CS4 and AVCHD never really played well together, and after hearing (rumors?) that AVCHD smart rendering has yet again missed the bus in CS5, I'm giving serious thought to abandoning Premiere. Can anybody confirm or deny? It was often suggested that, with CS4, one could get AVCHD smart rendering via the MainConcept MPEG ProHD plug-in, however a conversation with MainConcept support debunked that, and it sounds like CS5 has really just taken MPEG ProHD inbox, hence presumably having the same strengths/limitations.

It was also my unfortunate experience that importing large AVCHD clips into Encore CS4 just crashed it, and there was no way around this; the program would just eat memory until it died, or else display a debug message (and die) later when building the disc. Whether the AVC program was created by Media Encoder or another app (like Corel VideoStudio), if it was much over 1Gb, I knew I was doomed. This was a day-one problem with CS4 that was never fixed, hence giving me serious reason to doubt that Adobe really cared about supporting AVC[HD].

In fact, it's been my observation that pretty much zero of the issues I've run into with CS4--including things like having my source file directory littered with random DLL files for God knows what--have been addressed since the program was released, giving me serious reason to wonder: How's CS5? Solid? Polished? Or...?

Best,
Aaron

It's my distinct impression that CS5, on a suitable system (at least Intel i7, 12GB RAM, Win7 64, and an approved nVidea CUDA GPU), is finally ready for prime time with AVCHD. Certainly very head and shoulders above CS3/4.
I can't say that it's perfect, or addresses every one of your concerns, but IMO the CS5 software combined with the big RAM/64 bit environment + MPE really puts HD editing/native format editing on a new level.

Thanks, Robert. Though I do in fact have a 64-bit machine, it has nothing near the specs you're talking about, and is running a 32-bit OS currently, meaning that even installing the trial version of CS5 would require a leap of faith (reinstalling the OS--not the end of the world, but certainly a PITA). I've used Premiere since 6.5 (at that time only for DV) and I regret that it's now so difficult to continue paying the "Adobe Tax" every year. I really wish they'd pause for a sec and just *fix* the *existing* version, but that's definitely not their business model.

Most of what I've read about CS5 is about Mercury and how fast it makes everything that was painfully slow before. This is fine, however I'd rather hear about the things that work now but were broken before, like AVCHD smart rendering, AVC import, etc.; you've gotta walk before you can run, after all.

It's hard to resist the $299 upgrade price for CS5 when moving to just about anything else would be far more expensive, but when I see AVCHD editing fly by in Edius and Vegas on my existing hardware, my brain and my wallet get into a terrible argument! :-)

Still cogitating.

Aaron

Just a reminder:
Premiere CS5 is 64 bit only. It won't install on a 32 bit OS.
The software is very good, but an absolutely major and necessary component for performance "as advertised" is the huge advance in hardware- 8 cores or more, 12-16GB fast RAM, 64 bit OS, and CUDA GPU.
You have to plan on having the whole package for everything to work as it should. If your hardware/OS is not up to par, you will be very disappointed in the results :(
Frankly, this package makes HD editing as quick, simple, and stable as DV editing was just a couple of years ago.
IMO, all the HD editing tools/available hardware/OS have been pretty lame up til now. This is the first time since we began HD editing with HDV that everything is truely up to the task.
With this sort of hardware/software upgrade, you could probably plan on getting several years use from it.

Worth it? Yes. CS5 is 64 bit, and requires a 64 bit OS to run it. It takes advantage of breaking through the 4GB memory barrier; it's fully optimized for 64 bit operation. On top of that, it takes advantage of some of the CUDA video cards to improve the video processing.

I've loaded hour long AVCHD clips (1080/30p, 24Mbps max) into CS5 and they run just fine in Premiere Pro, After Effects, Encore, Soundbooth, and Media Encoder. Not perfect, but certainly easy to use. A sizable improvement over CS4. All this, on an i7 laptop with 6GB of memory. It'll undoubtedly do better when I get around to building a new desktop this fall/winter.

I'm just sayin' the performance is there for live editing of AVCHD. You don't really need to transcode before editing anymore.

