Please add AVCHD smart-render to Vegas

Sebaz wrote on 5/25/2008, 8:04 AM

There's no doubt to me that AVCHD cameras are more convenient than HDV. With HDV you are constrained to 63 minute tapes (ok, there may be 80 minute ones but the tape is probably very thin and drop-outs in HDV are a nightmare) so if you're recording an event that doesn't pause for you to switch tapes, you lose several seconds of it. Then there's that annoying whining noise from the tape mechanism.

With AVCHD you can put 2 hours and 11 minutes non-stop on a 16 GB card with the best bitrate available, and more than that if you switch to the second best bitrate, and I'm sure most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. And no whining noise at all.

But the only advantage that HDV has right now is that it's a breeze to edit. I had a Canon HV20 briefly and editing in Vegas was a pleasure, with the exception of the pre-render bug that I mentioned here a couple of times. But at least playback is at full fps and editing is fast. And most important of all, HDV in Vegas has smart-render.

It's puzzling for me how to this day, the only software for editing AVCHD that provides smart-render is the one that comes with the camera itself, which usually is an abomination, both in design and in performance. I have experience with HD Writer, which comes with Panasonic cameras, and Pixela ImageMixer 3, which comes with Canon ones. They are beyond retarded. I don't know who designs software so inept and twisted. However, those two unbelievably horrendous pieces of garbage excel in one thing: smart-render.

I come home with one hour of footage that I shot with my Canon HF100 and I would love to load it in Vegas and edit it, but unless my final medium is DVD, there's no use, because Vegas can load the footage but can only output to 1440x1080 and re-encoding every single frame. Pixela ImageMixer, after I suffer through the horrible pain of editing in it, renders the whole movie in just a few minutes, re-encoding only a few frames around cuts.

It's puzzling to me how is it possible that the professional software that you have to pay good money for, such as Vegas, Final Cut Pro, Premiere, etc, can't provide a complete workflow for AVCHD, while the pathetic software that comes bundled with the cameras can.

AVCHD smart-rendering in Vegas is long past due. Sony Creative team, please give us something, and make it good.

Comments

Jeff B wrote on 5/25/2008, 11:40 AM

Pardon the newbie question, but what would you then do with the edited and smart-rendered AVCHD file?

Laurence wrote on 5/25/2008, 11:54 AM

I would burn them onto AVCHD discs burned onto regular DVD+-Rs.

Sebaz wrote on 5/25/2008, 2:14 PM

Make an AVCHD DVD that I can play in my Blu-ray player, which is what I can do with the crappy Pixela Image Mixer.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 5/26/2008, 2:13 AM

There are not a lot of tools that are able to smarrender AVC material by now - I think it is now Nero8 in the latest version, and also Cyberlinks Power Director.

However, Smartrendering would be a great advantage, beside better preview capabilities for AVCHD material.

The delivery of the material can take place at AVCHD-DVDs, generated with tools like Uleads Moviefactory 6+ with the HD package. It can also take place as 002-BMDV-structure, both on DVDs but also on BD-R, generated by Vegas 8 Pro from the timeline. But be aware that 002-BDMV structures from DVDs are not played back by the PS3.

blink3times wrote on 5/26/2008, 3:00 AM

"I think it is now Nero8 in the latest version, and also Cyberlinks Power Director."

Ulead MF6 will also not reencode as long as you set up your avchd file the way mf6 likes it.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 5/26/2008, 6:23 AM

I was talking more about NLEs, but not so much about Authoring tools. The DVDA 4.5 does not encode mpeg2-SD either, what is important. But typically, we refer more to NLEs, when we discuss about smart rendering - since we assume that authoring tools are able to avoid recompressing anyway.

WillGill wrote on 6/6/2008, 2:01 PM

Amen. I've got a Canon HF10 AVCHD and have tried everything to cut the render time. I figured filming at 1440x1080 might do it, but it still renders everything. I didn't even think to use the software that came with the camera. I might do that until Vegas supports AVCHD better.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 6/6/2008, 2:20 PM

So this would seem to be a reason to use Cineform then. I'm not too keen on the idea of editing higher bit rate AVCHD like what Panasonic is introducing later this year and having to shell out $500-$1000 for Cineform just to be able to edit the file format. Maybe AVCUpshift is the key to this...

I'm beginning to pine for the days of just shooting dv footage and being able to get real time performance out of it while editing. Instead everything related to shooting video these days seems to be a financial black hole.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | SoloVJ.com

Sebaz wrote on 6/6/2008, 3:46 PM

No, I don't think it's a reason to use CIneform because that involves re-encoding to another format just to edit, and then what do you use to re-encode back to 1920x1080i AVCHD?

The only real solution for now to edit the footage if you want to keep the original quality is to use the pathetic Pixela software that comes with the camera. It's terrible, but one of the few things that it's good at is at creating a truly smart-rendered AVCHD file that you can burn on a DVD and watch on a Blu-ray player.