What do you mean dual core? I have a Q6700 with 8 GB of DDR2 RAM. See, I don't agree with anybody that says that Vegas is not the culprit but the hardware is. The thing is, if the hardware was lacking, then Edius Neo Booster would have the same problem, or when I just play the raw footage in Windows Media Player, or any other player for that matter, would choke, and it doesn't. To me it's just Vegas not having the necessary code to deal with AVCHD properly.

Sorry. I thought your spec said Dual Core -- I think that others have said Q6700 was successful with AVCHD -- I know my Q6600 was not. I agree too that a Q6700 at this state of the game should do it --- but here's reality -- it doesn't in your case. And you have a valid point as I don't believe SCS has pegged the minimum system requirement correctly -- but that doesn't help when your AVCHD is stuttering like mad.

One thing to try (and this may not be worth the time for you) -- is to get a fresh hard drive, load you OS -- Load all system drivers -- Load Video drivers - Load Vegas. See what happens. Same problem? In other words, try to isolate the issue.

Meanwhile, if you really do like Vegas you have to think about an i5 or above !! Just my opinion.

I have tried AVCHD on my i7 on x64 and it works fine so far. Have not tried several layers and lots of xf yet, but for me the performance is better on d than c

/Ulf

I have an i7 running WinXP, 32 bit Vegas and it works fine on mixed AVCHD from a Sony and Pana cam with lots of transitions, some effects, and lots of intermixed hi res DSLR stills on a one hour timeline.

Dave

One thing to try (and this may not be worth the time for you) -- is to get a fresh hard drive, load you OS -- Load all system drivers -- Load Video drivers - Load Vegas. See what happens. Same problem? In other words, try to isolate the issue.

That's one thing I tried when they released 9.0c, mainly because I was forced, since 32 bit 9.0c would not load as a user, it required admin elevation, even though I wasted hours setting permissions and doing everything SCS told me to.

So I reformatted a hard drive, installed Win 7 64 bit, drivers, and then Vegas 9.0c. AVCHD playback sucked as much as it sucks in 9.0d.

As for the hardware, at this point if I have to spend hundreds of dollars in replacing both motherboard and CPU (since i7 would not fit in my motherboard anyway), I would rather spend in the Firecoder Blu card which transcodes to h.264 1080i at twice the time of the footage. Even with the top of the line i7, you can't achieve that. To me it makes more sense to spend money in the device that will save me more time, which is precisely that card.

I get full frame playback on my quad but the problem comes when I try to manipulate the footage on the timeline. Vegas is not good at editing AVCHD. I have to convert it to Cineform and then my problems disappear.

That card sounded good until I checked the pricing. Like 4-5 hundred? .. I built my i5-750 for around that price with new Antec case, Win7, main drive (10000 rpm), RAM, video card, CPU and Motherboard -- even a new DVD writer (not BD) .. The CPU and Gigabyte Motherboard were $200 at Fry's .. Very happy with it.

Have I got the right one?
Grass Valley EDIUS Version 5 Plus Firecoder Blu
Apparently bundled with Edius which seems odd if Edius runs AVCHD ok.

I won't mind using a PCI card to smooth out the AVCHD .. but doubt I'd spend $500.
Anyone using such a card with Vegas?

The Firecoder Blu card is an accelerator for ENCODING - not playback.

It's a hardware video compression board, compatible with EDIUS. The card can encode HD video at up to 60fps, and SD video at up to 150fps. It supports direct writing to Blu-ray disc, making it a great choice for HD video compression and delivery.

Here's the specifics:

*Transcodes AVCHD to MPEG-2 (transport stream and program stream) and MPEG-2 to H.264(transport stream),
*2 times faster than real-time encoding of HD Blu-ray compatible video
*4-5 times faster than real-time encoding of SD Blu-ray compatible video
*Direct writing to Blu-ray disc or output to file for additional authoring
*Supports 1080i and 720p as well as native 24p Blu-ray
*Up- and down-conversion of SD and HD sources
*Included FIRECODER WRITER software provides basic Blu-ray and DVD authoring tools including creation of titles and chapters from Canopus DV, Canopus HQ (avi), HDV (m2t) and MPEG-2 PS (mpg, m2p) source files
*Encodes or transcodes files created by Grass Valley EDIUS nonlinear editing software (not included) or other applications

The card is meant for serious professional post production workflow.

