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Sony Vegas 10? or other AVCHD disk with menu solution
Hi,
I am in the process of buying some video editing software to edit AVCHD lite video from my Panasonic ZS3. I have tried the trial of a lot of packages (Sony Vegas 9, Premiere Elements 8, Cyberlink PowerDirector, Pinnacle Studio 14, and Corel Videostudio 12. I have a new machine (i7 860, 8 Gig RAM, Windows 7 64 bit, etc). The only two trials that were stable were Sony Vegas and Pinnacle Studio 14. The rest choked on editing. My test was with two small clips of no more than 2 minutes total.
I liked Sony Vegas with some caveats. There is no template for creating AVCHD at 720p. Also, there is no support for burning a AVCHD compliant disk. If you do it to the hard drive, they don’t have a 720p option. I would like to keep the footage at 720 to reduce space requirements. And lastly, you can’t make a menu for Blu ray or AVCHD (specially since you can’t burn the AVCHD disk).
In my test I used multiAVCHD to create my disk. It was doable, but I think creating a menu would be a pain.
Does anyone know if there is a version 10 (not Pro) coming out soon that addresses these issues?
Even though Pinnacle Studio 14 allowed me to do everything in my little test, I am leary about getting it. It doesn’t have a great reputation for being very stable, but worked fine for me.
I am a novice at this stuff. Can anyone make a recommendation? It seems if I go the Vegas route I can get it done, but need other programs and it will take me longer. If my main concern is editing AVCHD files and creating AVCHD disks, is Pinnacle the better way to go for me?
Thanks for any guidance,
Rob -
9 Replies
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If you need menuing and more sophisticated bluray authoring you will need the pro version of vegas which comes with DVD Architect.
Like you, I also shoot 720p AVCHD. I have a support request in to Sony Creative Software asking why there is no 720p24 template in Vegas. Major oversight I would say. You can’t even customize one because you can’t select 23.976 framerate. I would expect this to be addressed in Vegas 10, but I have no real insight into that, or when it might be available.
However, to my surprise, you can put out of the camera 720p24 footage in DVD Architect and it handles it properly. You just can’t edit it first in Vegas.
I see that you are using 64 bit OS. I’ve found Vegas 32 bit to be more stable with my AVCHD footage than Vegas 64 bit. Your mileage may vary.
Jerry
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Jerry,
Thank you for your response. Unfortunately the Pro version is not within my budget. I will have to make due with one of the other video editing apps or get the non Pro Vegas and get something like Nero to create my AVCHD DVDs or Blu Rays.
Thanks,
Rob -
No one can say when Vegas Movie Studio 10 will be released. I can tell you that I have used the Pinnacle products back in the days of Pinnacle Studio 7 & 8 and they were so buggy they were unusable. The funny thing is that they would get great reviews. It turns out that most reviewers were just using 10 minute clips and everything seemed to work. It was only until you got up over 1/2 hr long project that the program couldn’t handle it.
So if you are making your determination based on 10 minute clips, I would recommend you try doing some serious work before purchasing Pinnacle Studio 14. If it is still unstable (since version 7), changes are it will never be stable. Pinnacle has always had a phenomenal feature set but they have never been able to execute on it. (i.e., it looks great on paper, but it never delivers as advertised)
I had a project in Pinnacle Studio 8 that I couldn’t render without errors. Pinnacle support told me the project had become corrupt and I needed to re-do it from scratch. I figured if I’m going to start all over again, I’m going to start with a tool that isn’t buggy. That’s when I bought a copy of Video Factory (predecessor to Movie Studio) and never looked back.
Sony is really good about upgrade pricing. I would put my money into Movie Studio 9 now and learn all you can while waiting for 10 to come out.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
From the info I could find online, it seemed that somewhere around Pinnacle 11 or 12, it got more stable. I don’t know if it is true, but I found several posts where users said they had been working with it for many versions and 8 and 9 were bad, then got better at 11 or 12. I am leary about Pinnacle. I thnk I had one of their packages a long time ago, pre 8, and eventually dumped it to get Premiere Elements. I was happy with Premiere elements 3 for standard definition video on WIndows XP. I did give Premiere Elements 8 another go and it behaved better than my first attempt. I wasn’t aware before about when the background processing was taking place. Also, it I rendered my work area after applying affects, the preview worked fine.
That is good advice about trying a larger project with Pinnacle. I will try and do that before I purchase anything. The little project worked at weeding out the really bad ones fast, but probably didn’t stress the others very much.
