Sony AVCHD Template Inherent Rendering Problems

SMC23 wrote on 12/22/2009, 5:06 PM

Hello there,

To provide you with a brief rundown; I purchased Vegas Movie Studio 9.0b as it was one of the only Video editing softwares to support my requirements of rendering to AVCHD and 5.1 surround sound. The moment I downloaded the trial I should have known how poor this application really is! It has caused nothing but frustration for me.

In summary, there are two inherent issues with this software:

1. AVCHD rendering crash:
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I have been faced with a frustrating issue whenever you try to render to Sony AVCHD template (1920 x 1080i NTSC 5.1 surround) the application would always crash instantly!! I'm not certain it relates to other AVCHD resolutions, but I would imagine it would. It was not until i found this workaround below with CFF Explorer that resolved this issue:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=650217

2. Choppy Video - Out of sync with Audio
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Once I applied the hack (this is what this essentially is!) from the above link and finally got Vegas PE to render to Sony AVCHD template (1920 x 1080i NTSC 5.1 surround), I found that everytime the final video output got past 2min in length, the video would always starts to become choppy and out of sync with the audio. I could not find any resolution so I created a ticket with Sony. Once Sony confirmed the issue they sent it to their Engineering department for further investigation. Basically they too were able to reproduce the issue and here is the response they provided to me:

"For my tests, I was seeing this behavior if my Vegas rendered file exceeded 3 minutes with playback getting out of sync around the 1:45 mark.

I've had problems playing back AVCHD files (especially large ones) on 3rd party AVCHD players. The video often gets choppy and lags behind the audio. It gets progressively worse the longer the clip. In some cases, the video will just freeze-frame while the audio continues on.

After consulting with other team members, we don't think this is a Vegas problem. Vegas plays the rendered files fine in all cases. Apparently, the PS3 has some problems playing back AVCHD files as well. Other players I've tried, like VLC, don't play more than 5 seconds of video (if that) before freeze-frame occurs.

Other notes:
- No difference between a stereo or a 5.1 rendered file
- The AVCHD template used to render the file is irrelevant.
- Occurs no matter which Vegas app rendered the file (VMSPE or Pro)
- Able to repro with other source footage.

The only workaround I can think of is to keep those rendered files short in length."

Take note of that last paragraph. They want me to keep my video short in length!!! lol. This is simply inexcusable when they clearly advertise the ability of this software to edit and render to HD including AVCHD format. Well i obviously did not accept that response so I fired back and told them howcome my original, unaltered AVCHD files are able to play on the same players succesfully? Low and behold they admited to this inherent defect and now are looking into updating the application. Here is the response they provided:

"Our Engineering Department performed some more tests and it appears that there is an issue with Vegas-rendered AVCHD files. We want to thank you for bringing this to our attention. The Engineering Department is currently working to resolve the issue and if they develop any suggestions within the coming days, I will let you know right away. Otherwise, please check back with us in the future as this will, hopefully, be resolved in one of the next updates of Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, but do appreciate your patience and understanding."

So looks like they are working on a fix. But I'm VERY surprised that this issue is only getting to their attention now, wasn't Vegas 9.0 out for sometime. I'm sure i'm not the only one who is trying to render to AVCHD!!! Also this affects Vegas Pro 9.0 as I was able to replicate the same chopy-out of sync playback.

So what do i do now that they are looking into this issue. I really doubt they would come up with a fix anytime soon. So what do i now???

Anyways, please post your thoughts here on this response from Sony and if you have found a solution to item #2.

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Comments

Razz wrote on 1/13/2010, 9:38 PM

LR2003, you have summed it up nicely. Question though: What are you using to play back your rendered file (WMP, other?) Picture motion browser is an m2ts player and may work. Have you tried that yet?

I have got to the point of now being able to render m2ts to m2ts (1920x1080 5.1) on my 64bit Windows 7 system after using the fix for the memory flags as noted.

I also find that the video will go out of sync on playback after a period of time in playing back the rendered file. The rendered file is of course quite a bit larger then the native files. I have been using windows media player. When I play the file as a preview in Vegas, it plays just fine and everything remains synced.

I will next try recording a longer file and trying to play this native file in WMP and see if the sync problem is just due to the lack of ability for WMP. It may just take a little bit for the problem to become apparent. Have any of you with longer native files had any difficulty in playing them with regard to the syncing problem?

I have yet to try out the tsMuxeR program. I am planning on doing some trials with this in the near future also.

Thank you to all for the help in this informative thread.

-Mark

Razz wrote on 1/13/2010, 9:41 PM

frogpb, when you run the CFF Explorer program, right click on it and run it as an administrator. That should hopefully allow you to save/overwrite the various files.

