I have Gearshift and Cineform Neoscene. I have use them both at various times, but with Proxy Stream appearing on this forum last week, decided to try that. I used Proxy Stream to convert Neoscene .avi's to MXF. I got much smoother playback doing this. However, I was wondering if I can skip the intermediate stage (Neoscene) and use Proxy Stream on my raw AVCHD footage. Will this work as well and I wonder, and what will the finished output be like?

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I really have little problem with using native AVCHD in 9.0c 32 bit. But I just downloaded Proxy Stream (thanks Gilles!) today and tried it. Very smooth even when using 9.0b 64 bit which has been a problem. The quality seems excellent. I lined up the original AVCHD MTS files and the new MXF proxy file, did a split screen and rendered it out to MP4 for upload to YouTube. I could not tell any difference between the MXF and the original MTS. So I'd say the quality loss is very slight.

So agreeing with Al and Lars, I'd at least give Proxy Stream a shot and see what you think.. Proxy Stream

Just wanted to mention that .mxf clips will smart-render into a final .mxf master and unlike .m2t clips, the audio portion is uncompressed so you don't do successive audio damage each time you smart-render.

Also, for absolutely incredible looking .mxf playback, you should try the free Sony PDZVX10 .mxf player which you can find here:

https://servicesplus.us.sony.biz/sony-software-model-PDZVX10.aspx

Use this utility instead of Windows Media Player or VLC when you audition clips or play back your .mxf masters. If you have a decent graphics card, don't forget to go into the tools/options window and enable the directX9 renderer.

I can't express how good the image from the PDZVX10 player looks. It does some sort of sRGB to cRGB color correction so the colors look absolutely vibrant. It also does the best looking on the fly computer deinterlace I've ever seen (about on par with the deinterlacers in a good blueray or DVD player). You can also shuttle very easily within the file (something which you can't do with VLC and a .mxf file).

Laurence wrote: " It does some sort of sRGB to cRGB color correction so the colors look absolutely vibrant"

Does this mean the PDZVX10 player makes the MXF clip look better than it really is? Unless I misunderstood it, one wouldn't want an app to mask the color correction error.

>Does this mean the PDZVX10 player makes the MXF clip look better than it really is? Unless I misunderstood it, one wouldn't want an app to mask the color correction error.

No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is that the color space on an HD TV and the color space on a computer monitor are different. Normally HD video looks a little washed out on a computer monitor because of this. The PDZVX10 player seems to correct for this and give you the same look on your computer monitor that you would normally just expect to get on an HD TV.

If you take a standard 1080i clip and play it back on a computer monitor, usually you have interlace issues and the color looks washed out. Save the video as a. mxf clip and play it back with the PDZVX10 player and what you'll see is perfectly deinterlaced video that looks like it is being played back on an HD TV.

Go one step further and transcode your original AVCHD clips into .mxf and what you'll have is a video project that previews smoothly and smart-renders (when possible) really quickly into a final project that you can play with the PDZX10 player and looks just gorgeous.

Thanks for the explanation. I have been looking for a way to play back the clips at Best(Full) quality with full frame rate. MXF and this player could be the answer.

Thank all of you for responding, however, I downloaded Proxy Stream 1.5 and have it as a folder on my desktop. I do not find it in Vegas 9.0c tools under scripting. How to I open Proxy Stream. Sorry, but I'm not the most computer literate person.

Place the proxy stream folder in the scripts folder where you have Vegas Pro 9 installed, open Vegas and you will find it in your scripting options.

Cliff Etzel
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Also wanted to mention that there are other scripts that do this same batch conversion:

Gearshift, Proxy Stream, Ultimate-S.

I use Ultimate-S for this since I use it for so many other things as well.

Laurence,
Thank you for your help. I downloaded PDZVX10. Not sure how to activate it for use in my Vegas preview window. When you say, "don't forget to go into the tools/options window and enable the direct X9 renderer," where is the tools/options window you are referring to? I can't find the command "enable the direct Xp renderer" anywhere.

Unzip the PDZVX10.zip file.
Look for setup.exe. Double click this file to start setup.
Install the viewer. It should also install DirectX 9 on your system.
This is a stand alone program meant to view MXF files. It does not run inside Vegas.
The "DirectX 9" setting is within the "options" of the viewer. Nothing to do with Vegas.

The idea put forward here in having the viewer is to really see how your MXF files are looking and give you an idea of how they will look on an High Def Television. Since my Windows Media Player will not play MXF files, the viewer is handy and to have.

Paul

I got the ProxyStream to work on my Vegas 8c but I don't see any MXF conversion template. Is it one of the HDV intermediate templates? I'm going from AVCHD mts, using Vista..

I also have the current version of Ultimate S but I cannot figure out how to use it to create and use proxy streams for my Panasonic AVCHD video. Can anyone offer a few hints?

Thanks

Anyone?

> Anyone?

Everything you need is on the Render tab of Ultimate S Pro. First you should create a render template for the format that you want to use as a proxy. DV Widescreen works really well for HD proxies. There is actually a DV Widescreen Proxy template that ships with the product. Select it and use the render function to render your AVCHD files to DV Widescreen AVI. This will create your proxies. Place them in the same folder as your source AVCHD files (this is important for the next step to work).

Then also on the Render tab is the Media Swapper tool. It too comes with a preset called Any AVCHD/HDV to Proxies which will swap .m2t, .mts, .m2ts, & .mxf to .avi files and back. (or you can make your own template using any filetypes) Press the Source to Target button to swap the HD for DV. Do all of your editing on the DV Widescreen proxies. Then press the Target to Source button to swap the HD back in before you render.

That's basically the workflow. I'm working on a training video that shows this but I'm not done editing it yet. Hopefully soon.

~jr