What is the best/most efficient codec for editing?

A. Grandt wrote on 6/26/2009, 12:20 PM

AVCHD and h.264 are at the moment pretty much prohibitively CPU intensive when editing.
So if I were to re-encode the original AVCHD files, which codec and container are the best to use for editing in Vegas?

Uncompressed is not really an option for now, as it takes up too much HDD space and bandwidth.

Best Regards
A.Grandt

EDIT:
I'm using Vegas 8 and 9 32-bit in Win XP-SP3 32-bit, on a quad core 2.6 GHz AMD Phenom CPU with 8 GB RAM (Windows is blind to all but the lower 3.5GB) and less HDD space than I'd like.

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Comments

PerroneFord wrote on 7/2/2009, 1:19 PM

But that's not a full raster codec.... it's only 1440x1080. Or am I missing something?

malowz wrote on 7/2/2009, 2:25 PM

it is "full raster", can be 1920x1080, 1440x1080, 720x480...

i use it for everything, including when converting HD>SD. ;)

its a DCT based codec, 4:2:2

MPM wrote on 7/2/2009, 3:00 PM

FWIW, Don Graft has a new version of DGIndex for AVC vid, & it can use Cuda for any Nvidia users out there. The downside is that Vegas, unlike P/pro won't directly support AviSynth so you have to work with an intermediate like VFAPi or ffdshow's makeavis.

Not saying it's any better or worse than anything else -- only that some folks are having a lot of success with it.

malowz wrote on 7/2/2009, 3:27 PM

here im using a home-made batch, using ffmpeg to extract audio, ffmpegsource to open in avs + audio, convert in vdub "silently" to canopus HQ in HD, and also, downsize with a motion-compensated deinterlacer to get a very sharp interlaced SD (compressed with canopus HQ also)

so i get a 4:2:2 HD and SD easly direct from original mp4 files, ready to edit.

preview in 960x540 i get full fps, and of course, export without recompress, pre-render only when needed, like DV...

for avchd/hdv, im using carbon coder. very powerful... and expensive... :(