LR2003 wrote on 1/14/2010, 4:33 PM

Razz,
I was using WMP in Windows 7 to play the file back. VLC had issues also, but I can't remember the details. Splash lite does a good job of playing them back. my WD TV Live also plays them back well.

I suspect that when VMS saves the file some flag or something is not being set properly and different players handle it differently. I then think that tsMuxeR notices this and corrects it.

Razz wrote on 1/14/2010, 9:40 PM

Some additional interesting observations:

Original Test Video: 1920x1080 with 5.1 surround (record mode AVCHD 16M) size 1,071,744 KB time 8:25 data rate reported by windows 17112kbps

Rendered Video: AVCHD 1920x1080 NTSC 5.1 surround as m2ts file size 1,049,046 KB time 9:03 (according to Windows. This still lists time as 8:25 from the details in the Vegas program) data rate 15557kbps

Muxed video (original test video): size 1,067,826 KB time 8:25 In addition to the H.264 and AC3 there is a thread for "presentation graphics" data rate 17,047kbps

Muxed video (original test video with "presentation graphics" thread disabled): size 1,062,924 KB time 8:25 data rate 16,968kbps

Muxed video (rendered): size 1,047,858 KB time 8:25 data rate reported by windows 16727 kbps

tsMuxeR lists the frames as the same for all of the files after passing through the program. All of the files with the exception of the first rendered file (original rendered file) play just fine in Windows Media Player. It is interesting that the data rate reported by windows goes up substantially after passing thru tsMuxeR. It does not however get back to the original value. Also just passing the original file thru tsMuxeR lowers the data rate some. I don't see or hear any difference in watching the videos with the exception of the originally rendered (corrupted) video.

I talked with Sony Technical Support today. The support person was unable to provide assistance with the various fixes that the people on this forum have provided.

So... the combination of CFF Explorer and tsMuxeR has successfully worked in allowing us to render and view 1920x1080 AVCHD files. I am very grateful to the people on this forum that have been so very helpful.

david_f_knight wrote on 2/1/2010, 7:57 PM

Here are my experiences:

When I rendered to AVCHD, the audio in the output file was corrupt. However, that didn't really matter because the AVCHD output was just a single file, i.e., it lacked the structure and other files required for AVCHD-compliant DVDs. (I don't see any point in creating AVCHD video files unless it is to put them onto AVCHD-compliant DVDs. If your goal is simply to create HD video for playback on computers, then there are better formats than AVCHD to use.)

My work-around, which has worked well for me, is to render my AVCHD source material to Blu-ray iso image, and then use multiAVCHD to convert the Blu-ray video file to AVCHD format and create the AVCHD structure and other required files for an AVCHD-compliant DVD. I then burn all that to DVD and have no problem with anything playing that in my AVCHD-compliant Blu-ray disk player.

Here are more detailed steps of that that work for me:
1) Create and edit your high-definition video in Vegas Platinum 9, and render it out to your computer hard disk in Blu-ray iso image format (Make Movie/Burn it to a DVD, Blu-ray Disc, or CD/Blu-ray Disc/Render image only + Sony AVC (*.mp4;*.m2ts;*.avc) + Blu-ray 1920x1080-60i, 16 Mbps video stream). (Note: 16Mbps is near the highest bit rate that DVDs support; in particular, they do not support a 24Mbps video stream. If you require a 24Mbps video stream then you must use a Blu-ray writer and Blu-ray media as well as a Blu-ray player. There is nothing wrong or unreasonable with recording your video at 24Mbps for the highest possible quality and then rendering it for 16Mbps output. The results are excellent.)

2) Mount the Blu-ray disk iso image file created in step 1 to a virtual drive on your file system. (You can use the free DAEMON Tools Lite program to mount it. If you use Windows XP you need to install UDF 2.50 file system drivers first, which can be obtained for free. Vista and Windows 7 supposedly support UDF 2.50 natively, but I don't have either and haven't tested them to confirm that.)

3) Use the multiAVCHD program to convert the Blu-ray m2ts video file on the virtual drive that the Blu-ray iso file image was mounted on in step 2. multiAVCHD converts the m2ts file to AVCHD format and writes it and all supporting files in AVCHD DVD structure to your computer hard disk. (multiAVCHD is shareware or something. You can try it out for free. If you like it, you can donate whatever you choose to the author.)

4) Burn the AVCHD DVD structure and files created in step 3 onto a DVD. You can use the free ImgBurn program to do so. You must burn the DVD using the UDF 2.50 file system, which is selectable in ImgBurn.

5) Play your AVCHD DVD on any AVCHD compatible Blu-ray disk player. You get Blu-ray disk quality on DVD media. It's great, but you're limited to about 40 minutes of AVCHD video per single layer DVD.