Yeah, that article has pretty much been seen every where. It's putting Vegas on the map. Some one even posted it on the Avid forum. Of course the thread was locked. It's so funny.... they feel so threatened by the mere mention of vegas over there. Anything that involves the name "Vegas" gets shutdown.

http://forums.pinnaclesys.com/forums/thread/312580.aspx

Wow! LewS seems like a bit of a bitch ; )

It seems interesting to me how can Vegas 9's performance with RED footage can be so great (at least according to the author) but so dreadful with AVCHD, when RED is 4k resolution and AVCHD 1920x1080.

> It seems interesting to me how can Vegas 9's performance with RED footage can be so great (at least according to the author) but so dreadful with AVCHD, when RED is 4k resolution and AVCHD 1920x1080.

It's not about resolution... it's about decompressing pixels. AVCHD is so highly compressed that it take a LOT of processing power to decompress it. I assume that RED RAW is called "raw" because it uses none or very little compression. This is also why HDV plays very smoothly when AVCHD doesn't and they are both 1920x1080. HDV uses less compression than AVCHD. So it's the compression that makes AVCHD so hard to work with.

~jr

Added....
It seems interesting to me how can Vegas 9's performance with RED footage ...

Not according to the author, Its Proven....I have tested and ran it thru
all its Red Raw paces...flawless and smooth integration....no rewrapping
like the other NLE's do, etc. And works directly with its Metadata.

It's not about resolution... it's about decompressing pixels. AVCHD is so highly compressed that it take a LOT of processing power to decompress it. I assume that RED RAW is called "raw" because it uses none or very little compression. This is also why HDV plays very smoothly when AVCHD doesn't and they are both 1920x1080. HDV uses less compression than AVCHD. So it's the compression that makes AVCHD so hard to work with.

Of course it takes a lot of processing power, but when you have such required processing power and Vegas 9 does such a pathetic job at handling AVCHD, even worse than its previous version, then you can't blame the hardware or the format, the editing software is obviously the culprit.

To me is evident that what happened here is that Sony saw the opportunity to cash in some quick bucks because they knew several fans were going to pre-order it, and they released a product way before it was ready for prime time. What they do in futures updates hopefully will bring it to a state that will make it worth to buy, but I don't have any respect for a company that releases early beta software as a final product.

Sebaz,

I'm sorry that you have experienced so many problems in Vegas. From the sound of many of your recent posts, apparently, it has caused your editing to come to a screeching halt and your business to fail.

AVCHD simply isn't ready for prime-time, it's not necessarily Sony's fault, it just takes more horsepower to do it than the current crop of high-end processors have available. RED files, Cineform and MJPEG2000 are based on wavelet compression, which is vastly superior to AVCHD in all the ways that count. It scales well and is entirely intra-frame. I have avoided AVCHD entirely and on those rare occasions when I have clients bring in AVCHD b-roll footage, I have immediately transcoded it to Cineform for editing.

None of the major NLEs; Avid, Apple, Adobe or Vegas handle AVCHD particularly well. Don't go blaming any of them for the fact that you bought into a format that was never really intended for professional level editing. The way AVCHD has been implemented is to make an acceptable picture at lower bitrates. I wanted to see increased image quality at the same bitrates, lets say 25Mbps, but at that bitrate there is really no perceptible difference between MPEG2 and AVCHD (only that AVCHD is much more difficult to edit.) Is saving 6 or 7 megabits per second really worth the hassle?

AVCHD is fine as a end-user distribution format to be played on a machine with dedicated h.264 playback hardware. Sony has wisely decided to stay with MPEG2 compression in their professional cameras and you'll note that there has been some discussion here lately that MPEG2-based MXF files work exceptionally well in Vegas. I didn't think AVCHD was a good idea and I still don't. MPEG2 still has a lot of life left in it and wavelet-based compression is the future.

This does bring up an interesting point. Smooth playback of 4k RAW files? Those RAW files do need to be demosiaced and that does take quite a bit of computing power. Perhaps not as much as decoding AVCHD but then again we're talking 4k for Red vs. 1920 lines for AVCHD.