Edius leverages the processing power of the GPU, like a number of other nle's also do. Don't know why Sony hasn't done this yet but they better do it soon or they'll lose more nle market share. Maybe in v. 10? I believe they're going in the direction of recommending Quadro cards which would improve things quite a bit if they utilize the Cuda technology.

Best would be if they program it to leverage any video card's gpu so that users could have more choices on how fast they want to go/how much to spend rather than supporting only Quadro's like Avid has done. With Media Composer it appears users take a chance on their systems not working properly if they go with a nice ATi card or a less expensive Geforce.

Steve

You don't need a Quadro card to get Avid to utilize the GPU. Quadro's are officially supported though and that's the difference. If someone's Geforce gaming card doesn't work for Avid, that's their deal. But You can buy a low end Quadro card for less than $250.

[edit]

Here's one for $130:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133274&cm_re=nvidia_quadro-_-14-133-274-_-Product

Sebaz, really bummed to hear that you're having so much problems w/ AVCHD. ):

Maybe you can check what the FSB speed is on your Core2 Quad is. I not sure if Vegas proxys the AVCHD files like many other video apps, so maybe more bandwidth between the hard drive and processor is required to keep up..

Try re-rendering to .mxf as xberk said and see how that works for you.

I've been able to run native AVCHD @ 60fps since 9d release. I slow down the 60fps for smoother slow motion effects then render out to mxf 30fps.

Though my PC is beefy enough to work in native AVCHD, for more complex edits and layering of AVCHD video that don't need to be slowed down, I covert all the 60fps AVCHD to mxf 30fps using the Proxystream script. I usually leave clips in native AVCHD if the project doesn't have a lot of layering or lots of effects.

Maybe this work flow helps.

That card sounded good until I checked the pricing. Like 4-5 hundred? .. I built my i5-750 for around that price with new Antec case, Win7, main drive (10000 rpm), RAM, video card, CPU and Motherboard -- even a new DVD writer (not BD) .. The CPU and Gigabyte Motherboard were $200 at Fry's .. Very happy with it.

There's a version that is the card only for around $500 and then the bundle with Edius 5 for about $800. It's not for accelerating AVCHD on the timeline. The point of the card is to encode to h.264 video way faster than you can with any i7 that will cost you way more than the card itself. It's not a difference in minutes, it's a difference in hours. I don't know this for certain, but it claims to encode h.264 video twice as fast as the time of the footage, so imagine encoding a timeline that is one hour long in half an hour. If you work with video, or even if you are just a serious video geek that encodes to blu-ray a lot, it makes sense to spend $500 in a card that will save you hundreds of hours in encoding time. That is, if it performs as it's supposed to, and it's not a big fat lie like ATI Stream, which encodes lightning fast, but the quality of the encode is crap.

Edius 5 doesn't work well with AVCHD natively, the one that does is Edius Neo Booster.

I don't want to convert my footage to an intermediate, first of all it takes a lot of extra time, disk space, and loss of quality. I'd rather stick with an NLE that handles it natively at full fps, but I wish Vegas would do that.

I know that Perrone. I downloaded the MC trial and it runs on my Windows XP 32 bit system with an ATi x1950Pro card. However, I haven't tried anything fancy with it. And thank you for mentioning the low-end Quadro FX380 card and helping to make my point about how it would be nice for Sony to make Vegas Pro leverage the power of most any GPU, even the cheaper ones, which will allow users to decide how powerful they want their systems to be yet still work properly (without crashing all the time).

Steve

Whatever I can do to help... ;)

I do agree that without some kind of acceleration, there just isn't a good patch forward. And these CUDA cards are ridiculously cheap now.

