TM900 and Editing the 50p files

[Ian Cope]

Just a quick Hi to all the knowledgeable people here from a long time lurker, 1st time poster.

I recently got my hands on a brand new TM900 and I gotta say, what a camera this is. The image produced is absolutely amazing for a camera in this price point, easily on par with my FX1000 in good light. The O.I.S. is awesome. Handheld shots at full zoom VERY usable and the auto focus is hard to fault. Falls away a little under low light, but what camera doesn’t. Love the menu system, took me minutes to acclimatize myself well enough to get some nice footage.

My main reason to purchase this camera is I recently upgraded my Sony A1P for a FX1000 after securing a number of small jobs. The A1P was ok for holiday stuff as well as pro as it was nice and small. The FX1000 is to big for me to cart on holidays. Step in the TM900.

My main problem now is, I use Premiere CS3 to edit my HDV stuff. It is no good with AVCHD files and I have read about the problem editing AVCHD files with low spec PCs. I am looking for advice on editing software. I don't want to spend a fortune as this will be mainly for editing my family and holiday stuff. My main needs are to be able to import and edit 1920 x 1080 50p files. Add transitions, titles and maybe the odd colour correction. Nothing too heavy. Don’t need to see the edits in HD straight off the timeline. A lower resolution preview is fine. Simple audio editing of voiceovers over background music is a must. I really then want to output this in a high quality as possible for authoring onto Blu Ray. I read somewhere that 720 50p is useable on Blu Ray, is this correct? Which of the below entry level programs if any, do you think would suit my requirements??

Sony Movie Studio HD 11: Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11 Overview

Pinnacle Studio HD Ultimate 15: Pinnacle Studio Ultimate ? Share high-definition video to Blu-ray

Power Director 9: PowerDirector 9 - World 1st 64-bit consumer video editing software

Be nice to hear from people what works for them. I think there would be quite a lot of people with these hard to use 1080 50p files and this thread may help with Editing software decisions.

Thanks for your input.
Ian

[Tom Hardwick]

I can't help you with your editing dilemma Ian but I'd just like to back you on the 900's amazing capabilities. I too have one of these and just love the LCD screen's touch sensitivity. I take the SD card out of my Sony NX5 and pop it into the 900 simply because the screen is better, more colourful, brighter, bigger and files access is lightening quick and finger-touch easy.

And that active image stabilisation! You've tried the 'touch the screen' stabiliser? It's just slap-forehead A-A-Mazing.

tom.

[Ron Windeyer]

Hi Ian - congrats on the TM900 - as a fellow new user I can share in the enthusiasm. It is an awesome little camera!

Regarding editing - I have been a Vegas Pro user for some time; when I got the TM900 I upgraded from 8 to 10e. You may not want to go that far, and I will admit that there are many many functions and features in the Pro package that I don't use or even understand. However it does a great job.

The BEST part is that it will handle 1920x1080 50P files - just set up a custom template; it calls the video Double Pal. There is even a rendering option that I can work with at present - it will create a Sony AVC file (mp4), 1920x1080 50P@28Mbits/sec; I export this to my PS3 and watch stunning video on the TV.

Will Movie Studio Platinum do this? Don't know. I suggest you download a trial copy and see what you can do with it. However the Sony product gets a vote of support from me..

Bear in mind that the AVCHD specs were expanded to Version 2 on 1st July - in coming months you may be able to buy Blu-Ray burners and players that will handle 1080/50P footage@28Mbits/sec; I wouldn't be in a hurry to buy what's in the shops now. Also I am sure that the NLE packages will be upgraded to include this specification - you will be able to handle these files easily.

Best of luck in the decision making!

[Ian Cope]

Hi Tom, everytime I pickup this camera it amazes me.

Thanks Ron, I have downloaded the trial Movie Studio. We have the V8 Supercars in town this weekend and of course I'm taking my new toy to grab some footage. I will have a play in Movie Studio with my footage over the next few days and report back.

I have noticed a great feature of the cam, the ability to convert 50p footage to regular AVCHD. I had found a workaround for editing and that was to convert the 50p footage to MP4 or MPEG2 using a HD converter. Problem was it simply dumped the extra 25 frames making the footage not as smooth as original. Doing the conversion in camera, negates this problem and footage still looks pristine. This lets me archive my 50p footage until I sort my editing of it out and easily edit the converted AVCHD footage now.

One question I still have, is does the Blu Ray format support 1280 x 720 50p?

