a 32 bit OS!!

In doing some other reading, Corel says VS pro x2 "supports" the new quad core technology . . . whatever that means. I believe I'll have to send that to decoding . . .

So, I'm back to what software to use. I want to do menus, so it seems VS is the one, but . . .

I've had good success with this product. It converts avc to m2t which edits as easily as mpg2. It also maintains the original file sizes.

http://www.newbluefx.com/avchd-upshift.html

So, I'm back to what software to use. I want to do menus, so it seems VS is the one, but . . .

FWIW, in Pinnacle Studio 12 you create your menus on the timeline at pretty much any point in the editing process. There are also "canned" menus you can edit, some have motion backgrounds, even.

There is a little bit of a learning curve until you get the hang of how they work but once I did I was even creating my own from "scratch" starting with a JPEG created in PhotoShop with the menu text already "laid in", all I had to do was add "buttons" and use the menu editor to set in and out points.

For one DVD (in standard def) I even used a video clip shot in a Cessna as my grandson was "banking" into a turn on final approach. Two menu buttons and the accompanying text superimposed as an overlay and the menu "loops" until a choice is made.

This package is not most folks "darling" but almost everything is done from one interface and it is fairly intuitive and user friendly.

[QUOTE=Bruce Foreman;. . . . "Cessna as my grandson was "banking" into a turn on final approach . . . ."

Used to own a PA 28-128. Used it a lot when I worked. Not current for over a decade. My brother retired as a pilot with US Air. I miss flying, my wife doesn'i !!

I'm going to look at Pinnacle 12. Thanks, Bruce.

Ron,

I too edited HDV for several years on a relatively low power single processor 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 class Dell machine, and found it to be entirely adequate. Not until I moved to AVCHD/h.264/mp4 did the additional CPU speed become important, and I merely switched to a quadcore QX9650 Dell and my problem was solved.

I have seen no reason to use an uncompressed avi file format. I am using Sony Vegas Pro 8 most of the time for my editing, and find it extremely competent. I frankly see no advantage in going from AVCHD camcorder footage to another format for editing, especially when I ultimately want to share content with others on AVCHD disks. Apart from the time required to transcode back and forth, and the huge file sizes which result, I can't think of any situation where the editing I need to do would be any better than it already is in Vegas Pro using AVCHD. Vegas does generate proxy files which are of lesser resolution for previewing, and this is fine with me. For those who want to see the previews on an HDTV in full resolution, Sony Vegas Pro supports the AJA / Kona PCI Express cards in full 1080p.

Larry

Jim,

Yes, if a drive is reading it cannot be writing, and vice versa. Two drives thus improve performance over one, and it is common for work files to be placed on one drive and rendering done to another for this very reason.

Regarding VS, your Sony apparently has 32 bit Windows installed and thus would not nor would it benefit from 64 bit VS if you were merely running this single program.

As regards VS supporting quadcore........the latest CPUs from Intel and AMD (the two dominant CPU chip makers) put up to 4 separate processors on a single die, and offer their so-called quadcore chips for use in their highest performance CPU chipsets. The quadcores are offered in computers starting at around $700, and allow programs such as VS which are written to exploit this parallel processing hardware. The benefit is, in some caees, greatly improved performance. For AVCHD work in particular, this feature is essential, and if not available results in very sluggish editing, jerky pixellated playback, and other severe problems handling the complex AVCHD/h.264 format.

Both VS 11.5 (with the HD Pack) and VS 12 Pro X2 offer fully menued AVCHD disks Jim. If you need further help in how to make use of them, let us know and I for one will be glad to offer further assistance.

Larry

Brian,
Upshift converts AVCHD to an mpeg2 file format. This conversion / transcoding suffers from some losses going from one lossy compression format to another. In order to retain the original AVCHD quality, it is essential that you use a considerably higher mpeg2 bit rate than the original h.264 file from your AVCHD camcorder. This is because mpeg2 is far less compact, roughly only 50% the efficiency of h.264, and thus file sizes will at least double if you want to preserve image detail and quality.

Given the conversion time to and from mpeg2, and the file growth, and the possible image degredation in transcoding, I personally have avoided using Upshift as well as its competitors (Voltaic, Elecard, AVS Converter, etc.) since they all have the same drawbacks.

Larry

You may not gain much by taking your overclocking further. Comments in various forums by folks with quad core running at about 3Ghz are having good luck with AVCHD and it sounds like you are already in that "sweet spot". And see Larry Horwitz' comment on the higher (24Mbps) bitrate on the new Canon's.



