"I see where you're going, but my intent is not to promote Edius, but instead to tell SCS to wake up because there's another company that has an NLE with excellent AVCHD playback and it doesn't make me waste time pre-rendering"

Well, while you're over here.... "not promoting edius" ;)
tell Grassvalley to wake up because there is another company that actually handles avchd 5.1 correctly with out totally botching the audio. Maybe they'll make Edius so that it's actually usable?

Here is a Vimeo post showing real time AVCHD editing with Edius Neo on an I5 notebook. I look forward to improvements in Vegas to achieve similar speed results.

You don't need NEO anymore. Edius 5 (which I have) now has an update out (bringing it to 5.5) so that it now handles avchd the same way Neo does. And the rt preview is no doubt good. The problem with Grass Valley products is that the interface is no where as good as Vegas (probably closer to PP than anything else), and it SADLY lacks a lot of the more detailed abilities found in Vegas.

Vegas surely has some catching up to do in its preview abilities... and SCS will be FORCED into doing it at one point or another. But Edius has some catching up to do on a much wider scope.

I absolutely agree with you in that Edius lacks several Vegas features, but when it comes to plain editing video, cutting and adding transitions and titles, Edius is just better for AVCHD right now. In that video at Vimeo the guy says in the description that on an i7 he can do 4 tracks of realtime without rendering. That means that you can even do multi-camera at full fps without pre-rendering. Last year I did a simple two track multicamera project in Vegas, and it took me forever because I would have to do a RAM preview of the next minute or so, working in Preview and half res.

"Plain and simple, AVCHD is an acquisition format. It's not Sony's responsibility to worry about making it play nice in their NLE".

"Acquisition Format" is defined by technology, not by format.

When HDV came out, it was very much an acquisition-only format. Then NLEs, Vegas among them, started supporting it. Then they started supporting it well, and before you knew it, between better coding in the NLE and faster hardware, HDV and, in general MPEG-2 as used in MXF (and most likely, the intermediate format you're going to use if you have Vegas and don't feel like paying another $100 for Cineform) is now "obviously" an editing format.

The simple fact is that AVCHD is only an acquisition format until it's not. When I started playing around with it three years ago, it sucked in many ways, Vegas didn't do much with it, etc. Today, I have three AVC cameras (no long own that first one), and Vegas is certainly doing an ok job of making this an editing format. Sometimes.

But the simple fact of the world is that, if someone manages to prove that AVCHD is a workable editing format, then it very much is Sony's and Adobe's and Avid's responsibility to make it play nice in their NLE. Or they risk being left behind.

I got a copy of Edius Neo 2 bundled with one of my camcorders. It is significantly better than Vegas in dealing with AVCHD and other AVC formats. On the very same hardware. That should be a serious problem for the folks working on Vegas to consider for their next release, just as they did in the past with HDV.

Why is Neo 2 (or the add-on for "full" Edius) faster? Simple: Grass Valley was not playing even a little nice with AVCHD, and it hurt them, since so many are moving to this format. They have the most recent support for AVCHD in any NLE (well, at least prior to any stuff just released at NAB), and they decided it was in their best interest to support this well.

Also, transcoding isn't a panacea, either. When I'm working with 1080/60p video, that comes over as 120GB/hr in Cineform. Now, I'm not complaining about the storage (I have 12TB of storage on my main PC here), but unless you've actually worked with this, you might miss the fact that, with a few streams of that sort of video, your hard drives start to become the bottleneck in your system. So you have to wait for buffers to fill when editing or playing back, even on a fast system with lots of memory. And for renders, that super fast CPU you have for cranking out Blu-Ray quality AVC in a few hours is all for naught.... you're waiting for the HDD.

But hey, I guess there's always proxy editing ...

No problems here editing AVCHD footage from 3 Canon HD camcorders( 2-HG10 and 1-HG21) in multicam setup in vegas 9d on my setup...runs smoothly.....I do have Neoscene but right now I have no need to use it.....


i7Core 920
Widows7 Ultimate 64Bit
MSI X58 Pro MB
12Gig DDR3
GTX295 EVGA
3-1TB Hard drives
2-LG Blu-ray Burners
800Watt PS
24" Acer HDMI LCD

Last I checked, this isn't an Apple web site, and we're not discussing the iPad. Or any other religion.

Thus, I'm kind of shocked at the number of people here who seem against the idea that Vegas ought to be improved in some areas.

I don't know about anyone else, but I have been using Vegas since it was Vegas Pro, rev 1, audio-only (thanks, Peter!). I have bought nearly every upgrade along the way, and love the program. I'm using it now.