Thanks Bruce, Robert: As I alluded to above, I have a 64-bit machine and can easily reinstall the OS to get to 64 bits (I own the Windows 7 full-product DVD, which has both flavors), however I don't have anything that would make CS5 really scream (no supported nVidia card, for example). It would run. My gripe about AVCHD is about smart-rendering, not simply ingesting AVCHD, per se, although as I mentioned, I've never been able to import anything near an hour of AVC in TS form into Encore without the app just crashing and asking me to send a debug report (which I do every time). Note that I'm referring to a single monolithic TS file, *not* simply a Premiere timeline loaded up with an hour of AVCHD. Why would I try doing the former? Because I can stitch together AVCHD losslessly in near realtime *on my current hardware* using VideoStudio, but it's Blu-ray authoring is terrible and I'd rather use Encore.

One big promise of AVCHD is it's Blu-ray compatible format, hence one really ought not to have to transcode the entirety of an AVCHD program (e.g., with no effects) in order to get it onto a Blu-ray. That's ridiculous. Reminds me of my VHS editing days and the analog generation loss issue! Given that most things package AVCHD in a MPEG-2 stream, one would expect that it wouldn't be too difficult to smartly handle AVCHD too, but it's apparently low on the priority list, as MPEG Pro HD now seems to smartly handle everything *but* AVCHD. That's a very strong statement, IMO. Of course, the statement is probably, "You were an idiot for buying AVCHD equipment." ;-) Years ago, I'd have never believed I would still be having as much trouble with this material as I am today.

I would really love to hear from somebody who thinks CS5 has made improvements in AVCHD handling besides simply speeding it up. I don't care about the speed right now, only about getting results. I'm used to leaving my computer to render overnight. As a hobbyist, it doesn't kill me. What kills me is waking up to a crash report or finding that, even though I transcoded my 24 Mbit/s footage up to 39 Mbit/s to limit the damage caused by Premiere's unavoidable recompression, I can still see a huge difference between the original footage and the finished product on my 50" screen.

Best,
Aaron

PS: I'm really not trying to just complain here, but it feels like that's what this has devolved into, so I'll wait and see if somebody wants to correct me before I reply again.

Well...
Some of this just gets down to personal attitude.
My attitude is that AVCHD is a good acquisition codec, but is a lousy editing codec due to its high level of compression. There are semi work-arounds, like "smart rendering" that limit the damage somewhat. However, if I am doing a typical project that will have effects, animated graphics, color correction, maybe even a "looks" treatment with something like Magic Bullet, smart rendering won't help.
There's no way I would try to edit in AVCHD and have any expection of the best possible quality output for any final delivery format- HD or SD.
I have no hesitation to shoot AVCHD, but I always edit it as Cineform .avi digital intermediate codec.
This workflow is fast, rendering is fast with CS5, and the final image quality in the delivery formats (BR, DVD, Flash, etc.) is at the level of the original footage.
The Cineform workflow eliminates most of the problems that have frustrated you.

I'll repeat: If you have a system running CS4 okay- you will get advantage just going 64 bit operating system and program - like CS5.
Yes - it is better with a lot of cores and a lot of memory but CS5 is running better and faster than CS4 !

...even installing the trial version of CS5 would require a leap of faith ......and it wouldn't help you decide anyway. As always, the trial version does not support any form of mpeg, so AVCHD import and editing is not enabled.
I really wish they'd pause for a sec and just *fix* the *existing* version, but that's definitely not their business model.That actually sort of is what they did with CS5. Other than MPE, there aren't a whole lot of new bloatware features. They pretty much concentrated on cleaning up the mess that was CS4, and for the most part, reportedly, have been pretty successful.

But really, no one here is trying to twist your arm to get you to switch to CS5, stay with CS4, or even stay with Premiere. Edius has a fully functioning trial and reportedly works great on even modest hardware. Why don't you give it a try if Premiere does not meet your needs?

Other than MPE, there aren't a whole lot of new bloatware features. They pretty much concentrated on cleaning up the mess that was CS4, and for the most part, reportedly, have been pretty successful.