Unless of course if Vegas is simply cutting resolution of the RAW files by a factor of 4 or more, thus simply grouping enough pixels to simply use weighted averages to display the Red RAW files. So previewing 4k RAW files at 2k resolution *could* be a pretty easy load for the CPU compared to AVCHD preview.

I wonder how full resolution Red RAW preview compares to half size preview?

- Mark

From the sound of many of your recent posts, apparently, it has caused your editing to come to a screeching halt and your business to fail.

Hardly. About the only good thing about Vegas 9 is that nobody pointed a gun to my head and forced me to use it. I still use Vegas 8.0c, sometimes 8.1 for some things. I'm just happy that SCS didn't get my money for a mediocre beta product that lots of people are having problems with, judging by the threads here.

AVCHD simply isn't ready for prime-time, it's not necessarily Sony's fault, it just takes more horsepower to do it than the current crop of high-end processors have available.

John, that's where you're way wrong. The current crop of not even high end, but mid-level processors are perfectly capable of handling AVCHD acceptably well. That it is way harder to process than HDV, we can certainly agree on, but your argument doesn't stand a chance, because you don't even have to compare how Vegas 9 handles AVCHD as opposed to other NLEs, but simply to its immediate predecessors, 8.0c and 8.1. In either of those, you have AVCHD on a timeline, you press play and it starts playing, right away. It's still not as smooth as HDV, you do need at least a quad core to play it nicely and bring down the quality to Good or Preview, preferably half. But my point is, you press play, and it plays. In Vegas 9, you press play, and i------t------s------t-------a-------r------t-----s----p---l---a---y--i--n--g--s---l--o--w and then finally goes up to full speed after four seconds. What kind of NLE does that, on any format?

So it is not a matter of the processing requirements of the format, it's a matter of Sony Creative releasing an early beta software as a final release, and that's unforgivable.

None of the major NLEs; Avid, Apple, Adobe or Vegas handle AVCHD particularly well.

I saw how Final Cut Pro handles AVCHD and while I don't like the conversion to an intermediate, at least it provides a decent solution. I have Premiere CS4 and it handles AVCHD like a champ. No intermediate format, just throw it in there and it plays without skipping frames. When it has to pre-render a transition it uses MPEG-2 to avoid wasting the editor's time in rendering to AVC again.

I'll tell you of one other NLE, not a professional one, but one that also handles AVCHD like a champ: Cyberlink Power Director 7. AVCHD files play at full fps and start playing when you hit play. Granted, you can't do a lot of the stuff you can with Vegas, but my point is that the poor handling of AVCHD in Vegas is not due to the colossal requirements of AVCHD as a format, but because SCS either doesn't care to give this format proper support in Vegas or who knows why, but one thing is clear to me, if you advertise a product as capable of handling a certain format, but then that handling is so poor, then you shouldn't have advertised it in the first place. Either do it right or don't do it.

OK, let me put it more simply: AVCHD sucks.

You're happy that SCS didn't get your money, I'd be happy that the three or four of you that come here and do nothing but bitch about Vegas would simply find another NLE and go away. Vegas v9 works great for me, but I don't do AVCHD.

"To me is evident that what happened here is that Sony saw the opportunity to cash in some quick bucks because they knew several fans were going to pre-order it,"

Usually your idiotic rambling makes SOME kind of sense..... but this??? The customer buys it now... or they buy it later... but either way they still buy it.... so what's your point??

"John, that's where you're way wrong. The current crop of not even high end, but mid-level processors are perfectly capable of handling AVCHD acceptably well. That it is way harder to process than HDV, we can certainly agree on, but your argument doesn't stand a chance, because you don't even have to compare how Vegas 9 handles AVCHD as opposed to other NLEs, but simply to its immediate predecessors, 8.0c and 8.1. In either of those, you have AVCHD on a timeline, you press play and it starts playing, right away."

