I used Womble for some time but it's not reliable, many Pioneer (and Pioneer clone) DVD players will balk at the edit points.

VideoReDo is much better, or I'd actually suggest a complete re-encode over a Womble produced video, the generation loss being a valid trade-off for a disc that plays reliably.

I'm still on 7.0e (hoping for HDV smart-rendering and black-frames bugfixes in 8.0a before the end-of-October deadline before upgrading), but I have a question about how 8.0 is behaving on other users' systems...

If I have a raw HDV m2t file which is processed by the newish fast Sony m2tsplug.dll codec, and I trim and then it in Vegas 8.0, is the resulting m2t file still processed by the Sony codec or by the older slower MainConcept mcplug.dll codec?

If the file still ends up as a "Sony" m2t file then I don't see how MainConcept is involved in the encoding process.

By the way if you trim and smart-render a "Sony" m2t file in Womble it then becomes a "MainConcept" m2t file.

(Note: to check which codec processes an m2t file see Vegas explorer > right click on file > properties > scroll down to "Plug-In")

hi nick,

with my system - v8 it's a sony m2t file before and after edit. so, the problem is therefore sony's?

leslie

Well, total guesswork here, but yes, probably a Sony problem. I'm assuming for an HDV m2t smart render in V8 one still renders via the "MainConcept MPEG-2" file type? If so then that may well be just for simplicity and convenience as opposed to the MainConcept encoder actually doing the encoding.

The Sony codec introduced in V7 brought blistering, industry-leading playback performance. The downside as we've found out is messy captures, the dreaded black frames, and corrupt smart renders. Because of the complexity of encoding/decoding long-GOP video, these problems are probaby incredibly difficult to solve while maintaining the codec's performance. Here's praying that they sort it out in 8.0a.

Can someone explain how this 'no recompress' thing can work, even in theory?
Just that I've yet to hear of it being made to work 100% reliably by anyone.

Bob.

Womble allows you to see only I-frames in the trimmer so you can always cut on an I-frame hence a complete GOP. Smart Render only renders that portion of anything that has changed. Since all GOP's are complete, no problem. They are using the Ligos encoder I think.

MainConcept does not mention SmartRender in their product descriptions so this may be a Sony problem after all in how they use the encoder. (But curiously Ulead has the same problem, same encoder.)

SmartRender works reliably for SD.

"Since all GOP's are complete, no problem"
Well people here are saying there are problems, some devices baulk at the altered GOP structure.
"Womble allows you to see only I-frames in the trimmer so you can always cut on an I-frame hence a complete GOP"
With a 15 frame (0.5 secs) GOP that's going to require some pretty sloppy cutting at times.
"SmartRender works reliably for SD."
SD what? If you mean DV, then Vegas has always SmartRendered that anyway. If you mean SD mpeg-2, that's a much shorter GOP

I understand the concept and I've used Womble, I just see the implementation as being somewhere between very complex to impossible to get 100% accurate so that nothing down the chain is going to have issues.

Bob.

I agree with Bob, I have yet to see any software that can completely pull off an MPEG2 smart render. OK, as long as you do a cuts-only edit on I-frames, it works. Both Womble and VideoReDo handle this just fine, but cutting on I-frames is pretty simple since they aren't actually modifying the stream. I tried Womble to cut some stuff (on I-frames) and then apply fades at the head and tail of each clip. The fades were full of blocky artifacts. The same is true of Vegas using the new smart-render option, but the artifacts were somewhat less severe. The only way to do it cleanly (so far) is to render the entire timeline without smart render, but this re-render make HDV footage a little softer than the original footage and exagerates the banding on subtle gradients. Oh well, that's the current state of things.

I bought a Blackmagic Intensity Pro card to record the HDMI output live of my camcorder and this completely solves the issue, but the Intensity isn't fully supported in Vegas (yet) and it isn't practical to haul a desktop computer out to a location shoot.

John

My issue with the "no recompress long GOP's" is why advertise it as a feature if you can't get it to work uniformly amongst most editors? I haven't heard anyone say that the feature is a great tool and they use it daily. I have heard people say that it has issues with blocks at cuts. I too have this same issue and have turned off this option.

