Recommendations for AVCHD editing and rendering

ingvarai wrote on 7/15/2008, 8:43 AM
I have just purchased a Canon HF 10, and have made some recordings. I use the bundled software ImageMixer 3 to save the footages to my PC as m2ts files. When played back using the ImageMixer player, the video flow like butter in a hot frying pan, and looks just great to me, being used to VHS and low quality video.

And, I have no problems whatsoever importing the m2ts into Vegas.

However, when added to the time line in Vegas, the playback becomes jerky (ok, jerky is maybe the wrong word - the frame rate drops a lot).
I can perfectly well live with a low quality rendering during editing, as long as I can render to a high quality when all editing is done. I would prefer my video to flow normal during editing over sharp images.

Question1:
Is this low frame rate playback normal, or have I missed some settings?
In fact, isn't there some sort of a "proxy editing" function that is supposed to cater for this, maintaining speed and smooth flow for editing purposes?

--
I want to share my video with others, on the Internet. I often come across web sites where they have wide screen video streamed back almost instantly, with razor blade sharp images. I guess this is Flash technology.
I have tried for several hours almost any setting in Vegas to render avi, wmv, mpg etc, that will play back nicely on my own computer - in vain. They have artifacts, ugly lines, are jerky and all in all useless. Obviously I am missing something here..

Question2:
What format do I render to, to make video files that Flash or the like would accept? Or at least what format can I use to make a file that at least Windows media player will play back, and at the same time not lose quality?

--
Question3:
I will later burn a DVD with my edited videos. What format can I render to, to start with, that will look ok on most modern wide screen TVs? (I do not have a Blue Ray burner)

I hope you video experts here will be able to give me some advice!

Thanks, Ingvarai

Comments

kairosmatt wrote on 7/15/2008, 10:12 AM
Ingvarai,

1. The playback framerate on the timeline will not effect the final render. If it does become too choppy to see, change the playback quality . Its on the top of the preview monitor, and can go from Best to Draft. I find that changing from Full to Half or Quarter also helps.
I think Gearshift does AVCHD proxies now, but am not 100%.

2. The higher the quality, the more power is needed to playback smoothly! Vegas does not render to Flash, but you can render out a high quality AVI and then have another program convert it.
For windows media video, there are lots of templates that you can experiment with to find which one has the best quality vs playback. Or you can customize them, but you need to read up on it a little bit.

3. To burn DVDs you need to render out MPEG2. When you bring that up, there are some DVD Architect templates, choose the one best for you.

By the way, I'm jealous of that camera! If I was in the market for one, that'd be the one I'd get!

kairosmatt

EDIT: On #2 I forgot to mention that I use Premiere to render to Flash, and there is also a flash converter from Adobe.
ingvarai wrote on 7/15/2008, 11:16 AM
Thanks, kairosmatt,
#1 solved, I followed your advice :-)

For #2, I am as clueless as before.
I have tried AVI and WMV templates, but have not succeeded.
For example, using the AVI default template results in an avi video which has approx 1 Gb per second, this makes is unusable of course, and besides of this, Windows will not open it at all. I tried to render 5 seconds of my footage, and got an avi file of 4.6 Gb.
Then I have tried various templates, all more or less generate videos with thiese kind of artifacts:

avi-pal-dv-template

and like this:

HD-1080-50i-YUV

My first step now therefore is to be able to at least render my footage to a PC format, to share with other PC users, and also be able to adjust the quality and the size on the screen, without those nasty side effects.
If someone knows what I do wrong, any help is much appreciated!

Ingvarai
kairosmatt wrote on 7/15/2008, 12:28 PM
ingvarai,
It looks to me like those are interlacing problems. When you render out for display on a computer, make sure that that the video is set to progressive (no fields).

Also, your camera can shoot in 23.97 or 29.97 fps. So make sure your final render is set to the correct frame rate. When you shoot, since you know you'll be going to a computer display, try to use only the progressive frame rates on the camera, that way you can by-pass interlacing all together.

hope that helps,
kairosmatt
ingvarai wrote on 7/15/2008, 1:14 PM
Hi kairosmatt,

> It looks to me like those are interlacing problems.
> When you render out for display on a computer,
> make sure that that the video is set to
> progressive (no fields).

When rendering to WMV, I found no such options

> Also, your camera can shoot in 23.97 or 29.97 fps.
> So make sure your final render is set to the correct frame rate.

This did the trick! I set it to 29.97 fps, instead of 25 which I for some reason initially believed was right.

> When you shoot, since you know you'll be going to a computer display,
> try to use only the progressive frame rates on the camera,
> that way you can by-pass interlacing all together.

I have not found any settings yet on my Canon HF 10 for this. Anyhows - I shoot for all purposes, PC, YouTube, DVD and for all possible future purposes.

kairosmatt,
you made my day! The rendered WMV video is just beautiful, it flows like a dream and has no artifacts I can spot right now. I have even added it to the timeline in Vegas, and run it through once more - still it looks fantastic.
Maybe I will render all footages to WMV and use thoose instead, I will see what speed I can gain in Vegas. And yes - I know som people will frown upon using lossy sources, still I am so impressed with the video quality that I might just do this :-)

> hope that helps
Indeed! :-))

Ingvarai
kairosmatt wrote on 7/15/2008, 3:18 PM
You know, I just checked my own Windows Video options, and you're right! I think that it always renders progressive since its WMV is only for a computer.

As for your camera options, I've only read about it-never gotten to use it (one day...), and it seems like it has 24p, 30p and 60i? The 60i would be 29.97 interlaced fps, that's the one I'd avoid. Even if your going to DVD, I believe its easier to interlace footage than to make it progressive.
If you want to get more into it, there are many, many topics on this forum about frame rates and interlacing that you can search down.

Anyway, glad I could help!

kairosmatt