Get serious will ya!?!
There are only 2 avchd nle's that I haven't tried yet... Apple and CS4.... but as for the others.... they STINK! Pinnacle is awful, Edius stuttered worse than Vegas EVER has and the final output was simply horrid.... Nero.... Ulead.... etc... waste of time. About the only NLE that I know of that has MOST of it togther for avchd is VEGAS.

ADDED.... and actually.... forget apple because it really isn't a avchd nle in the first place.

what some ppl are failing to note is that Vegas is still a CPU intensive NLE, while others such as Power Director and CS4 use high end GPU to playback or even render AVCHD.

THIS is where vegas will fall on its face.... the fact that the only GPU support it has is through plugins.. its always been like this but i fail to see why considering most ppl these days are running PCIe2 mainboards and 8800+ GFX cards anyway...

Usually your idiotic rambling makes SOME kind of sense..... but this??? The customer buys it now... or they buy it later... but either way they still buy it.... so what's your point??

My point is that instead of waiting another six months or a year until they had a decent product to offer, they wanted or desperately needed a torrent of cash coming in now instead, so they released this early beta software as a final product, kind of like when Microsoft released Windows 95, except that Microsoft didn't desperately need the torrent of cash because they had more than enough, and Windows 95, another example of software released before it's ready, wasn't anywhere as green as Vegas 9 is.

I'd be happy that the three or four of you that come here and do nothing but bitch about Vegas would simply find another NLE and go away.

Ha ha ha, that shows me how biased you are towards SCS. Since May 11th I've read lots of threads and posts in here of people bitching about Vegas 9 and how it was released before it was properly polished.

There are only 2 avchd nle's that I haven't tried yet... Apple and CS4.... but as for the others.... they STINK! Pinnacle is awful, Edius stuttered worse than Vegas EVER has and the final output was simply horrid.... Nero.... Ulead.... etc... waste of time. About the only NLE that I know of that has MOST of it togther for avchd is VEGAS.

[Gameshow buzz][ Wrooong!! CS4 handles it great, Cyberlink Powerdirector 7 does it as well. The bare-bones horrendous baby NLE that comes with some camcorders, Pixela Imagemixer, handles it well and does smart-rendering beautifully.

And as the other poster here said, CS4 and Powerdirector use not just CPU but also GPU to accelerate display. Here I am with a new Radeon 4850 with 1 GB of RAM and Vegas couldn't care less, even though there's a new version out!

"what some ppl are failing to note is that Vegas is still a CPU intensive NLE, while others such as Power Director and CS4 use high end GPU to playback or even render AVCHD."

Again I haven't tried CS4 but I have with the others.... and they still stink even WITH gpu playback. I have however read LOTS of CS4/avchd complaints

"[Gameshow buzz][ Wrooong!! CS4 handles it great,"

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=iHp&q=CS4+avchd+playback+problems&btnG=Search&meta=

"Here I am with a new Radeon 4850 with 1 GB of RAM and Vegas couldn't care less, even though there's a new version out!"

Vegas is all cpu and memory. You can't hold Sony responsible for your stupidity in investing in such a card when you KNEW what Vegas was all about.

The fact is vegas9 handles RED's metadata is huge! This has a lot of secondary meanings as well. But the concept of RED metadata is not new, but they did it and now its usable by a economical but clever NLE, VEGAS9. What I would like to see is that other cameras ie, EX and other $4K+ cost cameras offer similar metadata access with raw data as an option. Now this is not a simple task for camera storage but imagine $20-30k colour systems becoming becoming affordable, the impact would be positively massive for the small film projects.

Yes, I would love to see EX1 & EX3 metadata become accessible in Vegas - I'm sure SCS would find the camera manufacturer open and co-operative ;)

Vegas is all cpu and memory. You can't hold Sony responsible for your stupidity in investing in such a card when you KNEW what Vegas was all about.

Ha ha ha!! Dude, where exactly did I say that I had purchased this card with the purpose of using it to accelerate Vegas at all? Your stupidity is in jumping to conclusions. I was just saying that since I have a decent graphics card, it would be nice if Vegas used it, since it looks like the technology is there to be used or other NLEs would not use it.