I don't think Sony would advertise this without the know how of "fixing" the issue. Can you really put it on the list of new features and it not work or be fixed so that it will work? Sounds like false advertisement to me if this truly was the intention, but I doubt it was.

j razz

I've smart-rendered thousands of 1080i50 (12-frame GOP) HDV files for my stock archive using Womble not cut on I-frames. The renders were very fast so I'm pretty sure there was no re-encoding going on during rendering of the complete GOPs, and I can't visually detect any difference from the original either. But Womble creates a new I-frame at the beginning of the clip and so I suppose that makes it non-HDV-compliant. Personally I don't care about that because I never write back to tape anyway.

I've used the archived files in a few projects with cross-dissolves etc. and I haven't seen any artefacts as John has. But as I said above, the files are handled in Vegas by the slower MainConcept codec, which is a big disadvantage.

By the way I smart render in Womble by sending it a trim list (tls) file generated in Vegas by a script based on JohnnyRoy's script.

Now then, another question... If you have a "MainConcept" m2t file and "smart render" it in V8, does Vegas turn it into a "Sony" m2t file? Would be great if it did because I will be able to speed up the playback performance of my HDV archive, assuming Sony fix the smart rendering.

I might just have the answer.
I suspect where this is meant to be used is with XDCAM and the new EX1. Say you want to archive from SxS cards to a XDCAM disk. You want to trim your clips or cutout the no takes.
Now in this scenario adding a bit of a handle is no problemo and the XDCAM enables you to define in/out point anyway. What you really, never ever want to do in this scenario is recompress an already lossy format. For this application a few mangled frames doesn't matter, heck even cutting to the nearest I frame is acceptable.
I just tweaked to this as another Vegas user was touting this no recompress thing elsewhere in relation to the EX1 and I was thinking oh dear, this could get ugly seeing as how it doesn't work but maybe now I see the logic of it.

Bob.

I'm following your discussin guys with great interest, as my trial 'no-recompressing' renders of m2t clips produces unwatchable files, full of pixelations even outside edit points.

One thing I am at lost with: what do you mean by differentiating between the Mainconcept and Sony HDV codecs? In "render as" drop down list, for MPEG-2 I can only choose the Mainconcept one; Sony is only for MP4 (AVC).

What am I missing?

Megabit, open Vegas' Explorer window (not Windows Explorer).

Choose "properties" from the bottom of the context menu (right click on a video file).

Scroll to the bottom of the "File Properties" window and the "Plug-In" information shows you which codec Vegas will use to decode the file.

Some HDV m2t files such as those that Womble MPEG Video Wizard has encoded are decoded by the older MainConcept MPEG-2 codec (mcplug.dll).

Other HDV m2t files such as those captured in Vegas and (in my case) most of those captured in HDVSplit are decoded by the Sony M2TS codec (m2tsplug.dll) introduced in Vegas 7.

The Sony codec plays back a lot faster than the MainConcept codec, which is why realtime playback of HDV without using a Cineform intermediate AVI became a realistic option with Vegas 7.

Nobody except the programmers seems to know exactly what makes an m2t file worthy of being decoded by the Sony codec as opposed to the MainConcept codec.

I'd be most interested to know if a "no-recompress" render in V8 will turn a "MainConcept" m2t into a "Sony" m2t. That might be enough to make me upgrade in good faith that Sony will fix the bugs.

I'm pretty sure the files encoded by the other software are in the PS (Program Stream) format.
The videos produced from Vegas are in the TS (transport stream) format. I think that's why you see the difference in the decoders being used to load, edit & play the file.The Sony m2ts is TS (transport stream) format, same as on the HDV tape, so you can just select the sony TS file directly and write it back to a tape device. Vegas edits efficiently in the HDV TS format.
I think that Vegas is seeing the video as a PS (program stream) file and has to use the MainConcept encoder to read it when made from the other software.

