Thanks, I'll try it out. It's a bit surprising that a freeware encoder produces better results than the encoders built into Movie Studio. I also note that the tutorial isn't about 1080 resolution output, but I'll experiment and see what it's like.

OK, failure unfortunately. In Movie Studio 13 Platinum, the render process involves clicking the "Project" menu, then selecting "Render". The interface displayed has an option for quicktime ".mov" format, but if I select it, it says that the result will be 0x0 pixels. If I click the Advanced button, Quicktime is not listed as a rendering option. The video tutorial uses a quicktime file as an intermediate format for input to Handbrake. If I can't create the intermediate file, I can't reproduce the tutorial process.

At the moment I'm attempting to render the video in WMV format 1440x1080, which is still not what I want, but I'm curious to see the result anyway. I want to produce a full HD render.

QuickTime player for Windows and the Avid LE codecs must be installed in order to use this method.

Thanks. I installed QT but it made no difference. I think I may have to completely uninstall Movie Studio and reinstall it with QT installed first - and yes I also installed the codec pack (2.3.9 I think).

I don't see what the problem is, really. Just use the sony mainconcept AVC/AAC codec to render to mp4. Choose for the full hd resolution and a bitrate of 18 to 20Mbps. This will render a good quality full hd mp4 file which still isn't too big to upload to the internet.
Here are two examples of mine. They were shot with the GH3 in avchd 50p 1080p, and rendered to a 1080p 25fps mp4 with the above mentioned codec. It is fine to upload to vimeo. (And my Samsung Smart tv can play these videos in crispsharp resolution from an usb stick. I can tell from experience that Samsung tvs won't play mts files from an usb stick.)
I'm using Vegas 12, btw.
https://vimeo.com/108669570
https://vimeo.com/108000853

I recently found that a LG TV which wouldn't recognise m2ts files on a stick did so when the file suffix was changed to mpg!

If you want high quality from AVCHD clips, you need to decompress the footage first. GoPro Studio allows you to do this with non-GoPro footage and it's free (the only thing you can't do within the program is trim the clips) --- Here's the link: http://shop.gopro.com/EMEA/softwareandapp/gopro-studio/GoPro-Studio.html

Inside GoPro Studio I recommend using an AVI container when converting(decompressing). A 500MB video clip @ 1920x1080 25fps will become roughly 1.5GB once it's decompressed (MEDIUM setting).

Next, import the converted(decompressed) clips into Sony Vegas. When finished editing render to MainConcept AVC/AAC (.mp4)

----

I disagree with Parked. Since Vegas 12, it can handle avchd files perfectly well. Just put your avchd files on the timeline and start editing. Make sure to match the project properties to the videofile. There really is no need to decompress the files with an intermediate programme. It is a waste of time, and there will be no improvement of image quality in the final mp4 file. If you want to keep the 5.1 audio surround, make sure you choose the correct Mainconcept template with those audio settings.

Disagree with Ivan. It's definitely not a waste of time if you're going for quality. The amount of information retrievable from decompressing is substantial (see my example). In the end it depends on what you need.

I'm always interested in better quality.

Just like I said, Parked: a waste of time. I downloaded GoPro Studio and tried to import my GH3 avchd file (with the extension .mts) into it. The programme doesn't even show my avchd files. It only recognizes jpg, mp4 and mov files.

I wasn't aware that the .mts extension didn't work in GoPro Studio.

Parked,
You seem too be under the impression that the GoPro intermediate will somehow be "better" than the source? This is unequivocally incorrect. Also, GoPro Cineform is a compressed wavelet codec. Therefore, it "recompresses," not "decompresses" the interframe source.

Intermediate renders serve some useful purposes, but yours is not one of them.

I'm not "under the impression" it will be better than the source, I know it's better than the source. The amount of information retrieved through the decompression via GoPro Studio is substantial and real. Again, see my example.

Parked, where is your example? I cannot find a link to the file in your posts.

No.
Increasing the number of bits by re-encoding does not increase quality. You are limited to the detail and quality of the source. Converting compressed to "less-compressed" or "uncompressed" DOES NOT ADD A THING. It will either look worse or the same as your source, no matter how large the rendered file is.

Transcoding will always result in a cumulative generational quality LOSS, no matter what you use as an intermediate. This is easily proven using PSNR and SSIM analysis. Following a better workflow, such as detailed in my tutorial, will minimize those losses. Unfortunately, uploading to Vimeo or Youtube introduces yet another lossy encoding step, so you will never see on Vimeo what you gave it.

[I]You cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear.[/i]

Best of luck.

"If you want high quality from AVCHD clips, you need to decompress the footage first."

I think Parked is getting hung up on this idea. It is actually and in fact true! That being said, if you want to get *ANYTHING* from your AVCHD clips, or clips from ANY compressed source, you have to decompress them first. This is an irrefutable fact.

Windows Media Player decompresses the video file in order to show it on the screen.
BluRay players decompress the video file in order to show it on the TV.
Portable media players decompress the video file in order to show it on the screen.
Transcoding software decompresses the video file in order to recompress it to a new file.
Vegas decompresses the video file in order to allow you to edit it.

Whoa, hey, what's that last one? Vegas decompresses? Indeed it does! EVERY program/player that needs to access a compressed video file must decompress it in order to access it. Why? Because there is no video in a compressed video file. (Read that again and ponder. It is true.) All a compressed video file contains is a huge number of encoded bits that describe the video before it was compressed. You simply cannot display a compressed file as a video image without undoing the compression that was performed to produce the file.

So, this shows that Parked is right. It also shows that he's wrong in saying the file needs to be decompressed before using it, since Vegas will perform that decompression anyway. And as musicvid rightly points out, using a separate program to decompress it and recompress it into some other format merely compounds the quality loss.

Just because decompressing a file creates a much larger number of bits does not mean that these newly created bits represent or restore the information that was lost during compression. They may represent it close enough to fool your eye, but they are still made up new information rather than the original. What was lost during compression is still lost after decompression.

Compression and Encoding are not quite the same function, and the terms are not interchangeable.

Encoding can be done with higher, lower, or no recompression of the source, given the right tools.
AVCHD->Cineform->MP4 is not "better" than AVCHD->MP4, all else being equal. Cineform will probably handle better on the timeline, the very thing it was designed to do.
;?O

Media must be decoded, or "unpacked to raw bits," before editing and encoding. Doing so does not reverse compression losses in any sense whatsoever. Saying "decompression" could be misinterpreted to mean that it does so in some way.

I think it would be less confusing for Parked if we replaced the word "decompression" with "decoding," which may be less likely to introduce speculative thinking into the discussion.

Thanks for the interesting discussion guys. Can anyone suggest a reason why I can't render to MOV despite having Quicktime installed, and despite reinstalling Vega Movie Studio?

If I select the MOV option from the wizard it says "Resolution: 0x0", "Estimated file size: 0". If I select Advanced, Quicktime MOV isn't an option.

Try installing Movie. studio after installing QT

As I said, I have installed Quicktime, and reinstalled Movie Studio. About the only thing I can think of at this point is to uninstall both and find a way to clean the registry, then reinstall Quicktime first, followed by Vegas. My guess is that reinstalling Vegas didn't overwrite the registry entries for the program, so it was still set as though Quicktime was not present.