AVCHD editing problems

[John Rofrano]

[Brian Burns] “My laptop is Windows 7 64 bit with i5 (2.67ghz) processor, 6 gigs of RAM, ATI Mobility Radeo HD 6370 512MB graphics. I thought this would be good enough for HD video editing but I guess its not.”

That should be a pretty good computer although an i7 would have been better. Let’s try and see if there is a reason for the lag other that 24Mbps AVCHD.

What are your project settings? make sure they match your source video. This will give you the smoothest playback.

What are your video preview settings? Preview (Auto) should give pretty good playback.

I don’t know why you’re having trouble with MPEG2 files. What settings did you use to create those?

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Brian Burns]

I have the project set to the media settings I am importing. I did this when I first started the project and set to match settings. I have the preview set on draft auto but it still lags even if I don’t have any other programs running.

The MPEG files are 720 by 480 at 6000kbps with 29 fps. I used the PMB software that came with my sony handycam. The files work fine when I play them outside of Vegas.

The MPEG files edit and run smoothly in the preview when I only have 50 or so project files loaded in the project media. When I import the rest of the 200 or so files, Vegas crashes. I don’t understand why this happens when AVCHD files are much larger than the MPEG files and I am able to load of all of them and place them in the timeline. So basically the AVCHD files load but lag, and the MPEG files don’t lag but I can’t load all of them.

[John Rofrano]

I agree it’s odd that you can have 200 AVCHD files in your project but 200 SD MPEG2 files. Movie Studio should be able to edit them easily. You might consider breaking your project up into smaller projects so that you can use less files in each just as a workaround.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Brian Burns]

I think that is what I’m going to end up doing. I tried the CFF explorer thing I found on other threads and that allowed me to import a few more files but still not all of them. My RAM now gets up to about 70% instead of the 45-50% it was at before with Vegas running. It’s not that big of a deal though cause I will only have to break up my project into 2.

I wish I could get a faster computer and/or upgrade to Vegas Pro but for now its not in the budget. I’m fairly content with this solution for now, even though it takes a little more time. Thanks for your help.

[John Rofrano]

[Brian Burns] “I tried the CFF explorer thing I found on other threads and that allowed me to import a few more files but still not all of them.”

That seems to imply that it’s a memory limitation and that Vegas Pro 64-bit would help. I guess using less files per project is the workaround then.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Brian Burns]

So I noticed that Vegas Platinum 11 has added OpenCL AVC Encode and improved quicktime decode so I decided to run the trial version…

…and it greatly improves performance with the avchd files! I guess it takes advantage of my GPU and now the playback set at preview auto is very smooth. When effects, such as cross-fading, are added the preview gets a little slower and skips frames but nothing that will hinder me from editing. I should have waited 1 month for the 11th version to come out but oh well…I will be upgrading to this version. I spent a couple of weeks trying to find a good workaround but I never thought that the upgraded version would help so much. I feel like the 10th version just has so many bug issues cause it wasn’t around long before being replaced.

Anyway…if anyone is having the same troubles as me, try the trial of version 11 and see if it helps.