However, it is a program, not a cult, and I'd feel much better keeping it that way. It is very clear to many people, and more importantly, many NLE companies, that AVC is now rapidly moving from "acquisition-only" to "acquisition/edit", just as HDV did in its day. The fact that many of us here would like Vegas to do this better, and can point to other NLEs that now do it better, is a valid point to be making. And the grade-school playground response of "well, then just go use XXX" is rather absurd. I don't think anyone would be voicing this here if they preferred the other program. Don't you all want Vegas to the be the best. Period.

I'd really like to see Vegas take the lead in supporting native GPU computing, since video is one of the main things GPUs can help out on very nicely. There are any number of different ways to use this: from DXVA 2.0 though Compute Shaders all the way up to Open CL. It's applicable for editing and for rendering. And other companies will do it. Adobe's already got some plug-ins using native computing, if not the actual apps yet.

Obviously, I want to see Vegas features that improve my workflow, and I'm unlikely to leave Vegas ... well... for much of anything, really. But this is a competitive market, and I absolutely want to see Vegas remain competitive, or better still, get the competition arguing about "why can't we have" Vegas features on their support boards.

Sebaz:
> wish I could use Vegas exclusively for editing..

Sebaz,
please stay tuned, I will soon release my Vegas Extension as some sort of "beta", completely free. With this extension, you can render out all your projects AVCHD files as MXF, to a folder where you keep your proxy files. MXF files run like flowing hot oil in Vegas, even with overlapping and effects added. A real joy to edit.
When it is time to render out for your final target, just press a button, and all proxies are replaced with the originals again.

Personally I see no difference between original AVCHD and MXF, so I sometimes render the final result using MXF, but you will have the choice.

And by the way, on my Quad core I saw a significant improvement with Vegas 9d. AVCHD starts playback immediately, and play back in real time no problem, unless I overlap and add effects. But then I just use my Proxy Extension. Stay tuned! I will post here when I think it is good enough to be shared with you guys here.
Ingvar

Thus, I'm kind of shocked at the number of people here who seem against the idea that Vegas ought to be improved in some areas.

I don't think anybody is really saying that. As you've read, people have said that other NLE's do AVCHD better than Vegas. But then they say that same NLE sucks in other areas that Vegas excels in. Last time I checked, there is no perfect NLE.

I've only been shooting with AVCHD for a year. Before that, believe it or not, I was still shooting SD. For me, transcoding actually takes less time than dumping tapes into my system. So I'm already ahead of the curve in that respect.

The fact that Vegas doesn't edit native AVCHD perfectly (at least on my system), isn't enough for me to use another NLE.

"The fact that Vegas doesn't edit native AVCHD perfectly "

Please show me a NLE that does because I've used them all and I can't find one.

Well, at least for me VP9.0c - WAS a perfect editor using AVCHD on the timeline (with a fast CPU).

It run very smoothly with AVCHD material on the timeline (as long as the application did not hang). I could crossfade between two AVCHD clips with full frame rate (25 fps), even with some color correction!!! Ok, I have a fast Quadcore QX9650 (clocked at 3,8GHz), so I was happily editing (neglecting those strange non-responsive periods of Vegas).

Now, in 9.0d, two native AVCHD clips (no color correction or other effects) runs barely at 13..15 fps during crossfades!!!

In that respect the latest bug fix (9.0d) is a very big dissappoinment. Why is the playback suddenly so lousy! There seems to be some major changes under the hood in how Vegas accesses files and buffers them for playback. All or some of these changes are not making the product better. I am very frustrated since I assumed that the playback would still improve with a new release. Now it is the contraty, at least for me. I am really considering going back to 9.0c. Pathethic, at least...

Christian

You should go back to 9.0c.

I myself have stayed with 8.0c. I got tired of being just another of Sony's involuntary beta testers that have to find all their bugs with each new version.

@warriorking: I just got my first avc cam TM700. Do you get full frame play back at a Good Auto preview quality with something other than straight cuts? My frame rate drops at crossfades. I have an i7 950 win7 64 computer. I am new to avchd, I gather that rendering the files to MXF is something I should consider if I want to edit with FX etc?

Generally speaking, there are many people that defend camera & software companies instead of the consumers.

There are whole forums dedicated to this goal and delete and ban users for demanding more from their camcorders and software makers. NAB is full of this same BS.

It's simple make software that edits the video from the current camcorders.

Sony Vegas is falling way behind in this area. It is well known by all except the few who keep telling us how good we have it.

We know FAR BETTER!

If the ZoomBrowser software for the Canon 7D plays the video files smoothly, then Vegas should play the same video file smoothly regardless of anything.

There is no pedantic excuse that can change this FACT!