AVCHD Mystery

InterceptPoint wrote on 1/2/2008, 2:31 PM

I'm trying to figure out a good workflow for putting together short videos that will play on a PS3 and can be written in the future to Blu-Ray disks. I want to edit in segments and put the segments together, add titles and background music and render to something that is PS3 compatible.

My camera is a CX7 and the files are AVCHD .m2ts.

As a test, I edited a .m2ts CX7 video clip with 5.1 audio using Gearshift and then rendered three different ways:

1. Sony AVC to AVCHD NTSC 5.1 and .m2ts format.
2. Sony AVC to AVCHD NTSC 5.1 and .mp4 format.
3. MainConcept MPEG-2 HDV 1080-60i 25MB/s VBR with .m2t format.

Moving these files to the Vegas 8.0a timeline gives me the following:

.m2ts shows up as a two channel (not stereo) audio only - NO VIDEO
.mp4 shows up as video + stereo and relatively small file size
.m2t shows up as video + stereo and relatively large file size

No surprises with the .mp4 and m2t files.

Surprisingly, the .m2ts, which shows up as audio only on the Vegas timeline, plays as full video + 5.1 audio as a file on my PS3. So the Sony AVC render was good and even includes the video and 5 channels of audio.

But what's up with Vegas?
No video
No 5.1 audio.

Any ideas?

Comments

blink3times wrote on 1/2/2008, 3:21 PM

".m2ts shows up as a two channel (not stereo) audio only - NO VIDEO"
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Interesting...

I played with some AVCHD a short time ago and got the same thing. I didn't have any AVCHD from a cam though. I converted mpeg2 from my Sony HC3 to AVCHD with another program.

I thought it was the other program that screwed the conversion........ now after reading your issue........... I'm having seconds thoughts.

InterceptPoint wrote on 1/4/2008, 4:44 AM

I have been running tests on this problem without much luck.

I have found that on very short segments ( a few seconds) I cannot reproduce the problem. The project that I have seen the problem on only runs 100 seconds and it will not render properly - I get only the two channel audio and no video with a 5.1 NTSC .m2ts render. Short selections of a few seconds from that project do render properly yielding video plus 5.1 audio.

Tis a problem, at least for me.

megabit wrote on 1/4/2008, 4:58 AM

I can confirm the strange way Vegas sees AVCHD files, rendered by Vegas from HDV. When a clip is short, it does see them correctly (i.e. both video and 5.1 audio); whith longer clips it only sees stereo audio (which BTW only plays in the right channel), and no video...

4eyes wrote on 1/4/2008, 8:38 AM

If I take the xxxx.m2ts files and use them in MF6+ and burn an avchd disk the avc/h264 videos are passed through MF6+ encoder & re-multiplexed onto the avchd disk.

After I burn the avchd disk using MF6+ under Vista I then copy them back to the harddisk from the STREAMS folder.
Vegas then reads them correctly.
I think there is a difference in the container when going to harddisk versus dvd because even Nero makes .mts files when burning avchd folders, instead of .m2ts files.

In MF6+ you can use the BDMV instead of the avchd module to quickly re-multiplex the videos again. Just don't create a menus and burn a BDMV structure to your harddisk. Grab the video from the streams folder. A workaround for now.

megabit wrote on 1/4/2008, 9:05 AM

I confirm there are no problems with actually burning disks out of the Vegas-rendered files (be it mpegs or avchd), using MF6 or "Clik to DVD BD" that comes with Sony Vaio laptops - and with menues and no recompression, too.

It's just this inconsistency in how Vegas sees its own m2ts files depending on their size that's strange.

InterceptPoint wrote on 1/4/2008, 2:43 PM

Since the problem that rendered .m2ts clips are not showing up properly on a Vegas 8.0 timeline has been confirmed by at least two others it seems this is a real bug that should be reported to Sony.

Anybody know how to file an official Vegas 8.0a bug report?