AVCHD editing issue

coasternut67 wrote on 12/21/2009, 6:00 PM
Just bought a new camcorder for Christmas - Canon HF20.

My intent was to use AVCHD project settings that match the recorded files so no recompression would be needed on un-changed sections of video....except that apparently Movie Studio platinum 9b does not allow this to happen.

I have several choices to shoot video:
1920x1080at 17 Mbit/s or 24 Mbit/s
1440x1080 at 12, 7, or 5 MBit/s

I also notice a significant render speed difference between the full HD 1920x1080 and 3/4 HD 1440x1080 resolutions of about 2x longer for full HD...not sure why that is the case.

I would like to use the 17Mbit setting but may use the 12 Mbit for speed reasons...as the visual difference is not that much between them...though I have yet to test this outside in daylight yet.

Anyone know if Movie Studio can edit AVCHD without recompression as it can with MPEG-2 and DV-AVI ??? If so how to do it.

Rob

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 12/21/2009, 6:11 PM
Anyone know if Movie Studio can edit AVCHD without recompression as it can with MPEG-2 and DV-AVI ?

It is my understanding that smart-rendering AVCHD is not currently available.
Eugenia wrote on 12/21/2009, 7:25 PM
>I also notice a significant render speed difference between the full HD 1920x1080
>and 3/4 HD 1440x1080 resolutions of about 2x longer for full HD...not sure why that is the case.

It's because the less bitrate there is, the fewer calculations/bandwidth are needed to decode a video. So even two videos have the exact same resolution, format, and frame rate, but different bitrate, the less bitrate version will be faster to decode.

However, there IS quality difference on quick-changing scenes between 12 mbps and 24 mbps. Personally, I would not record anything below 24 mbps. The HG10 has almost the same lens/sensor as HF-S100 for example, but the HF-S100 looks a lot better because of the double bitrate it's got at 24 mbps.
coasternut67 wrote on 12/21/2009, 8:25 PM
Well that sucks that smart rendering AVCHD is not available...means that everything will be second generation so I guess I need to do some more testing on what will be acceptable video quality versus the time it will take editing... Shooting video on a newspaper shows only a modest difference between 1920 and 1440 pixels that would not likely be seen with natural footage or at least minimally noticable. So given it takes 2x longer to go full HD and probably 3x if I shoot at 24 Mbit/s rate I may just shoot at 12 Mbit/s and 1440 resolution. Still looks damn good at that setting.

So does anyone know when smart render will be avaialbe with AVCHD in Movie Studio or another program that can do it??

Regards,

Rob
musicvid10 wrote on 12/21/2009, 8:57 PM
Unlike MPEG-2, AVC - to- AVC encodes have been quite satisfactory for me, both with SD and HD.