So my stupid HDC-SD9 shoots AVCHD 1080 (30i & 24p) and I use Sony Vegas Pro9.

I'm a big youtuber and getting my work flow seems to be a nightmare, ultimately the best thing I've been told is .avi however for 1 youtube likes MP4 and for 2 it seems to render a 100gb 5 min video.

I just dont know what else I can do besides render my videos in XDCAM MP4 with the highest settings. For my 1080-30i files I use the 1080-60i format and it still loses detail and aggravates me.

I'm still between using the 24P and the 30i, I use the 24P when its something not moving or really slow and 30i whenever its something moving fast or something like walking, however if I use a steadicam device while walking do you think I would be fine using 24P?

Try the MainConcept AVCHD (mp4). See settings below. Depending on frame rate shot, change from 23.97 to 29.97

AVDHD MP4 just crashes, all other AVCHD types work fine but MP4 crashes. And why can't I maintain a 24P look onto youtube?

be sure you have version c of Vegas, previous versions crashed when trying 2-pass

be sure you have version c of Vegas, previous versions crashed when trying 2-pass

http://i998.photobucket.com/albums/af101/NateTeebo/Vegas.png
^My Version^

the last videos I sent to YouTube I use the Divx. The quality was great, the file size small and it rendered a lot faster than MP4 from Vegas 6. My raw footage was HDV, not AVCHD, so I'm not sure how much of a difference that would make for you.

I like using x264 for encoding video for uploading to the web. A GUI like MediaCoder or Avidemux makes it pretty easy (when you know what you are doing), and you have a lot of control over the encoding settings (and x264 is a very high quality H264 encoder). One thing that helps, if uploading to YouTube (or similar service) is ignoring their advice about I-frame intervals. They will re-encode your video anyway, so you might as well crank the I-frame interval up well into the hundreds of frames. Low I-frame intervals, like one per second (one I-frame for every 24 frames of 24p video) is not hardly ideal at all for getting the best image quality (especially at relatively low bitrates to make it reasonable for transmitting video over the net). Also, you can crank up the number of reference frames (to like 4 or 5) and maximum number of consecutive B-frames considerably (go the full 16, not just 2 - and allow B-frames to be referenced as well), to get a little overall image quality boost too.

DIVX and XVID can work pretty well for encoding video for uploading to YouTube (or whatever), but you can pretty easily trim at least 20% off the file size without losing any quality by using x264. Encoding will be slower, but the smaller file will upload faster. Out here in the cornfields of Minnesota, bandwidth considerations make the extra encoding time well worth it.

I was trying to render a Sony AVCHD file and the AVCHD seemed to kill my PC over the XDCAM so finally I'm able to render a .m2ts file from my .mts files that looks excellent. Best thing I've found. SO what is m2ts over mts? Basically when using the Sony AVCHD codec my CPU would burn up at 140F and I was blowing liquid nitrogen into the heatsink to cool the thing down, so I relayed the thermal compound and BAM rendering at 106F.

I use a canon Hf11 AVCHD camera for a lot of my behind the scenes videos that then go onto you tube.

I shoot AVCHD 1920x1080i 50i 24mbs and then transcode the material to final cut pro at pro res LT, I then output a master at pro res LT 1920x1080i 25p and create an apple tv H264 mpeg4 file ready for upload at 1280x720p 5mbs.

The resulting video looks good and streams very well:YouTube - British Beef Jerky Shoot 7-8-09 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1o1aE9OkHw)

Hello Gary Nattrass,

What app are you using? your video on youtube looks amazing quality. Would be great if you could explain in more details what settings are you using. I have Sony HDR-HC1E video camera, that captures at 1920X1080 50i video. I need to capture video from camera and then reender for youtube. I have Sony Vegas 8.

Should you have some advice to get best video onto DVD, would be great to hear too.

From November through early February, I was re-rendering 1080i Sony AVCHD files to 720p via Corel software, and it worked OK but some de-interlacing artifacts showed up in many clips. I had tried uploading the AVCHD clips directly to YouTube but it never worked. In February, I tried again because someone else said that worked for them.

I can typically upload 1080i clips from the camcorder unedited or trimmed by Picture Motion Browser up to about 125 to 150 MB. Past that, it works sometimes and fails sometimes. Typically the upload "succeeds" but then the processing fails later. I also have mixed success with converting the 1080i AVCHD clips to MPEG-4 HD in the Corel software - that's how I get the larger clips uploaded.

Just FYI as I suspect YouTube has quietly increased the range of 1080i/p formats they support over the last few months.

I use final cut pro V7 for editing the transcoded pro res in LT from AVCHD and then export a master file at 1920x1080i 25p.

I then use quicktime to make an apple TV version which is 1280x720p at 5mbs and this is what I upload to you tube etc.

I also use the same pro res master file for making DVD's in i-dvd