I completely understand, Dave, and there is nothing more aggravating than trying to get a project done and getting a lot of work "finished" and then having the program crash. Lots of people have run into this with PD8, as well as many of the other NLE programs including some heavy hitters like Sony Vegas. There is a good reason why I personally started this thread and called PD8 a "train wreck"........!!

Ironically, I had to ultimately remove Pinnacle 12 Ultimate from my system since it caused me tons of problems, but not until I installed the update. The original version was very stable, but I seldom used it since it re-rendered everything, and created inferior output compared to the original camera video. I never did buy the latest V14 upgrade since they still do not offer smart rendering.

Maybe one of these days somebody will come out with a really good, fast, NLE program which handles AVCHD natively and handles it well. I am downloading and trying the very recent (late October) release of Edius Neo 2 with AVCHD Booster currently. At $229 it could be a nice solution.

Larry

Unfortunately the current release 2220 has more bugs, but this time less obvious, and detectable only when actually views the AVCHD (OR Blu-ray!) results ! Frustration is high, production is low. They are on the verge of loosing a lot of die hard users because their claim of running i7 processors - they cannot. And dropping to 2 cores is not a solid solution. Poor code integrity and code house keeping - the software appears to run ahead of itself and looses total control. The data streams seem to go everywhere.

Al,

What bugs are you seeing in the AVCHD / BluRay output disks?

Thanks,
Larry

Larry,

The list is getting too long. And if I add the list from other users that I keep in touch with it gets worse. Essentially rendering is relatively trouble free if one keeps the effects to a minimum. Once they are added in the variability of the problems are diverse and often changing from one rendering to another WITHOUT one making any changes in the project. One needs patience to use this package. I also use Corel's VideoStudio 12 which is considerably more stable. BUT, it's editing features are not as good (especially on video) and it does NOT utilize all the cores of an i7 PC. I frequently use both to complete a project.

Argh. While Studio 14 works quite well with relatively few crashes, the stabilizer is not good enough for the snowboarding footage from my self-made helmet cam.

Optical stabilization sucks when you have a high-vibration or high-G environment. I'll have to try out PD8 again, even if just to prepare my clips for import into Studio 14. That is, IF the PD8 stabilizer plugin does a good enough job...

Any tips for a better stabilizer plugin (or external software) that I could use with Studio 14?

Larry,
Slightly OT from this thread, but in the past you said that Corel VS Pro X2 did a reasonably good job with AVCHD. Do you still think so? Looking at their forums, it appears that they still have issues with glitches appearing at transitions. Also, the recently released "SP2" update appears to do nothing more than provide Win 7 compatibility, so it appears that no other fixes or improvements were made in the year that elapsed between SP1 and SP2. Disappointing.

PD8 still has issues as discussed in this thread. Still no smart rendering in Pinnacle 14. Sigh. I guess we're still waiting for a good consumer-level editor which provides smart rendering?

Something that would be really handy in this forum is a sticky post that summarizes some of the benefits and known issues of the various AVCHD editing programs. I have really appreciated the info and experiences that you have shared. Thanks!

Bob,
I am in a bit of a hurry so my apologies for being brief. (My normal posts are way too verbose anyway...)

I have used most of the AVCHD programs on the market, and would recommend Power Director 8 as the best of the bunch. It still has issues, but the newest release from late 2009 is really stable, works well, and seems to do all I ask of it.

Corel has dropped the ball with VideoStudio Pro X2 as far as I can tell. The transition of ownership from Ulead to Corel has taken their two AVCHD programs (VS Pro X2 and Movie Factory) and slowed the update and improvement cycle down to a dead stop. They were never too great when Ulead owned them but they seem much worse now. The glitch at transitions is still an issue for some, but it is visible or invisible based on whether you are using 60p or 30i content, and only shows under some conditions. I can think of no good reason to prefer using it to PD8.

I have also been using Vegas 9 with some success, although it is also filled with problems. Much to Sony's credit, they have released several updates since it was released in September, and have fixed many bugs without introducing too many new ones...... You could also take a look at Edius Neo 2 with AVCHD Booster, a really nice editor with a pretty lame authoring capability. Still a good value in my opinion, and worth downloading the trial version before you buy anything.

Please let us know your experiences here as this is an ever-changing situation. In the last 6 months AVCHD has been coming on really strong, with many new still digital cameras now using AVCHD-Lite as their encoding format for video.

Maybe it is now finally time for SOMEBODY to get this AVCHD thing right. It's been over 2 years that I have been struggling with a lot of total crap software offered by companies that pride themselves on selling the software and then disappearing when it comes to make it work correctly. Hopefully there will be some major improvements now that the AVCHD format is clearly dominant in not only small pocket point and shoot digital cameras but also on the DSLR end of the market as well.

Larry

Thanks Larry! Excellent info as usual, and it is greatly appreciated. No need for a more lengthy reply.

I've been advised by the Cybertechs (as I like to call them) that a new release of PD8 is about to occur. Whether it addresses the various crashes of PD8 only time will tell. However, the good news is that via an ex-PD8 user and now a Sony Vegas user an interesting fix to a good deal of the rendering problems associated with i7 processors, larger system memories and 64 bit Win7 has cropped up. By using a script editor one can turn ON the ability of PD8 (and any other 32 bit application such as Vegas running on a Win7 64 bit system) to utilize more than the 2 MB allowed for a 32 bit application. In my case PD8 crashes which were related to the handling of very high def images (>7 MB per image) have been totally eliminated. In addition, the processor utilization of i7 has gone from 45-50% to 75-90% with total memory usage easily exceeding 4.0 MB when previously (in crash mode) it rarely reached 2.5 MB. I'm a happy camper with PD8 as is, even if their upcoming fixes don't do anything for me.

