There are 2 types of avchd floating around out there;
MAIN PROFILE (used by Sony)
HIGH PROFILE (used by Canon/Panasonic)

Main profile is said to have easier editing and playback abilities... but then the bit rate doesn't go as high as the high profile (Canon cams for example will shoot as high as 24mb/s)

I don't know for 100% but I believe that Vegas renders out avc at main profile levels. After all that's what their cames are and that's where their bitrates top out for avc.

So yes... you should notice a difference in the way that the avc plays/edits.

I did some recent experimenting with Vegas Pro 9 and 24 Mbps footage (from a Panasonic 150). I first tried exporting part of one of the files on the timeline, without change, to a file on the desktop. It went very quickly, indicating that it was being copied and not recompressed. I then chopped the clips into several pieces, removing some small pieces, and overlapping the ones that remained (adding a different transition type to one of the overlaps). I also cut one clip to move a section to a track above where I extended its ends, applied a color change, then brought it back down to join (with overlaps) its original clip. Remaining were several relatively long unchanged parts. I then added audio and video fade-in/outs at the ends and included an "empty" leader and tail. Exporting this to a file required about 6:15 for 40 seconds of material with a dual core CPU, and that (plus the "stepped" preview image progress) indicated that none of the timeline material was merely copied once part of the timeline material had been modified. I compared the exported video frame-to-frame with the original, and while it was very close, it wasn't quite as good. Apparently, changinging any of the footage on the timeline forces the output to be rendered using Main Profile rather than High Profile. Also, at no time with any 1/2 sized preview window setting was playback of 24 Mbps AVCHD material smooth on this computer. Hooray for HDV! It works, and Vegas doesn't appear to yet work very well with AVCHD (at least with 24 Mbps material), and it is still a "pain" to use unless the hardware resources are extraordinary. I will be staying with HDV and Vegas Pro 8 for a while longer, it appears...
--DR

I did some recent experimenting with Vegas Pro 9 and 24 Mbps footage (from a Panasonic 150)
What SD card did you use for this?

ingvarai

"Hooray for HDV! It works, and AVCHD doesn't appear to yet work with Vegas (at least at 24 Mbps material), and it is still a "pain" to use unless the hardware resources are extraordinary. I will be staying with HDV and Vegas Pro 8 for a while longer, it appears.."

And I'm not sure Vegas WILL ever work at that bit rate. That's HIGH profile avchd (to a max of 24Mb/s) that Panasonic uses, while Sony has made it pretty clear that they have no interest in this profile. Sony Cameras operate on MAIN profile avchd (which has a max bitrate of 17Mb/s) and as can be seen in Vegas the max setting for avchd is 16Mb/s. I think Sony's philosophy is pretty clear on this subject (so far anyway) and that is that avchd is strictly a consumer level format and should be operated at main profile levels.

As for quality levels between rendered mpeg2 vs avc.... while the avc rendering quality is CLEARLY better than in 8, it still can not beat the quality level of rendered mpeg2 (IMO). In low light shots I find that there still much more in terms of various artifacting in rendered avc as opposed to rendered mpeg2.

For me... if I'm in a pinch for room then I think that avchd is at a point where it can be used... but if disk space is not an issue then I will continue to render my avchd (from the sr11) over to mpeg2 for final output to blu ray.

Blink, give me an advice. I have Panasonic 151 myself (151 = PAL, 150 = NTSC) So I shoot in 24 Mbps and I do use Vegas.
What to do?

ingvarai

Mpeg2...

You can either throw that on the timeline as it is or convert it over to cineform for easier editing if you need... but you should render that out as mpeg2 at 1920x1080 at a vbr bitrate of 20/25/30 (there is a blu ray template already made and outputs a M2V for dvda). You'll only get about 1:45:00 on a blu ray disk but then the quality will be a hell of a lot better than rendering out as avc at 16Mb/s

But what is the problem? I never render to AVC, except when using proxy files. When doing th final render, the destination media decides. And in my case, it is almost DVD. Have not started with bluray yet.
Edited:
Ok, I see, intermediate is the word. I understand, I think..

"And in my case, it is almost DVD"

I'm speaking in terms of high definition to Blu Ray... as I THOUGHT you were. Dvd is a completely different work flow (which I don't do anymore) and quality loss is not that big an issue. I would say the only issue facing you is time line playback speed/quality. If you don't mind using SHIFT-B alot then I would throw it on the time line as is. However if it react too jerky for your taste then yes... intermediate is the word.

I'm speaking in terms of high definition to Blu Ray
Ok, let us say I do this. I can then use the Panasonic AVCHD footages as is on the time line, and do a final render to mpeg2. Right?
BTW, what is SHIFT-B?

"Ok, let us say I do this. I can then use the Panasonic AVCHD footages as is on the time line, and do a final render to mpeg2. Right?"
yes.


SHIFT-B works with your dynamic ram setting in your preferences. It loads a section of time line into memory for smooth playback. I use it probably more than anything else.

If you have a transition on the time line that is playing all jerky and you want to see it playback smooth then highlight that transition from start to finish then click SHIFT-B. This highlighted section will be loaded into memory for smooth, full frame rate playback. You will see it as you would on disk.

If your transition doesn't load fully into memory then your dynamic ram setting is too low and you need to turn it up a little.

OK I started this thread and perhaps would have written
"intermediate" in subject.
Thank you for the shift B!
I work with transitions a lot with conserts, musicals and so and I have used the audio (beat) to finetune transitions when preview get jerky - but this seems very useful.
My end product are also dvd´s, blue ray-players are not very common in Sweden.
As Ingvari I shoot with HMC 151 and perhaps I can use my AVC "intermediate" for dvd´s and then benefit the power of VP9/64.
/Aje