Full screen AVCHD playback

coasternut67 wrote on 12/22/2009, 1:28 PM
What is the best way to preview AVCHD renders or from the timeline?

Movie studio platnium 9b is horrible at this - get about 3 frames per second! I have also tried Power DVD 7 blu ray which is better but has the field order backwards and shakes during motion from interlacing...de-interlace settings do not work. The higher the bitrate the worse the playback in Movie Studio.

I think a 9C update / patch is needed here to address many AVCHD codec issues with speed of decode and CPU usage...other codecs do not have this problem on my system but I do not want to do an intermediate render just to do editing!

I know my system is more than fast enough - Phenom 955 quad core 3.2 GHz with 3 gig RAM running windows XP service pack 2.

Windows media player 11 will not play them....but my laptop running windows 7 64 bit does - and flawlessly I might add.

I am tempted to put windows 7 on my video PC...but I wonder about compatibility issues.

Any suggestions here??

Rob

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 12/22/2009, 1:45 PM
Tried VLC player?
coasternut67 wrote on 12/22/2009, 3:16 PM
No I have not tried VLC player.... but Power DVD 9 ultra does a decent job - vertical sync is not aligned but it plays smooth using only 5-8% CPU...unlike Movie Studio which uses 50% CPU and chokes badly!

I will look into VLC Player.

A patch is needed here for sure to fix the AVCHD handling.

Rob
coasternut67 wrote on 12/22/2009, 3:37 PM
I tried VLC player - at first it seemed good but it would frequencly freeze on higher bitrate files during playback. Video was good when it worked but it has its problems. Also crashed on me once.

For now I am sticking with the Power DVD 9 ultra - I will deal with the vertical sync issue.

Just wish movie studio would fix this problem.

Rob
kkolbo wrote on 12/25/2009, 12:31 PM

Very few if any playback AVCHD at full frame rate when we are talking about editing systems. Players can handle it, but because of all that an editing system must be doing, AVCHD is a bit much to handle. With most professional systems, the AVCHD is trancoded to something easier to handle.

For consumer editing, Cyberlink has Power Director which creates proxies for editing all HD material. The proxy system works well, but the overall application is only so-so. you might look at that.

KK
Eugenia wrote on 12/25/2009, 2:04 PM
You CAN playback AVCHD files in real time, even on a P4 3Ghz 5-year old PC. But it will cost you $15. Here's how: http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2009/07/11/how-to-fast-h-264-decoding-on-your-pc/
beeblebrox wrote on 12/29/2009, 2:55 PM
Try Splash Lite, a freeware player found here:

http://mirillis.com/splash.html

I've found it to play AVCHD very smoothly.
coasternut67 wrote on 1/1/2010, 9:39 PM
I find Nero 9 does very well...even with 24 MBit files. Smooth and vertical sync is proper. And unlike VMS I can edit AVCHD input and output as long as I turn OFF the smart render and use LPCM audio in the output file.

Only uses about 25% CPU.

Windows 7 also plays AVCHD in media player on my Core2 Duo laptop 2.1 GHz...and with about 50% CPU. So its all in the software.

So long VMS!!! Sony you loose for now until you fix the AVCHD codec.
I am running my stuff at 24 Mbit or maybe 17 - neither of which VMS can handle.

Rob