Hi Al, what is the process for this script editor turning on the >2GB limit for an application? Do you have a link where you found that? Maybe I'll give PD8 another try if I can use my 3-core system without constant crashes.

For those with very shaky video, as mine was (helmet mounted, optical-stabilized camera), I found a pro-grade (but free) solution. AviSynth=>Virtualdub=>Deshaker plugin=>XviD=>(normal editing program). It was tricky and required a lot of playing around with settings, file formats, etc (Virtualdub really only supports .avi). But the result is almost steadycam-like output from what was at first unwatchable. Neither Pinnacle 14 nor PD8 could improve the shaky footage at all. See result (final edit in Pinnacle 14):

YouTube - Testing the Helmetcam: Hintertux, Austria (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaAZQru6ZeU)

This new release now incorporates the >2gb switch and is more stable as a result.

Hi David,
Excellet work using stabilization. I have been fiddling with your workflow for a while with skiing videos but can't get it to work well. Did you use something other than the default settings mentioned in the Deshaker guide? Also, what shutter speed did you use? I have been using 1/1000 with my HF100.

I have been doing HF100 AVCHD 30p to NeoScene AVI to Deshaker to Sony Movie Studio with bluray output.

By the way, I have found that the best way to film skiiers is to hold the camcorder with both hands while skiing behind the subject, while skiing using the dorky "snow plow" technique (I just hang my ski poles on my left hand and let them drag behind). I will post my results with this technique on vimeo if anyone is interested.

Hi Peter,
Thanks... well, I did a lot of optimization of the deshaker settings, actually. Check out these pages for tutorials how to fine-tune it:
http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm
Deshake, Rattle, and Roll! Make your shaky video look much better. (http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/articles/deshaker_guide.htm)

Since mine is helmet mounted and yours is handheld, you'll probably need some different settings than I do. But a few tips:

>Use the rolling shutter mentioned from the HV20 in one of the pages
>Use "Adaptive+Fixed only" as this gives no black borders, and also has the least amount of annoying zooming in & out while still stabilizing quite well
>Adjust the ignore pixels settings a bit based on moving background / etc as discussed in one of the pages ("Camera is Moving" heading)
>Up the zoom smoothness
>I didn't use previous/future frames fill-in at all

As for the shutter speed, on the latest one (see here, Dave's Photo & Travelblogue Snowboard Carving – Feb Craziness! (http://blog.daviddouglasbooks.com/index.php/2010/02/snowboard-carving-feb-craziness/) ) I used 1/500. I might try 1/1000 next time, but it's got to be really sunny for that I guess. 1/250 was also not bad, probably because I have a Kenko 0.5 wide lens, but if you get any slower you'll notice blur.

Cheers,
Dave

I'm having great luck with the stability and quality of PowerDirector on my
Mac Pro quad core 2.93.
I am rendering 24 bit Canon avchd. I boot into bootcamp with windows 7/64 and it takes advantage of Hardware acceleration and smart rendering. The newest upgrade
of PowerDirector v2704 handles AVCHD well, especially with shadow files checked.

Paul,

My experiences with Power Director 8 latest version are also excellent. They have fixed the problems which showed up in the original release with several very successful bug fixes, and the software is now a pleasure to use. I wish they would add higher bitrate 24 Mbit/sec progressive 24 frame per second capabilities for those who are using the newer camcorders, but most of the other necessary features are already well supported. Glad to hear that it works well on the Mac, and I am especially impressed that the hardware acceleration works under Bootcamp.

Larry

Hi Larry. After booting in Bootcamp, my Mac Pro is seen like other PC's probably because it contains many PC standard parts like the 2 Nehalem Quad-Core's and the ATI 4870 graphics. After installing Ati's Catalyst and AVIVO, acceleration just works.
Apple also includes drivers for Windows 7 so their newer Intel models are totally compatible.

I was tempted to try Powerdirector after reading your very informative posts several month back when you compared several different editors.
So thanks for that.

I have certainly paid more for the Mac but I like it for other things except video editing, which I find PowerDirector really nice.

Hi Paul,

i have owned dozens of Macs since the original 1984 release, including a couple 8 core MacPros and a dual G5 Powermac. I like the Macs a lot, but AVCHD and BluRay are very poorly supported, and everything takes way too long to transcode and recompress. Final Cut became too cluttered and slow and iMovie is wonderful but weak limited especially for AVCHD and any other HD work, lacking HD disk output support.

Apple could win me back again with a dual Gulftown and smart rendering apps. Could happen. NAB is coming soon and Apple usually has a few new releases then.

Glad you like Power Director. I use it a lot.

Best,
Larry

Has anyone tried the latest build of PowerDirector, 3022? Does it work with AMD Phenom2 X3's yet without crashing? :-)

I'm having problems with Pinnacle Studio 14, it can't seem to render a video longer than 2 minutes without a render failure. Doesn't crash, just fails to render with a non-fatal error at various points which I see to be high-load segments of the video. Their best solution so far is, "Hmm, try reinstalling the software." And there's been no patch of any kind since I bought the software almost a year ago.

Maybe I need to look at PD8 again. Though I hope that PD9 and Pinnacle 15 both have better useability than their current versions. (whenever those next versions come out)