Amen...
It was getting to be Adobe's last chance to salvage their credibility in the NLE market after CS4, and IMO, they pulled it off very nicely ;-)

Yes, that is very good to hear. Adam: Yes, I should have remembered about the trialware limitations. I ran into the same with CS4. Drat! (And odd, since I don't see anybody else leaving that stuff out of their trials.) Well, I may just reinstall Windows tomorrow and get the trial anyway just to make sure there isn't anything objectionable in what little is included. :-)

Decisions, decisions!

Best,
Aaron

My attitude is that AVCHD is a good acquisition codec, but is a lousy editing codec due to its high level of compression.
...
I have no hesitation to shoot AVCHD, but I always edit it as Cineform .avi digital intermediate codec.

Exactly. If you are going to modify the footage, color grading, contrast enhancement, compositing, FX, etc. then you'll finish with better quality if you work in an intermediate codec designed for the purpose, such as the Cineform .avi.

But it's not due to the performance of CS5. I find CS5 solid and polished. I've been using it for months and not had it do anything bad -- no crashing, no littering of directories, no choking on file sizes, none of that.

The reason to use an intermediate codec is the highly compressed and lossy nature of AVCHD, not CS5 performance. For similar reasons I convert from JPG to TIFF to edit still images in photoshop, even if the final is going to be a JPG -- so as not to loose image quality with the intermediate steps.

The reason to use an intermediate codec is the highly compressed and lossy nature of AVCHD, not CS5 performance. For similar reasons I convert from JPG to TIFF to edit still images in photoshop, even if the final is going to be a JPG -- so as not to loose image quality with the intermediate steps.

Hi Bruce: Regarding your TIFF analogy: That certainly makes sense if you're actually saving as TIFF multiple times, reloading, re-editing, etc., but if you're not then it won't make a difference. Similarly, for AVCHD, if my workflow is "Decode AVCHD" -> (do nothing or very little) -> "Render as AVC" -> "Burn to Blu-ray Disc", using some proxy or intermediate format ought to have no effect on the quality of the output. The only scenario I can imagine where using a proxy format would have an impact on quality would be where one renders one's whole project, then loads the result (e.g., into another program) for still more work. Is there another scenario? I'd love a technical explanation.

Don't forget: A few years ago everybody was griping about how MPEG-2 was not a format to be edited. We seem to have gotten over that, though. Beyond the added efficiency of AVC, I'm not seeing the difference. Probably, when AVC-2 comes along, everybody will be talking about the "good ol' days of AVCHD" and how the NLEs just cut through it like a hot knife through butter. ;-)

Best,
Aaron

Similarly, for AVCHD, if my workflow is "Decode AVCHD" -> (do nothing or very little) -> "Render as AVC" -> "Burn to Blu-ray Disc"

If all you intend on doing for editing is simple trim and stitch, you can get decent output from editing in these lossy native codecs.
But, Bruce's point is well taken:
If you are doing more sophisticated editing, it's the nature of all the highly compressed, lossy codecs to be problematic. It has nothing to do with the capability of the NLE, it's a limitation of the codec itself.
Frankly, if you plan on doing only cut & stitch, and directly out to Blu Ray, there are many inexpensive consumer programs that are designed expressly for this purpose. There is no need to get into the expense and complexity of a pro level suite like CS5

Frankly, if you plan on doing only cut & stitch, and directly out to Blu Ray, there are many inexpensive consumer programs that are designed expressly for this purpose. There is no need to get into the expense and complexity of a pro level suite like CS5

True for the NLE, certainly, however one can't buy Encore separately anymore, and I have yet to find another BD authoring solution I like. Now we return to one of my earlier posts where I discussed the problem Encore CS4 has with AVC: If you try to import a single, long AVC program in a .m2ts file, it just dies horribly. If it doesn't die during import, it dies creating the disc image. Doesn't matter who rendered the .m2ts, Encore CS4 dies eventually. If CS5 fixes that, I'd love to know. I can definitely do most of my cut & stitch with a program like Corel VideoStudio, and in fact it does a great job with 1080i60. 720p60, not so much, which is a major bummer!

