How's this:

In Edius, you have a list of effects/filters with a bunch of info about the clip (red area). You can have mulitple copies of 'em and change the order. You can also turn 'em off and on individually. Works out to pretty much the same as Vegas.

And in the record window (using 'one monitor' mode, you can also have a play/source and rec/timeline mode), you always have those counters right there. (yellow area)

In Vegas, I've got an in/out loop selected and I see, in the lower mid corner, the current time and the duration of in/out but not the times. Do I need to turn something on? I've got 'edit details' shown in lower left but can't find a way to display this info.

Canopus HQ? They tell me its a good codec. Best I can figure, the equivilant of Cineform. I haven't done any comparisons--just resting on Canopus/GVs reputation on codecs.

Andy,

See if the timecode filter helps you.

Above the preview window, click the "+" to add a filter. Select "Sony Timecode". Does this help?

With this new booster thingy, Neo 2 is probably the best basic editor for AVCHD right now (reasonable native AVCHD editing without having to build some super computer with multiple overclocked quad-core CPUs, that needs liquid nitrogen cooling and dims the lights when you turn it on).

I downloaded the evaluation copy, gave it a quick try, and it appears to handle AVCHD footage dropped straight onto the timeline quite well (silky smooth 720p60 AVCHD real-time playback, which is just as tough on the CPU as 1080i60 or 1080p30, with CPU utilization hovering between 30-40% on an AMD Phenom 9850 - a fairly modest quad-core CPU). From what I saw, just giving it a quick look-see, basic native AVCHD editing performance should be pretty smooth on any quad, and probably okay on a fast dual core or triple core CPU. Also, Canopus HQ is a viable alternative to Cineform for most purposes. Technically, Canopus HQ uses a very different approach to compression (more conventional - Cineform uses wavelet compression), but from a user's perspective, they are pretty similar.

I sure like that Edius has a built in discrete frame codec in HQ. Vegas used to do that with Cineform. That's a big thing if you ask me. If you're work in HQ, you could probably edit with a Pentium 4 and not miss a beat.

Aye, you can but with very light use of filters and short effects. Core 2 gets you a whole lot more but even then its fairly easy to max out.

Edius Trial
 

You talked highly enough about Edius that I downloaded the trial. In particular, I tried Edius Neo 2.5. True to your comments the editing performance is good. Relative to Sony Vegas, the software loaded faster, the transfer of video clips into a project was faster and most importantly it didn't drop frames during editing playback. This is all with 24Mbps AVCHD from my Cannon.

I have two issues I'm trying to resolve. One, the audio drops frames continuously. This is both annoying as well as a problem for audio editing. Any suggestions on how to resolve? Second, how do I perform the equivalent functio of cropping with key frames, like I do in Sony Movie Studio?

Cropping with keyframes is done via the layout tool in v5 - not sure in Neo.

Please elaborate on audio frame dropping; what do you call audio frame dropping?

Edius Audio
 

It's a bit difficult to describe what I call dropped frames in the audio. Thinking of the audio on the timeline, it sounds as if small slices have been deleted. This is how it sounds in the preview, not how it looks on the timeline. The drops are frequent, and short. Maybe a few per second that are 10ms in length. I made the comparison to dropped frames, because in some situations when frames are dropped the audio is dropped with them and this sounds similar. It is sort of a jerky voice sound. It could be related to sampling rates of the audio.

That's my best attempt at describing. Thanks for your comments.

Looking at your system specs, I think you will have to upgrade - not a bad PC but when it comes to AVCHD, you need more horsepower.

A LOT more.

From my quick look at Edius Neo 2 with the booster thingy, I would think a Phenom X3 could handle basic AVCHD editing with it (kinda cuts it close tho). When I'm getting only 30-40% CPU utilization with a Phenome X4 9850, playing back AVCHD from the timeline, there's enough headroom there to use a less powerful CPU. I'd suggest dropping a Phenom quad in there though. You can get em cheap as dirt, especially the older ones. I know you can get older ones under a hundred bucks.

Grass Valley has recently redesigned their website and the new layout does not do a lot of good to Edius, so you might not be aware that it also comes with some bundled software. Have you checked that out.

Honestly, I would be very surprised if you gave both Avid and Edius a fair trial and still go for Avid. I know people who use or used both and other than old timers coming from 'real' film, they all have Avid gathering dust.

Avid brings some things to the table that Edius just doesn't have. Some that are important to me. And some that important to "old timers" who have come from film and are still using film.

You don't find Edius used to cut feature film because it's missing some very crucial elements. Broadcast is different, and Grass Valley is VERY strong there.

John - I just purchased Neo 2 after testing and can say it put Vegas Pro 9 to shame in my tests. What you're experiencing is drops due to Edius not buffering enough frames to keep up with the timeline being played back - a simple way around this is to hit Shift-G and that will prerender any clips you have selected on the timeline. You can also specify how much memory is allocated to Edius in the applications settings as well.

I discovered this stuttering issue due to my only having a 128MB video card. Edius Neo 2 uses the memory on the graphics card to buffer frames I believe - I just ordered a 1GB nVidia video card to address this very issue (GT-220).

HTH

... with some exceptions... Page Not Found | Grass Valley - edit: for some reason the link seems dead but it does come up if you Google "feature film cut on Edius".

At the end of the day, it's a personal choice more than anything. I simply can't think of anything I can't do in Edius, but of course your situation might be different, especially if you work in a team environment, where, admittedly, Avid is the king.

Have fun learning Avid, and please report back on your final decision.

Edius does not do 10-bit codecs. So for anyone needing to do real color grading, it's a show stopper.