AVCHD to AVCHD

zipf wrote on 10/19/2008, 5:28 AM

I am a newbie so maybe this is silly question.

I have a Sony SR7 which records AVCHD. I want to do the following:

1. edit my videos
2. save them back to my SR7 to whatch the video in best quality possible on my TV
3. save the file in best quality but reasonable disc space to be able to burn it on a blue ray disk whenever the burners/players are affordable. Or to have it available for other formats there are to come.

I would understand that rendering back to AVCHD is the best option as his is the original quality.

I am also facing the problem with rendering to AVCHD 1980 as the camera only records in 1440 that does not inrease quality, right?

Can anybody confirm this? If not what would you use to archive your videos for future use?

Thanks for your advice.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 10/19/2008, 8:04 AM

You can never increase or even regain quality. You can maintain it or lose it. Vegas has some smartrendering capabilities that copy the input video to the output without rendering and this allows you to maintain quality. Note though that the only way for this to work is for the output video to be exactly the same format as the input. That means that going from 1440 to 1440 is the only way to not lose quality.

Going from 1440 to 1920 will incur a double loss. The video frames must be resampled to match the new frame size, and the video must be recompressed when rendering to the new output format. So, by going to 1920 you'll lose quality twice!

Eugenia wrote on 10/19/2008, 5:14 PM

>Going from 1440 to 1920 will incur a double loss.

I'd say that it's a single loss. All 1440 footage is meant to be played back at 1920, and Vegas is intelligent enough to export at 1920 the playback image, so if this the FINAL export, then it's not a problem to export at 1920. In fact, in some cases it's the only way you can watch a video at widescreen, because some players, Vimeo and PS3 doesn't support non-square pixel aspect ratios for some formats (e.g. the PS3 doesn't support it for WMV videos).

So what I would suggest is this: upgrade to Platinum 9.0b, do all your editing at 1440, and when you finally export the final for any reason OTHER than exporting back to the camera, export at 1920. If your camera doesn't support 1920x1080 recording, it won't play it back, so if the camera is the only way to playback HD video on your TV, then export at 1440. I suggest you buy a PS3 or an XBoX360 though, they support full HD playback on MP4, WMV and XViD files (and the PS3 also supports mpeg2 and AVCHD formats).

TZ wrote on 10/19/2008, 9:24 PM

Thanks for the feedback.

First, I just learned from Sony Support that it is not possible to upload any edited video to the camera to watch. :-(

Chienworks, as I am new to VMS 9.b can you show me how this smartrendering works for AVCHD?

Thanks a lot.

Zipf

ebros wrote on 10/21/2008, 12:55 AM

I am interested in the smartrendering for AVCHD too.

TZ wrote on 10/22/2008, 7:17 PM

OK, despite the feedback from Sony support I mangaged to uploade the edited video to the camcorder harddrive using the PMB software and everything works fine. Interesting, that this function is not directly available in VMS.

I am rendering in 1440 AVCHD. One problem i still face is that when I playback using PowerDVD the quality is quite bad and shows blocks. Anyone using PowerDVD and can help. Or can you recommend any other player? It seems that the quality of the WMV rendered video is much better in PowerDVD than AVCHD. But I thought that AVCHD to AVCHD should be best!?! Any comments?

Thanks a lot.