If somebody can tell me that Encore CS5 can import an hour-long AVC .m2ts file at, say, 24-ish Mbit/s (and, for bonus points, the peak memory usage of Encore during import), I would be enormously appreciative.

Very best,
Aaron

I don't know what your problem is with Encore.
I've authored & burned lots of Blu Ray disks on both Encore CS4 and CS5, mpg and h.264, with no difficulty at all. I've not really heard of others with problems in this regard either, so I don't think its a generic issue with Encore. More likely a specific problem with your system or workflow.

The only scenario I can imagine where using a proxy format would have an impact on quality would be where one renders one's whole project, then loads the result (e.g., into another program) for still more work. Is there another scenario? I'd love a technical explanation.

Alas, I'm not the guy to give it to you. I don't know the internals for the Production Premium suite.

It does look as if Premiere Pro does not constantly re-encode and restore the files. It looks as if there is a single copy of the original file, and what Adobe stores is difference files. IDK for sure. It also looks as if importing a file from Premiere Pro into Encore via Adobe Dynamic Link does something similar -- that is, Encore looks at the original file and the difference files in the PPro directories. Again, IDK. And I have no idea how After Effects handles files.

I too would like to know how the files are handled in the suite and by the individual programs. But for the next month or two I'm just going to have to live with less understanding than I might like.

Id like to jump in with a question, I have a i-7 920 and 6 gigs of memory when I play AVCHD video it plays fine but when I start to scrub around it gets clunky. Especially when I I do a multi-cam switch. Is there a minimum processor I should shoot for for? I dont do a lot of effects so I dont think a better video card will help. Right now I can get a good deal on a -7 950 would that help?

I have a 3DBOXX system with an i7 920 processor and 12 GB of Ram and am still running CS4 (hopefully upgrading next month). AVCHD just simply plays clunky on the timeline, regardless of what I do. From what I've read, I'm thinking jumping to the 950 won't really help matters at all--I'm hoping the CS5 Mercury engine will help out, but I frankly don't care that much--my rendered output from Media Encoder is great and I can live with clunky in the timeline as long as I know my output is going to be clean.

From what ive read the MPE will only help you with effects if your doing cuts & dissolves it does contribute at all. All it does is let the video card handle the effects processing.

From what ive read the MPE will only help you with effects if your doing cuts & dissolves it does contribute at all. All it does is let the video card handle the effects processing.

I believe that is true.
It is still your CPU and RAM that are decompressing and processing the AVCHD files.
AVCHD is RAM hungry.
I think you can get good performance with an 8 core CPU, but increasing RAM from 6GB to 12-16GB should provide a significant improvement in Premiere CS5's ability to handle AVCHD.
Adobe really does recommend 8+ cores, 12+GB RAM, approved CUDA GPU to get the full performance that CS5 is designed for.
Dave's situation is a little different- he has the hardware, but needs CS5 to get the performance. CS4 is 32 bit, CS5 is 64 bit and it makes a huge difference.

When you say 8 cores do you mean a 2 quad core system or a quad core with hyperthreading?

Sorry- I should have been more specific.
I mean an Intel i7

"If somebody can tell me that Encore CS5 can import an hour-long AVC .m2ts file at, say, 24-ish Mbit/s (and, for bonus points, the peak memory usage of Encore during import), I would be enormously appreciative."

While I have never tried to pull AVCHD directly into Encore, I have brought 2+ hour 24Mbps AVCHD (from an Sony NX5) into PPro CS5, added a beginning title with fades and dissolves at the beginning and end of the video, and then used Dynamic Link to export to Encore CS5. No problems at all.

I'm running an I7-920, 12 g of RAM, GTX260 (MPE hardware acceleration), with the AVCHD video fed from a GSpeed 4 TB Raid and the Blur-Ray directory on a separate 1 TB Raid 0. I run the 64 bit CS5 under Win 7. Working with one or two tracks of AVCHD under CS5 has been like working with DV used to be, as Robert mentioned above.

I've only looked at memory usage once or twice during export to Encore and it was negligible.

