Video Bitrate: AVCHD raw clips vs. rendered files

[Larry Horwitz]

Originally Posted by Stas Bobkov

Hi Larry.
This is how I understend it too. I wouldn't have a problem with that if the program had more then one video track. I need at list two normal video tracks (three is better) to do my B-roll and work with overlapping audio etc. I checked the Track Manager - how come they have SEVEN!!! overlay tracks, each with PiP and only one video track. Or, maybe I'm missing something...

Well Stas,

I won't try to apologize or defend these cheaper programs when compared to the heavy duty programs like Vegas and Final Cut, which handle multiple tracks way better, but I will say that Corel X2 does allow up to 7 tracks and does permit masking and chromakeying / alpha channel as well as sizing to allow video to be nicely blended. I know this is not in the same league as the big guys, and I have personally never used more than 3 tracks, but they do seem to work as advertised.


Larry

[Stas Bobkov]

Hey, no worries Larry. I'm trying to learn the program and it's a little bit different from what I used before but it supports AVCHD when many other programs dont, so... anyways, I posted this same question on Corel's forum, see what they say.
Thanks for answering my questions. There will be more...
Stas.

[Dale McClelland]

Originally Posted by Dale McClelland

Larry, you mentioned "Lower Field First" in the settings. Maybe that is the cause of my sync problem. I thought AVCHD was Upper Field First. I'll try Smart Rendering with Lower Field First. I'm not sure whether field order affects sync, but will try it and find out. Thanks.

I rendered an AVCHD file (from AVCHD clips) with Smart Render on and changed the field order to Lower Field First. I burned that file to disc (with Pro X2's Create Disc). The lip sync problem disappeared. What I think may have happened is, although Smart Render was on, Pro X2 had to re-render the whole file because of the change in field order. So in effect, Smart Render was not used. I had already found that turning off Smart Render avoided lip sync problems.

The video looked good - the same as when I use UFF. I would have thought changing the field order to LFF would have caused some type of video aberrations/artifacts.

[Larry Horwitz]

Dale,

I'm really pleased to hear that the Smart Rendering and lip sync issues are now solved. Although I downloaded and purchased the new Corel X2, I have been using the prior version 11.5 with both HDV and AVCD for a long time, and have never had any lip sync issues, so I was surprised when you hit this snag.

As you will now see, the Smart Rendered output looks as excellent as the original input clips, the sync is perfect, and it produces fully functional menued AVCHD disks in just a few minutes time. It makes AVCHD disks so easy that I so very much wish that they would bring back the feature Ulead previously offered to allow mpeg2 HDV encoding on red laser BDMV disks. It would be WONDERFUL if they supported mpeg2 just as they now support AVC/h.264 encoding on red laser with AVCHD.

Let me know if I can help again. I'm hardly an expert but am always willing to play with these programs.

Larry