Canon hg10 AVCHD Smart Render At Last

David Laine wrote on 12/23/2009, 9:05 AM
Well vegas still cannot manage to smart render canon hg10 files if evan one xfade is used, well done vegas

but the last software house you would think to manage it has

Power director 8 0220 has a setting that does allow smart render on canon hg10 files

Who knows sometime in 2110 the $500 vegas programme will at last do what a sub $200 programme does now

FWIW vegas is a better programme then PD8 but vegas is just so so slow working with AVCHD files

Happy Xmas Readers

Comments

LSHorwitz wrote on 12/23/2009, 12:45 PM
Power Director 7 (the prior version), Nero Vision (both prior and current versions), and Ulead / Corel Video Studio X2 Pro as well as Movie Factory (both versions 6 and 7) have had smart rendering starting nearly TWO YEARS AGO............

For those circumstances where smart rendering cannot be used, Power Director employs the additional hardware acceleration of nVidia CUDA by sharing the rendering workload onto the video card.

Vegas is superior in many ways, but when it comes to speed and especially when it comes to rendering, Vegas (including 9.0c) is really quite pathetic. The Vegas solution is to purchase multiple copies of Vegas ($$$$$) and install them on multiple workstations ($$$$$) to achieve a "render farm". How quaint..........


Larry
David Laine wrote on 12/24/2009, 2:36 AM
Yes but PD7 & VS X2 always had a problem if the time line had any transissions like evan a simple x fade PD7 would stop smart render after it and re render the whole file (just like vegas still does even on v9c) VS X2 would always put a glitch after the x-fade

But PD8 2220 looks like it works at last

You may well be right Vegas want your $'s a single licence is not enough for them

Lets hope Vegas 10f might just get it right
LSHorwitz wrote on 12/24/2009, 7:01 AM
David,

Your final comment was wonderful:

"Lets hope Vegas 10f might just get it right "!

For those of us who have owned prior and current versions of Vegas, it goes without saying that Version 10a,b,c,d,e can't possibly "get it right", but maybe, just maybe, 10f will !!!

Happy Holidays. Your comment had me laughing out loud!

Larry
musicvid10 wrote on 12/24/2009, 9:28 AM
Well vegas still cannot manage to smart render canon hg10 files if evan one xfade is used,

Here is my impression, perhaps not perfect technically:

In order for Vegas to do frame-accurate editing (which most people demand), it must re-index the entire GOP structure from the first edit frame to the end of the render. In the case of AVCHD, this is nontrivial. An AVCHD stream can have up to 300 non-indexed frames for each I frame, making each GOP many seconds in length. Add to that the complexities of rendering new non-P frames, and that's a lot of calculations. This consideration alone represents a huge departure from mpeg-2, which might typically have a GOP structure only 1/20th the length of AVCHD.

If Vegas moved the cut to the nearest I frame (called GOP accuracy), you and I and the rest of the world would complain. If Vegas did not recalculate the GOP, playability would be impacted, negatively.

Fast-recode technology for AVCHD is in the works (already available in a few apps), and we "might" possibly see it in future versions of Vegas. What we wish to see today and what it would take to accomplish it are often two different things, and difficult to comprehend without a good peek under the hood.
LSHorwitz wrote on 12/24/2009, 10:56 AM
Subject: Smart-render not ready for prime time
Posted by: LSHorwitz
Date: 12/24/2009 1:52:20 PM

For those of us who have used smart rendering with AVCHD for nearly two years, the fact that frame-accurate editing requires massive indexing and calculations doesn't seem to be a major obstacle.

Since smart rendering only makes sense at all for frames which have not changed, such as found when a clip is merely trimmed or cut, the comparatively 'easy' job of smart rendering can be applied in these circumstances with far less complexity and computational workload.

If my timeline contains 90% trimmed and cuts-only clips with no other editing changes, I enjoy the speed benefit of avoiding 90% of the render time. Once you get accustomed to this, it is difficult to enthusiastically endorse the approach Sony has been using.

To their credit, Sony has now begun to employ smart rendering in version 9, and may eventually get it to work right. They eventually may also employ CUDA, or even do something really smart (like Canopus) and use the Toshiba SpursEngine cell processor card to substantially speed up transcoding. Neo 2 Booster does it. Pegasys TMPG Express also does it. I'm not talking about invention of anything new here.......merely applying methods others have been using, in some cases for a couple years. The BluStreak and Leadtek cards are dirt cheap, particularly when you consider the Sony alternative of render farms, or the labor costs associated with long rendering wait times.

Most ironically, DVD Architect has had smart rendering for a much longer period of time (back to version 8), and it works relatively well in the few trials I have made.

Larry