Making AVC h.264 Editable

musicvid10 wrote on 2/20/2009, 9:34 PM
C'mon, guys and gals,
Make your ideas known here.

I know my last thread got deleted (the "positive" one) because it was hijacked by a you-know-what.

However, for consumer work, this is where we (and Vegas) are stuck.

Enough input, and something might just ring true with the developers, who have been essentially "stuck" since MPEG-2.

High compression, high quality, and fuzzy integration with an otherwise stable approach to edting. Who wants to start?

How could I possibly be disappointed and encouraged at the same time??

Comments

blink3times wrote on 2/21/2009, 5:19 AM
For simple stuff there's 8.1, but if you plan on doing anything serious or lengthy on the time line then the only way to go is an intermediate like cineform. Render times are otherwise far too long and crashing becomes a serious issue.
Aje wrote on 2/21/2009, 7:48 AM
I´ve struggled with 8.1 for weeks even with intermediate files
some times it works for a while but mostly not at all.
At least in my Quadcore Vista 64 computer - Vegas 8.1 doesn´t work!
I will not try 8.1 again until its stabel so I go with 8.0c and have found a good workflow for my needs (musicals, concerts).

I convert Canon MTS files with UpShift to m2t best quality
Panasonic HMC151 MTS files to MXF with mainconcept AVCHD and
Raylight to handle the MXF files.
So finally edit, preview and rendering works like a charm in 8.0c.
Regards
Aje
blink3times wrote on 2/21/2009, 9:20 AM
If you're going to use an intermediate then 8c is better.

8.1 works better with straight avc... although CERTAINLY NOT perfect
rmack350 wrote on 2/21/2009, 12:31 PM
A client of ours just bought a canon AVCHD camera and taped a product teardown. He intends to distribute the media to other people within his company, and since I was there he gave me the files directly. (I think he's probably in for a rude awakening when he tries to give the video to anyone)

This is my first encounter with this sort of media and it seems to be a kind of trainwreck for my modest computer. I was hoping to convert everything to WMV so that the rest of my office could see it easily, but there's just no way I could tie up my computer at work for that long. The raw video is an hour and a half long.

After trying a few things at home I decided to make a very plain SonyYUV intermediate at 640x320. After a couple of false starts I've decided to do this as a prerender because Vegas will just make a few thousand 23MB files. We'll see how that goes but it seems a little faster than trying to do the whole thing as one file, and if it crashes I've got a lot of the job still on disk.

And now I just go off to a baby shower and see what I get when I come back.

I'd definitely want to buy the fastest computer I could if I had to work with this sort of media for pay. I doubt we'd even accept it for editing at work.

Rob Mack
srode wrote on 2/21/2009, 1:13 PM
I have found that editting AVCHD 1920x1080 input from my Sony camcorder to 1440x1080 AVCHD in 8.1 is not only very stable but has excellent quality - not fuzzy at all - have you tried that format?
blink3times wrote on 2/21/2009, 1:54 PM
"I'd definitely want to buy the fastest computer I could if I had to work with this sort of media for pay. I doubt we'd even accept it for editing at work."

Yup.
It's what I've been saying for a while now with this stuff. It makes a really great delivery format and it's also great for a straight transfer to disk for instant playback. But to edit it... forget it. Take a clip, put a couple of effects on it and watch it bring even the strongest machine to its knees.

The killer for me is that there really is no need for it. At the bitrates that are coming out now (24Mb/s) there really isn't that much difference is size to that of mpeg, and it's no clearer than mpeg, yet we're more or less getting this stuff rammed down our throats. There was only one consumer cam that came out as HDV this year... the HV40. The rest were avchd.

This stuff is great for the consumer.... but for us it's a train wreck.
srode wrote on 2/21/2009, 6:34 PM
I wouldn't say that the reduction in file size is insignificant or not improved quality for all conversions - My personal experience is that from my AVCHD 1920x1080 to MPEG2 at 40mbps MPEG2 compared to going to 1440x1080 AVCHD ,the AVCHD image is quite noticably improved and the file size is 30% smaller. Even at 40mbps with the MPEG2 I can see quite a bit of compression problems when looking closely at single frames. I'd like to get the 1920x1080 AVCHD Vegas renders to work so I could compare apples to apples but they always fail part way through locking up and having to use task manager to stop Vegas.

That being said - it is a resource intensive render taking about 5x the realtime footage to complete using nearly 100% of the CPU most of the time - and that's on a 3.3ghz Quad core with 8GB of RAM. Using it for a job, I would have to have multiple computers to stay productive - but at home I just walk away and come back an hour or so later when it's done, so no problem.