I'm afraid, you are right, Bruce. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I've already paid for my 1066 Kingston HyperX memory and just waiting for it. If I can get even 3.1ghz, I'll be happy :). But I really want to push it to 3.2ghz. I've read some have managed to go as high as 3.5ghz. But I think that is a bit of stretch for me.





I have been following the HF S100 videos posted around with great interest. I think the feature of greatest interest to me at the present time is the larger "roller" for manual focus control. I missed the smaller "roller" that was on the HV20 and the joystick control of manual focus on the HF100 is something I tolerate at best.

Just the same it looks like I will stay with the HF100's for awhile, at least until the HF S100 comes down a lot. But again looking at Larry's comments (and I place a lot of stock in what he says) if I had one now, I would have to set it for the same res/bitrate as the highest setting on the HF100 (FXP I believe).



Welcome. I get a lot of good info out of these discussions.

Bruce

I would love to have that too. Focusing is one of the things, that's hard to with buttons being pushed. It's easier instead if there is a ring, a dial, or a "roller" is involved.

I passed on the s100 for the hf-100 as I know I will just kick myself when the next big thing comes around. :( It's still a good camera. I love it. I'll wait for the next round after the hf-s100 where hopefully they'll have a 720-60p or something like it. And maybe use a larger sensor to get more light in. I just hope they stop at 8mp on the stills resolution as it won't help much if they make the sensor large but cram more pixel in there.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Yes, if a drive is reading it cannot be writing, and vice versa. Two drives thus improve performance over one, and it is common for work files to be placed on one drive and rendering done to another for this very reason.



Thanks, Larry. I just copied the mts files from my SR8's drive to a folder on my editing computer. I'm going to try a small project with VS. I'll let you know what happens. By the way Larry, can you define more clearly what "work files" and "rendering" are from your last post? Right now without using my esata external connections, I have a 300Gb 10,000 rpm system drive where VS resides. I also have a 1 Tb 7,200 rpm drive. Both built in satas. How should I set my VS preferences, etc. so I am using these resources most effectively:e.g., original vid files on Tb, VS program on system drive, etc.?

Thanks and sorry to keep pursuing this. I'm sure my not being clear on this as yet is simply some genetic defect caused by having to go to work all those years! It's certainly not my fault! :-)

Jim

Jim,

Glad to help you Jim and no apologies needed. I am a silver haired retired guy myself and went to work "all those years" myself starting in the 1960's......

All of the video editing programs create temporary files during their normal processing, so as to allow for seeing previews, create on-screen simulations of the video effects, segregating audio and video, and a myriad of other things. I have refered to these temporary files as "work files" but different programs call them by different names. Video Studio calls them "working files", whereas other programs call them scratch files, user files, caches, etc. The important concept is to make use of your second hard disk to share the workload.

Since the eventual output of your editing and disk authoring is to make ("render") a final version, this rendering step normally is quite time consuming and can benefit from having its content written on a different disk than the one used for work files. In theory, the work files are being read and the rendered output file is being written concurrently, and in fact, the very process of making the rendered output file is essentially processing the work files. So in Video Studio I would chose to set the Preferences to put the work files on one drive and the final rendered file(s) on the other drive.

This arrangement also relies on the fact that the Video Studio pprogram itself is essentially all resident in RAM and need not be swapped in from the hard disk. This is a valid assumption for modern machines of the type we are are using.

You will find that there are places to set the working file directories in VS12 Preferences, as well as designate the output location for rendering when you get to the final output stage. In these two dialogs, I would set the folder locations to your two different drives.

As I stated earlier, disk drive performance is NOT the bottleneck in most of this work, since the AVCHD files in particular are highly compressed, thus requiring far fewer bytes to transfer, and the files themselves are complex, requiring gobs of CPU capacity to unpack and re-pack. I thus would caution you that the concern regarding which disks should hold which files is really getting disproportionate attention here, since in pratcial terms the drives are far faster than they need to be for this type of work whereas the processor / CPU is struggling to do the job even when a quadcore Intel Extreme QX9650 3.0GHz such as mine is being employed.

Hope this helps a bit.