Thanks,
Ian

[Ron Windeyer]

Hi Ian

Regarding the 1280x720 50P question: a partial answer only. In Vegas, if rendering to mpeg2 OR SonyAVC format, a default Blu-Ray template is 1920x1080 50i. If you go into that template and change things, Vegas will quite happily give you a 1280x720 50P m2v or avc file.

As I don't have a Blu-Ray burner or player, I can't answer the next question: will it work?- I hope someone else can. I think it should be playable as long as the bitrate doesn't go above the current ceiling (I think that's about 24 Mbits/sec).

The conversion facility is awesome - I presume you are referring to the output via the composite/avi port. I like you was trying to find ways to break down the 50P footage to DVD standard, to give to the family. Some methods did give a jumpy result, but just by selecting 576i I could connect the camera to an OLD OLD TV and the picture was perfect. Don't know how they do it but it's amazing!

The only downside I can see in this is that it is analogue output - you would need a video capture card, and be prepared to do real-time capture, just like the good old days of DV. I seriously thought of doing this, except that
1) I would have to do all the editing again, and
2) DVD Architect does a mighty good job as well - just load a media file into it, tell it that you want a DVD, and the result is very good.

For straight out of the camera, you can't beat Panasonic's whizbangery. For heavily edited stuff I would convert via Architect.

Edit: just looked up the Blu Ray specs in Wikipaedia and it looks like you're in luck.

Current BluRay video formats acceptable:
Resolution Frame rate[a] Aspect ratio
1920×1080 29.97-i 16:9
1920×1080 25-i 16:9
1920×1080 24-p 16:9
1920×1080 23.976-p 16:9
1440×1080[b] 29.97-i 16:9 (anamorphic)
1440×1080[b] 25-i 16:9 (anamorphic)
1440×1080[b] 24-p 16:9 (anamorphic)
1440×1080[b] 23.976-p 16:9 (anamorphic)
1280×720 59.94-p 16:9
1280×720 50-p 16:9
1280×720 24-p 16:9
1280×720 23.976-p 16:9
720×480 29.97-i 4:3/16:9 (anamorphic)
720×576 25-i 4:3/16:9 (anamorphic)

And apparently the bitrate is way higher that I quoted, so no worries about that.

Cheers Ron

As you can see, 1280x720 50P is definitley there; the only thing missing is 1920x1080 50P. Hope this is corrected in coming months!

[Tom Hardwick]

Originally Posted by Ian Cope

I have noticed a great feature of the cam, the ability to convert 50p footage to regular AVCHD.

Perhaps you could talk us through that process Ian because your idea of keeping the 1080/50p footage for future editing while producing 108050i BD is an excellent one.

[Ian Cope]

Thanks for the very informative post Ron. Great to see 720 50p is indeed supported by Blu Ray. I have a burner and when I tinker with Movie Studio, I will attempt a 720 50p Blu Ray project as I REALLY want to keep my 50 frames.

Originally Posted by Ron Windeyer

I presume you are referring to the output via the composite/avi port.

No, I am talking about the ability for the camera to convert 50p footage to regular AVCHD in the camera. What it does is convert whatever 50p files you want that are on the built-in memory to regular AVCHD files on an inserted SD card.

This is for you as well Tom: Page 106 of my manual covers this. It's probably best to have camera plugged in if you have a lot of footage to convert as it is a little time consuming but the results are worth the wait.

1) Select playback mode
2) Bring up the Menu and select Copy
3) Select 1080/50p to AVCHD
4) Select your desired quality AVCHD (I use the highest HA)
5) Select which scenes you want copied
6) Hit next and go make a cup of coffee

When you return, you will have 2 versions of your footage. 50p on the built in memory and regular AVCHD on the SD card. AWESOME feature!!

Boy I'm having fun with this camera. No one even looks twice when you point it at them. Not like my FX1000.

Cheers,
Ian

[Tom Hardwick]

Ah - so maybe my SD900 can't do this trick as it only has on SD card slot and no internal memory like the other two versions of this camera.

[Colin Rowe]

Tom. Ians method will only copy / convert from built in memory to the SDHC card in the camera, or vice-verse. I believe you have an SD900, if so the method you need to convert the files to a Hard drive are as follows. At least this is how it works with the TM900, hope it works for you.
Connect camera to PC via mains
Open HD Writer AE
Go to. Tools>Movie> format conversion
Select all, or whichever clips you want to convert.
Select HA
Select the folder on your HDD for the converted clips
Away you go.
Check out p120/121 of the manual. Its on the HD writer AE 3.0 disc

[Ron Windeyer]

Originally Posted by Ian Cope

No, I am talking about the ability for the camera to convert 50p footage to regular AVCHD in the camera. What it does is convert whatever 50p files you want that are on the built-in memory to regular AVCHD files on an inserted SD card.