But, are you asking about importing or are you asking about encoding? The encoding and disk imaging are a different matter. Encoding tends to max out memory usage. As I understand it --- and somebody doubtless will correct me if I'm wrong --- CS5 basically is set to use up to something like 75% of available memory when it needs it. This is true whether you have 6 g, 12 g or 24 g of RAM.

While a CS5 upgrade ($299) might fix your problems, the workflow and hardware you describe suggest you might be happier with Edius Neo ($199). There's a trial version at Grass Valley Home | Grass Valley (http://www.grassvalley.com).

While I have never tried to pull AVCHD directly into Encore, I have brought 2+ hour 24Mbps AVCHD (from an Sony NX5) into PPro CS5, added a beginning title with fades and dissolves at the beginning and end of the video, and then used Dynamic Link to export to Encore CS5. No problems at all.

Thanks, Jay. Yep, this works for me also. I'm only dead if I try to import a ready-made 30+ minute program as a single, monolithic AVCHD file (e.g., m2ts). File could originate from AME, VideoStudio, whatever. In this case, simply trying to import the file as an asset/timeline usually fails, and if it doesn't, then building a disc image with that asset later will. Demuxing the file first seems to dodge the import issue, but building a disc image still fails. The failure in both cases is either an outright crash or, more often, a debug message originating from the HDMV handling code that asks me to report the problem to Adobe.

While a CS5 upgrade ($299) might fix your problems, the workflow and hardware you describe suggest you might be happier with Edius Neo ($199). There's a trial version at Grass Valley Home | Grass Valley (http://www.grassvalley.com).

I've been playing with the Edius 5 trial the last few days and the performance is amazing. ...well, actually, it's the kind of performance I'd expect from a Quad-core machine with 4Gb of memory. ;-)

Best,
Aaron

Hi All,
As you know, AVCHD video is highly compressed, so it takes a lot more horsepower to edit with it smoothly. With the Mercury Playback Engine, the resources in your computer can be harnessed so that you can do just that.

In order to edit with a fully tuned system, you'll need to pay a bit more attention to how your RAM is configured for the applications you use in CS5. You may need to access and adjust your memory preferences to get the best performance and stability. I've found pages from Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 Help that will help you to understand how to set this preference optimally. Read through them and I think you'll have a better handle on how to adjust those settings according to what your system requires.

Adobe After Effects CS5 * Memory (RAM) usage in 64-bit After Effects (and Premiere Pro) (http://bit.ly/givxQm)
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 * Preferences (http://bit.ly/hgeYYv)
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 * About Dynamic Link (Production Premium or Master Collection only) (http://bit.ly/f7v7H1)

Thanks, Kevin. However, the intent of the thread was to address the AVCHD format; performance was never a concern. CS4 is so crashy, the question for me is never, "How long will it take me to get there?" but rather "Will I *ever* get there?"

The fact that CS5 supports smart-rendering every long-GOP format *except* AVCHD is bizarre, IMO. Smells of strange political/marketing games. I have, at least for now, decided to ignore CS5. We'll see what the updates bring. Whenever possible, I fall back on Corel VideoStudio for my AVCHD endeavors, as its performance for basic cutting and splicing is unrivaled. When I need to do more, I'll limp through with CS4.

Best,
Aaron

EDIT: By the way, this thread was happily dead until today and I'm really not trying to resurrect it. Just replying to Kevin to clarify my concern, which is that Premiere needlessly damages the quality of my AVCHD clips in situations where preserving the original encoding, byte-for-byte, ought to be possible (and has been achieved in other, arguably lesser NLEs). That CS5 can damage them even faster with the help of my GPU is completely orthogonal.

Hi Aaron,
Thanks for helping me understand your problem a bit better. Let me see if I can address some of your concerns here.

The fact that CS5 supports smart-rendering every long-GOP format *except* AVCHD is bizarre, IMO. Smells of strange political/marketing games.

Since I am new to Adobe, I wasn't aware of this issue. Let me find out more about this from the Premiere Pro team and I'll address it here, if I can.

I have, at least for now, decided to ignore CS5. We'll see what the updates bring.