Larry

Hi Jim, I have the HF10 and edit on Corel Video Studio Pro X2, the computer is a Intel Core 2 Duo 3HZ with 2GB ram and a single 500GB HD partitioned into separated drives so C drive only has programs on it and nothing else, I keep backups on an external 500Gb HD drive and also use a WD TV media player with separate 500GB HD and do all my videos at 1920x1080i which take 8 times real time to render, the ones I put on Vimeo I do at 1280x720p and use Super "C" to convert to .mov, now the main problem I find with ProX2 is that if you use the smart render option it will misplace parts of clips when doing cross fades ext. at the edit point, the only way to overcome this is to make sure you unselect the smart render when you go to "Share" to make the video AVCHD 1920, you will find it in the "options" tab, this says it will make the video at 18000kbps max bit rate, which is a bit of a let down as the average bit rate is only around 11200kbps, when I checked it out, I have written to them to ask them if they are likely to be putting out a patch to allow a higher out put. I see with some programs like Premiere Elements 7 you can specify which type of AVCHD you want to make whether it is Main Profile 4.0 or High Profile 4.1 this gives you the option to go as high as 35000kbps, with any permeation you want to select in between.
All the programs I've tried over the last few months seem to have issues handling AVCHD at the edit points and when doing cross fades and in my last edit making a 7 min video I had to go back and trim clips to get clean cross fades in a couple of places, it seems most programs are still in the development stage when it comes to AVCHD.
My very first post to this website so hope I haven't gone over other peoples ground to much
Cheers Bryan

Larry,

Thanks for the response. I'll have at it with some editing and post some commentary about my results. I am disabling "smart render" so that I can work natively. This may help me avoid the glitches Bryan mentioned. By the way, if I make an AVCHD disk, can it be plaed by an SD dvd player - either stand alone or in anyone's computer? If not, can I also burn my edited and menued AVCHD movie so it can be played on an SD machine? And, finally, when editing and menuing an SD movie, I could make an .ISO file to save for future copies. Will VS give me this option with AVCHD?

Bryan,

Thanks for the comments. I want to eventually make smaller vids that can be placed on thumb drives and be played by plugging into something like a WD player or computer or plasma display.

Jim

Jim,
AVCHD disks can be played on many but not all BluRay set-top players, Sony Playstation 3 consoles, and computers which have appropriate AVCHD playback software from such companies as Nero, Arcsoft, Cyberlink, or Corel. They will NOT play on standard defintion players. You can author standard definition DVDs from high def content such as footage from your AVCHD camcorder, and these will play in standard players, but they will obviously lack the detail and beauty of the high def original content.

Corel does not appear to provide a method to create .iso files for retention and re-use when bnurning AVCHD disks. The folder which is used by Corel's burning engine is, however, saved on the hard disk, and other burning programs such as Nero Burning ROM can create an .iso file, burn additional copies of the AVCHD, or both.

Hope this helps Jim,

Larry

Larry,

By the way, if I make an AVCHD disk, can it be plaed by an SD dvd player - either stand alone or in anyone's computer?


NO! It not only will not play but in most cases will refuse to eject and the DVD player will have to be serviced to get the disk out. There used to be a lot of warnings about this.


If not, can I also burn my edited and menued AVCHD movie so it can be played on an SD machine? And, finally, when editing and menuing an SD movie, I could make an .ISO file to save for future copies. Will VS give me this option with AVCHD?


Your software should give you some regular DVD options. Everything I use allows this from the same HD timeline I edit from.


I want to eventually make smaller vids that can be placed on thumb drives and be played by plugging into something like a WD player or computer or plasma display.



You don't have to make them smaller. I just render to HD WMV (other file formats are supposed to work too but that's all I've used so far) and copy it over to a thumb drive. Longest vid I've done this with is 26 minutes and it didn't go over 2GB. Plays great from a thumb drive.

Hi Jim, I did some experiments a few months ago with a Sony Play Station 3 and found I could author a AVCHD m2ts or MTS file to a standard DVD using Video Studio ProX2 and it played fine but unfortunately PS3 does not playback good PAL AVCHD from it's hard drive, probably OK with NTSC. so that's why I finished up buying the WD TV Media Player and it was cheaper. but it's like Larry say's AVCHD authored to a DVD won't work on all Blue-ray players or any standard DVD players. The WD TV Media Player has 2 USB2 inputs so you can leave a HDD attached and use a USB2 flash drive for short videos and testing.
One other thing I should mention if you make standard DVD's from AVCHD which is upper field first you will have to change the field order of the DVD to upper field first, or you will finish up with interlace jitter in your video.

Bryan