Cheers,
Ian

Hey Ian - Thanks! Hadn't found that feature - I'm loving the camera even more!

Mind you, as I can deal with the 50P footage I may not use it much, but great to know...

Cheers

Ron

[Phil Lee]

Hi

I'm currently working on a small application that takes 1920x1080 50P rendered out of Vegas (using the Lagarith codec) and it will convert it to AVCHD, AVCHD2.0 (for 1080/50p) or Blu-ray while complying to the relevant specs and bit-rates. It also uses AVISynth behind the scenes to resize 1920x1080 to 1280x720p using a very good resizer and results are excellent for Blu-ray keeping the 50p frame-rate. Another option is to interlace the footage to 1080/50i and this achieved cleanly with AVISynth behind the scenes. Essentially you render out 1920x1080 50p the once and from that all other format types can be obtained very easily.

It uses the x264 encoder which seems to produce great results compared to anything else I've used. There are applications that already wrap around the x264 encoder but they all seem to want to do everything and don't necessarily guide you into making complaint files for AVCHD or Blu-ray, so I wanted something simple for myself.

If others are interested I'm happy to tidy this up and make it available for download from somewhere.

Regards

Phil

[Ian Cope]

OK, quick update.

Vegas Movie Studio (VMS) does the job very well. I can import my 1920x1080 50p files no problem. I used the "match media settings" button and pointed at one of my files. VMS setup the project properties for me. I edited a quick video which included a few titles, a slow mo and a sped up clip, music and voiceover. I rendered the project out at the same 1920x1080 50p setting and it looks magnificent on WD Live Media Player. (note: with the built in Tutorials and the help files, coming to grips with VMS was quite easy)

One thing I did notice though and that is VMS appears to render every frame even the ones I didn't touch. I thought it would "smart render" my unedited clips, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I could be wrong here as my PC isn't exactly a rocket ship. It just seemed as though every frame was being rendered in the preview window.

Hi Phil, I for one would be very interested in your application. I like to convert my finished video to a Blu Ray compliant file. I am not sure what codec VMS is using for my 50p file, but would like to give it a try anyways. Thanks for the offer of sharing your creation.

Cheers,
Ian

[Roger Brown]

hi ian may i ask does the WD live player play the 50p files smoothly when the camera pans? or does it show judder as if was being played at 25p? i have AVID STUDIO and it can input/output 1080 50p H264 24mbs, but at the moment i output it in AVCHD 720 50p to disc then put in my panasonic bluray recorder and save to the hard drive then file the disc away for a hard copy,i must say the 720 50p looks absolutely awesome on my panasonic 65 inch full HD plasma but it would be nice to play it in the original 1080 format.

cheers from roger

[Phil Lee]

Hi

Originally Posted by Ian Cope

One thing I did notice though and that is VMS appears to render every frame even the ones I didn't touch. I thought it would "smart render" my unedited clips, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I could be wrong here as my PC isn't exactly a rocket ship. It just seemed as though every frame was being rendered in the preview window.

Vegas doesn't Smart render AVCHD, to be honest it's better this way providing you have a good output format as Smart rendering AVCHD isn't always reliable or glitch free.

I'll put up the application once finished.

hi ian may i ask does the WD live player play the 50p files smoothly when the camera pans? or does it show judder as if was being played at 25p? i have AVID STUDIO and it can input/output 1080 50p H264 24mbs, but at the moment i output it in AVCHD 720 50p to disc then put in my panasonic bluray recorder and save to the hard drive then file the disc away for a hard copy,i must say the 720 50p looks absolutely awesome on my panasonic 65 inch full HD plasma but it would be nice to play it in the original 1080 format.

720p is a very good compromise currently. I know what you are getting at regarding the WD live player. I think we need to wait for media players sporting AVCHD 2.0 to guarantee proper playback of 1080/50p footage.

Regards

Phil

[Ian Cope]

Hi Phil, thanks for the info on the smart render. It's only a rendering time issue I was concerned about, the quality is superb and I cannot pick it from original on my 50" LG Plasma. Look forward to having a play with your app, thanks.

Roger, the video plays smooth as silk on the WD Live Media Player, even in relatively fast pans. It's a great way to watch your 50p footage. I bought 2 Samsung 1TB portable drives to store all my original clips and edited movies. Hook them up to WD Media Player, and bingo pristine quality 50p footage. I have created footage where the software can only handle 25fps, so 25 frames are removed. Then I have seen the stuttering effect you are concerned about on the WD MP. This is definitely not present when I watch properly rendered 50p footage.

Cheers,
Ian