I guess my options right now are:
1) Sony Vegas + Nero (so I can author AVCHD DVDs / Blu ray with menus.
2) Adobe Premiere Elements 8 (If I decide to get a blu ray burner since it doesn’t do AVCHD DVDs).
3) Pinnacle Studio 14 – does AVCHD DVDs and Blu Ray.If I go with option #1, is Nero the best low cost option for just creating the AVCHD DVDs from the Vegas rending?
Thanks
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Rob,
I was a pinnacle user since v8, and got to V12 and gave up, despite years of trying to cope with its stability problems, constant corruption of transitions etc.
I moved to vegas movie studio a year ago and have not looked back. For me, there is no comparison in terms of stability and ease of use. Apart from that, the whole support and third-party-add-ons for vegas are way ahead of pinnacle. (This forum alone is a reason to move – vegas is a professional tool – and the knowledge base and generosity of time given by people in this forum take huge amounts of pain out of the learning curve).
I tried several large projects with pinnacle – and every time hit problems that could just not be solved. One of the biggest (and the reason I moved) was constant corruption of transitions – even on short clips – and nothing could be done about it no matter who tried – including Pinnacle themselves.
Pinnacle was not all bad – and I would probably be still using it if the transition thing could have been solved – but now having found vegas there is no way on earth I would ever go back…
One day i look forward to upgrading to pro – but for the moment – VMS is a great start..
Just my two-cents worth…
Stewart Bourke
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Stewart,
Thank you for your input and words of warning. Did the problems exist in version 12 too? From what I had read it seemed like Pinnacle 11 or 12 got much better. Maybe much better is still pretty bad compared to other programs!
Do you edit and create DVDs / BluRays with high def footage? If so, what software do you use to create those disks? That is a big reason I’m reluctant to get Vegas. I didn’t want to have to buy two software packages just so I can create AVCHD or BluRay disks with menus. Also, I’m a novie and don’t intent to do complicated. Is Vegas overkill for me? I think a typical project for me will be to:
– add some AVCHD lite content to a project
– trim out the bad / boring footage
– use some basic transitions between clips
– edit the sound track’s volume (the camera holder sounds very loud compared to the subject with my Panasonic ZS3)
– create an AVCHD disk (possibly BluRay) with menus
– sometimes I may output to standard DVDs for parents who don’t have a BluRay player.I’m not overly creative or fancy.
My current editing software was Adobe Premiere Elements 3, but I need something for high def footage now.
Well thanks again for your help.
Rob
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I am a little confused.. I can create a 720 24 template in vegas pro9.
I just called up the 720 23.976 template and changed the frame rate to 24 and saved it… would that be the same or is there a problem with that… K -
Hello,
I am talking about the non Pro version as I can’t spend that much on video editing software. If I try to modify an AVCHD template it doesn’t let me modify the resolution. It only comes with 1440 & 1920 by 1080. It doesn’t have a 720P AVCHD template.
If I try to create one based on the default template with a custom size of 1280 by 720 and the AVC video format, it doesn’t let me choose the m2ts file. I can only select mp4 using the other options.
My goal is to have a project where I import my AVCHD lite video from my Panasonic ZS3, edit the footage, and create an AVCHD disk with menus on DVD using 720p for my video format. Since Vegas non-Pro doesn’t let me create a blu ray or AVCHD disk with menus, I want to use Vegas to render a 1280 by 720 m2ts file that can be used in a program like Nero to create an AVCHD DVD with menus.
I am a novice at this, so I don’t know if there is another easier way. I aslo want to avoid using several programs to massage the video into a format I can use. Even though Pinnacle 14 is probably inferior to Vegas, it seems like the best way for me to get the output I need. If somebody knows a better way for me to do this I am all ears!
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Rob,
Apologies for the delay in reverting – have been away from the site for a few days..
If anything, things got worse as I moved from 11 to 12. the problems were simply not deterministic – and therefor I had to move.
I am an amateur – not a professional user – I use Vegas Movie Studio at present, and for me, it works very well. As my knowledge progresses I will probably upgrade to Vegas pro at some stage, but for now, VMS allows me do what I want.
my main difference with your situation is that I have not yet moved to HI-Def, so cannot comment on how it will work for you in this case – all I can say is that there appear to be a lot of people out there using it in the way you want to…
Good luck with your project…
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