AVCHD Workflow

Andy Tejral · December 17th, 2009, 01:14 PM

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.

Perrone Ford · December 17th, 2009, 01:54 PM

Andy,

See if the timecode filter helps you.

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

Robert M Wright · December 17th, 2009, 02:55 PM

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.

Brian Luce · December 17th, 2009, 05:40 PM

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.

Andy Tejral · December 17th, 2009, 07:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian Luce

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.

John Cooper · December 18th, 2009, 08:07 PM

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?

Ervin Farkas · December 19th, 2009, 10:33 PM

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?

John Cooper · December 20th, 2009, 12:39 AM

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.

Ervin Farkas · December 20th, 2009, 02:02 PM

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.

Robert M Wright · December 20th, 2009, 05:45 PM

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.

Ervin Farkas · December 31st, 2009, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

The high quality apps bundled with Avid alone would cost as much as they charge for the program. When I looked at adding Boris, Sonic, and some other tools to my Current Vegas workflow, I was right at the Avid price point.

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.

Perrone Ford · December 31st, 2009, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

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.

Cliff Etzel · December 31st, 2009, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Cooper

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.

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

Ervin Farkas · January 1st, 2010, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

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.

... 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.

Perrone Ford · January 1st, 2010, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ervin Farkas

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.

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

December 17th, 2009, 01:14 PM	#16
Andy Tejral Major Player Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: New York City Posts: 523	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. Attached Thumbnails __________________ Andy Tejral Railroad Videographer

December 17th, 2009, 01:54 PM	#17
Perrone Ford Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Tallahassee, FL Posts: 4,100	Andy, See if the timecode filter helps you. Above the preview window, click the "+" to add a filter. Select "Sony Timecode". Does this help? __________________ DVX100, PMW-EX1, Canon 550D, FigRig, Dell Octocore, Avid MC4/5, MB Looks, RedCineX, Matrox MX02 mini, GTech RAID, Edirol R-4, Senn. G2 Evo, Countryman, Moles and Lowels.

December 18th, 2009, 08:07 PM	#21
John Cooper New Boot Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Newport Coast CA Posts: 5	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?

December 19th, 2009, 10:33 PM	#22
Ervin Farkas Inner Circle Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Atlanta/USA Posts: 2,515	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? __________________ Ervin Farkas www.AtlantaLegalVideo.com

December 20th, 2009, 12:39 AM	#23
John Cooper New Boot Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Newport Coast CA Posts: 5	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.

December 17th, 2009, 02:55 PM	#18
Robert M Wright Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Minnesota (USA) Posts: 2,171	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.

December 17th, 2009, 05:40 PM	#19
Brian Luce Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 2,290	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.

December 20th, 2009, 02:02 PM	#24
Ervin Farkas Inner Circle Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Atlanta/USA Posts: 2,515	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. __________________ Ervin Farkas www.AtlantaLegalVideo.com

December 20th, 2009, 05:45 PM	#25
Robert M Wright Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Minnesota (USA) Posts: 2,171	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.