The Quadro cards get an unfair rap for being super expensive, and I just wanted to point out that you can get into a quadro card for a lot less than most people are aware of. Yes the top end cards are pretty pricy (touching $3k for the top cards) but you don't need to go to that level to get some nice boost from an application that can leverage it.

I am somewhat surprised, pleasantly so, to hear your ATi card works with MC. I didn't think they supported ATi at all.

"Edius 5 doesn't work well with AVCHD natively, the one that does is Edius Neo Booster."

No, but Edius 5.5 has the same booster that Neo does, and it's been released already.

No, but Edius 5.5 has the same booster that Neo does, and it's been released already.

That's awesome, I didn't know they had already released the update. That makes it an even better NLE, in fact, an outstanding NLE.

Nice little blog here:

http://www.videoguys.com

Official site:

http://www.grassvalley.com/products/edius_5

In my experience, it's a combination of software and hardware configuration.
We're building turnkey setups for extreme sports companies that are turning 200 videos acquired in AVCHD on a daily (yes, *daily) basis. AVCHD renders quickly and easily on an 8 core system, running as many as 4 instances of Vegas at once.
The machines are made lean as can be, with virtually nothing running. They are connected to the web for YouTube uploads.
In short....these operations don't mess around with slow systems or slow delivery. They MUST deliver video on disc, PDA, and the web within less than 10 mins or they're toast.

Vegas *could* do a better job of decoding, and could definitely do a better job of leveraging GPU. It could do a few things better. But it *is* plenty fast for what most AVCHD users are doing, and better than any app that isn't converting for edit first.
Bringing Edius into the discussion is appropriate (except it converts) while bringing VLC or WMP into the discussion isn't really relevant, as they don't have to buffer like an NLE does.

Spot,

I don't think Edius Neo, or Edius Pro 5.5 needs to convert at all. At least not from the literature, and not from what users of that system tell me. They drag, drop, and edit.

I've love to hear more about these "extreme sports" systems. I also have an 8 core machine and while AVCHD (single stream) isn't really problematic, multiple streams and streams with effects aren't real time.

I'd love to hear how you are leaning them out. I went through several webpages learning to shut down unneeded services and so forth and I think it's helped a bit, but I could always learn more tricks...

Before I start editing, I always decide whether to convert first or not.

I do a weekly ½ hrs. TV program with just straight cuts in one track, a few fades and a track with cutaways. For this kind of project I do not convert.

If I do a project with several tracks PIP's, XF's etc. I do convert to get a better workflow and that suits me just fine so far.

I have Edius 5.5 too and the Booster, but like Vegas much more for the easy interface :-) even if the AVCHD performance is not 100% as good in Vegas.

/Ulf

It could do a few things better. But it *is* plenty fast for what most AVCHD users are doing, and better than any app that isn't converting for edit first.

Sorry, but it's not better than any app that isn't converting for edit first. At AVCHD playback, that is. Both Edius Neo Booster and it seems now Edius 5.5 handle AVCHD way better than Vegas, on the same hardware, without any intermediate file. I know this first hand from using Neo Booster for months now and being able to play at full fps even after applying color correction and other filters on top, without rendering. Even better, the Booster can read the seek information stored in an AVCHD tree to make seeking and editing faster, so you can just throw an AVCHD tree in the project window and you're ready to edit.

This is not to say that Vegas is way better than both in other things, but as far as AVCHD editing goes, Edius and Neo Booster kick Vegas butt really hard.

but as far as AVCHD editing goes, Edius and Neo Booster kick Vegas butt really hard.

Depending on hardware/software configuration, I'm sure this is true.
However, if the machine is configured well, with out any background processes, I'm not sure that being able to go 160mph is much better than being able to go 155mph, when there is less ability to control the vehicle.
We're using preview/full for all the edits these guys are doing, and they're very happy with performance similar to what DV was doing 10 years ago.
The irony is, 10 years ago, some people couldn't get DV to run without hardware either. Perhaps I simply remember those days so well, and don't expect to play out multiple streams in real-time with FX, when dealing with highly compressed formats.