Let me know how I can help you get to the promised land. CS5 is a serious upgrade with lots of power, flexibility and, of course, fixes. There are tons of things that were fixed from previous versions (CS3, CS4)

Whenever possible, I fall back on Corel VideoStudio for my AVCHD endeavors, as its performance for basic cutting and splicing is unrivaled.

I'd love to hear more about why you use this system over Premiere Pro CS5. However, you'll have to upgrade to Premiere Pro CS5 to find out, right?

Premiere needlessly damages the quality of my AVCHD clips in situations where preserving the original encoding, byte-for-byte, ought to be possible (and has been achieved in other, arguably lesser NLEs). That CS5 can damage them even faster with the help of my GPU is completely orthogonal.

I'd like to investigate what you mean by "damaging" AVCHD clips. Let me talk to the team and I'll get back to you on this thread.

Hi, Kevin. I truly appreciate your willingness to follow up on this. Truly. And I appreciate it even more now that I've been terse and frustrated-sounding. Certainly none of my gripes are aimed at you personally. Let me expand on a few of the items in that case:

With regards to "damaging": I'm simply referring to recompression of already-compressed video where the destination format is the same as the source. The MainConcept MPEG Pro HD plug-in and now Premiere CS5 support "smart-rendering" (I don't know if there's a more appropriate term for this in Adobe vernacular), meaning that unmodified video frames or groups of frames are simply transported directly from source to target byte-for-byte, ensuring that the end result looks exactly as it did, e.g., coming off the camera. Or, rather, they support it for MPEG-2, AVC Intra, XDCAM, and a few others. Not AVCHD. When working with a format like AVCHD, which is Blu-ray compatible, this is such a tantalizing thing, since, at least technically, there is no reason why Premiere/Encore couldn't just copy my Blu-ray-compatible video directly onto a Blu-ray disc (plus menu, perhaps) if that's all I wanted them to do.

And in fact, that is all I am interested in most of the time. I try to get the color and other things looking the way I want them to via controls on the camera, and as I mostly shoot home video, I rarely have time (and don't get paid) to do much else. One might then wonder why I'm using Premiere Pro instead of a more consumery, less capable product. The answer is that I bought Premiere 6.5 back in my standard-def days because I simply couldn't stand any of the other NLEs out there, and I've stuck with it. I'm a creature of habit. :)

As for VideoStudio: Premiere certainly mops the floor with it in almost every way a professional would care about. It has one killer feature though, which is its ability to smart-render AVCHD. If I just need to trim and join some video clips, I can do it at light speed without any degredation in video quality. The downside is that VideoStudio, being geared toward home users who mostly shoot in interlaced modes, doesn't work well some progressive formats that I now have access to thanks to the NX5. Most notably, 720p60 doesn't work. This leads me back to Premiere and causes me to start complaining again about the fact that Premiere has let first-class AVCHD support fall by the wayside in yet another release. If Premiere would bring AVCHD support--particularly smart-rendering--up to the level of MPEG-2, XDCAM, etc., I would be a very happy camper. That would be awesome.

Best,
Aaron

Hi Aaron,
I just talked to engineering. It turns out that Adobe Premiere Pro does not support Smart Rendering for any format. If you would like this feature, please file a feature request. You can file a feature request here: http://www.adobe.com/go/wish . More on how to give feedback: feature requests, bug reports, crash reports, and sending feedback After Effects region of interest (http://bit.ly/93d6NF)

Hope this answers your question.

Hi Aaron,
I just talked to engineering. It turns out that Adobe Premiere Pro does not support Smart Rendering for any format. If you would like this feature, please file a feature request. You can file a feature request here: http://www.adobe.com/go/wish . More on how to give feedback: feature requests, bug reports, crash reports, and sending feedback After Effects region of interest (http://bit.ly/93d6NF)

Hope this answers your question.

Whacky! Now I need to figure out where I read that. :-/ On the positive side, I see that MainConcept has announced that they'll finally be adding AVCHD smart-rendering (at some point--not specific) to their MPEG Pro HD plug-in for Premiere:

"General H.264/AVC Smart Rendering support is scheduled for an upcoming update."
(from Codec Suite: MainConcept (http://www.mainconcept.com/products/apps-plug-ins/plug-ins-for-adobe/codec-suite-cs-5.html))

Of course, the downside is that you pay another $200 or whatever. Grrr. But probably worth it.