One of my Highdef players uses the "Sigma Designs" chipsets to playback highdef video. That chipset is rated 25MBS CBR for TS video and only 18MBS VBR for PS video (1440x1080 or 1920x1080).
I have never had problems playing back Highdef m2t TS files on that player.
I have had problems playing back the Highdef files that used the mainconcept encoder & put them into PS format. They studder every 2 sec's on playback while the same TS file from vegas no problem. This tells me the Mainconcept encoded from the other program is PS format, because I know the design of the "Sigma Designs" chips on my player can't handle PS at 25MBS. Also being in the PS (program stream) format is why these other programs render the video so fast after you cut/join or whatever. "Sigma Designs" also makes much better chips for pro models than what was designed in my player.
Actually when I tell the other programs to smartrender in the TS (transport stream) format the render times are very close to what Vegas does now.

I think that if some of the persons wanting this smart render feature added to Vegas so that Vegas could smart render just as fast as the other programs (ulead & all) they didn't take into account (or wasn't aware) the difference between smartrendering Program Stream versus Transport Stream video.

You may want to think twice about smart-render if your giving many dvd's to clients. It wouldn't look good if after frame 900 the player says "Cannot Play This Video File".

When smart rendering works it's great, but you also need another program to check the integrity of the smartrendered video.

>> Actually when I tell the other programs to smartrender in the TS (transport stream) format the render times are very close to what Vegas does now. <<
4eyes, which programs are you referring to that have this option?

Nick,
VideoStudio10 (not available anymore, don't look at VS11+, needs patching).
MovieFactory 6+ with Patch#2 installed. (Don't try the trial either, problems)
VideoStudio10+ converts the TS file to PS so it can smartrender it before it loads the video into the timeline, so it makes another copy of the source video that's in TS format in PS format, no re-compression, the process is very fast. So after it's copied to PS format say you have a 8gig 40 minute file and want to chop 10 minutes out, it's more like a file copy, very fast.
MovieFactory 6+ is tricky, if you bring TS files in the it will output TS files using smartrender.
If you bring in PS files into MF6+ it will smartrender them out as PS. This can be altered and you can switch the PS/TS format but it's very tricky.
But, ulead is one of the masters of smartrendering, (not exactly frame accurate mpeg editing), they started years ago and it's all in the PS format. When you tell the software to do this in TS format the rendering times are the same as Vegas, or very close to it.

Both of the above programs capture HD in PS format, so when people say this other program is so much faster smart rendering the video is probably in the PS format.
There's different forms of what's known as smart-render. Many programs don't rebuild the stream, it's more of a file copy. Doesn't always work either.
I only use smart-render to cut / split or joins 2 files, never for any frame accurate editing such as transisitions, overlays, effects. Mpeg isn't frame accurate video, there are frame accurate mpeg editors and are geared to do just that one thing, edit mpeg files. Must take alot of code and patience on their end. Even their programs can bomb out.

I'd like to mention AVCHD video can be smart rendered if it's in the correct format. It depends though on the format. I've taken 2 gig AVCHD files & trimmed them down cutting out the section I want and smart-rendered to a new file, it was very fast. I have to learn more about doing that and when & how it worked. Sometimes the option is or isn't available. But I have done it and it's more like a file copy.

I personnally don't have a need for smart render HDV in Vegas. It does smartrender my DV & cineform videos which I feel is important because they are frame accurate codecs.

VideoStudio 11+ will export both PS & TS formats. They will be releasing a patch soon for this program. Right now it has problems. I think that one has to be careful installing these other programs, so many codecs/editors on one computer can cause conflicts. When you install ulead software it adds a path statement to your environment, so does Roxio software, these path statements can affect other software on the computer.

4eyes,

Interesting observation. I think you have a point re PS/TS streams.

At least for me, rendering speed is not the reason I want to use SmartRender. It is to preserve 1080 picture quality in HDV! The current level of encoders used in these editing programs looses too much quality when re-encoding HDV video.

>>there are frame accurate mpeg editors and are geared to do just that one thing, edit mpeg files<<

Which other editors?

I keep hoping for a fix for Vegas 8 but am willing to go to a more expensive editor if I can determine in advance what really works. It's really frustrating to have companies advertise a feature only to find out after purchase that it doesn't work as advertised. And the fix may be months in coming, if ever!