Thanks for checking up on this, Kevin.

Best,
Aaron

No problem Aaron. Glad I could clarify the issue for you. The upgrade will be a good one for you. I say, go for it.

We have been editing native AVCHD for two years now on macs using both CS4 and now CS5. My older mac pro could handle the footage no problem up to 720p30. 1080p24 or higher were too complex to work with real-time. Our new mac pro has no problem with the 1080p footage however, so I think within the next few cpu upgrade cycles this will stop being an issue. We really like not waiting for an intermediate transcode and working the native files directly. The master encoded output to HD (or SD for DVD) has been fantastic for us.

When we previously used HDV, at first I tried using cineform all other intermediate transcodes because everyone was worried, but I soon started editing HDV native files without problems. I think the same is going to be true for AVCHD.

I suspect if you are working on a project for television or film and need to do a lot of keying work and effects, then a transcoded intermediate will be useful. But if you are just talking about basic editing and color correction and titles, working with the native AVCHD files seems fine in Adobe Premiere.

Hi Aaron,
I just talked to engineering. It turns out that Adobe Premiere Pro does not support Smart Rendering for any format. If you would like this feature, please file a feature request. You can file a feature request here: http://www.adobe.com/go/wish . More on how to give feedback: feature requests, bug reports, crash reports, and sending feedback After Effects region of interest (http://bit.ly/93d6NF)

This. At present all versions of Adobe Premiere - Pro, CS-anything and Elements - will re-compress everything no matter what. The cause is that all output from those programs must go through the Adobe Media Encoder, which is the component that re-compresses everything (even standard- or low-deninition video).

Yes... I think my "wish" will be:

Adobe: Please just buy MainConcept instead of continuing to license the stripped-down "dumb-rendering" (mind if I invent that term?) versions of their codecs.

Oops! I wasn't supposed to tell everybody, was I? Now it won't come true... :*(

Best,
Aaron

If you could phrase that in the language of a feature request ("I request smart rendering for all formats") and then file it, you'll be more likely to get your wish. http://www.adobe.com/go/wish (https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform)

I hope you guys don't mind that I'll be repeating this information often.

Sorry Aaron, I missed the part about smart rendering in the original post. I guess this would have to with output to blu ray and that kind of scenario. Are there any real world examples of how much the quality degrades? Since I encode avchd for web or dvd so I have not run into this. yet.

If you could phrase that in the language of a feature request ("I request smart rendering for all formats") and then file it, you'll be more likely to get your wish.
Certainly will do. :-)

Sorry Aaron, I missed the part about smart rendering in the original post. I guess this would have to with output to blu ray and that kind of scenario. Are there any real world examples of how much the quality degrades? Since I encode avchd for web or dvd so I have not run into this. yet.
Hi, Jeff:

Yep, it's encoding for Blu-ray. The appearance of the degredation is somewhat counterintuitive, and it really depends on what's in the shot. I do a lot of indoor shooting. In areas with lots of contrast, detail, etc., the degradation is actually not very noticeable at all (especially if I encode at a higher bitrate than the source material, e.g. 35Mbit, which I often do specifically to combat degradation). However, in areas of relatively little contrast, such as a wall in the background that has a very subtle luma/chroma gradient, the degradation can be very noticeable, especially on a large screen.

I attribute this to fundamental differences between the hardware AVCHD codec in the camera and a number of the software codecs like MainConcept as far as how gradients are dealt with. I think the camera's codec employs dithering very effectively, whereas MainConcept does not appear to apply dithering, or else does not do so very well. Consequently, banding that may have been cleverly hidden by the camera's codec stands out like a sore thumb after being recompressed.

That, at least, is my guess.

...and, unfortunately, as a mostly-indoors shooter, it's hard to avoid shooting walls, floors, and other things that really seem to bring this out. Video shot out of doors and in really good light is definitely less fragile.

Best,
Aaron

Thanks for the Feature Request Aaron! Good feedback on AVCHD issues too, thanks.