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AVCHD encoded MP4’s
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> It says Full HD MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 It was easy for me to see and assume AVCHD seeing the AVC!
Yea, this seems to confuse a lot of customers. AVCHD is a standard. It is a written specification that uses a subset of H.264 to hopefully provide some compatibility to a format that has too many profiles and parameters to allow any one manufacturer to support them all. When you see the AVCHD logo on a product, you know it uses a standard video format that software that is AVCHD compliant can edit. Anything without it is a gamble at best.
> So what does this mean then and how to edit and make a SD DVD? Do I still have to down convert or just lay it on Vegas timeline and edit?
I like to lay it on the Vegas timeline and edit but that’s because I have a Blu-ray burner and while I may be working on a project for a customer that only wants SD DVD today, having the HD project allows me to easily provide an HD version later. If you know you will never produce an HD version, then you can work on a SD timeline or downconvert the footage to SD from the start. GearShift will allow you to do this. You can batch create the DV Widescreen proxies and then just use them in the final SD render.
> Now I’m stumped. Ive been using MPEG Streamclip and it seems to be working fine but maybe that’s not the way to go?
Well… MPEG Slipstream is a necessary evil because the camera you bought shoots a video format that Vegas can’t edit. You have no choice at this point. For the same price I would have chosen the Sony CX12 and, in fact, I did and I’m very happy with it and edit the AVCHD files from it directly in Vegas.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Darrin:
Hi!! I also have a Samsung camcorder which produces HD mp4 files. I too have been having trouble authoring these files for the past three to four months. Please let me know how it works out with these programs as I will need to do the same to author my own home movies. One question…after all this tinkering with the original files, is the resulting stream still in HD quality? I would like to author these files onto a AVCHD DVD dsic to view through my BD player. Thanks in advance.
Robert Joyce
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Hi Robert,
I did crack it, please see a few messages up:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/24/889709
I can tell you that the export from the Elecard convertor is full HD, so there is no loss of quality (save the original encoding into MP4 created by the camera).
The Elecard AVCHD convertor can output in several formats, but I found the .ts output the best for Vegas.
Finally, none of this will help if your PC just doesn’t have the grunt – I recommend at least a modern dual core processor, several GB of memory and a fast disk system. You didn’t mention what NLE you are using but if it’s Sony Vegas, I recommend having the preview mode switched to draft whilst editing, unless you have an extremely powerful PC, as “FULL” mode causes a pretty jerky preview. Regardless of this, the rendered output should be fine. I’ve also got a PS3 but haven’t experimented much with HD output rendering, most of my target audience is still DVD based. Good luck !
Darrin.
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Darrin Salt
London, UK. -
Well… Now I got material from customer shoot with Sanyo Xacti 1010
Testing…
Put one .mp4 file to Vegas timeline and render it to Cinefrom HD (full 1920 x 1080)…
3 min take will tame 1.5 hours to encode!! And I have QuadCore 2,66 GHz here . .
ou man… Native support please. Now I just have to do with the cheap power director (hint from Av forums) to cut these (in this case, I manage with it, it will come a project, where I can’t)
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> Now I just have to do with the cheap power director (hint from Av forums) to cut these (in this case, I manage with it, it will come a project, where I can’t)
In that case you have three options:
(1) Tell these customers you don’t accept this non-standard format and ask them to only submit DV, AVCHD or HDV.
(2) Charge customers extra for submitting a non-standard formats because you have to convert them (i.e, charge them a conversion fee and refer them to option 1 if they don’t want to pay)
(3) Stop accepting jobs from people with non-standard cameras
If your time is worth money then option 2 is the one I would take… pretty soon they’ll realize they could save a lot of money just by buying a camera that shoots a standard format if they want someone else to edit it for them.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Stu,
I know where you are coming from, I’ve been there. You didn’t mentioned what NLE you are using but if it’s Vegas I can recommend my solution. I think John’s “option 2” is going to be the only way to go by default until (all) the NLE producers start including MP4 as an acceptable format.
I do dispute however that AVC encoded HD MP4’s are a “non-standard format” – they might be that for NLE use – but to be honest, until computing power moves on another notch I don’t see anything that is that compressed from being suitable for NLE without using an intermediate format.
It’s just another example of a new format which will take time to become widely adopted. Despite improvements in storage capacity, Flash memory devices are still small compared to HD or Tape capacities – leading vendors to seek the “ultimate compression” technology available.
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Darrin Salt
London, UK. -
Hi again
Non-standard may be a mis-nomer. MP4 is a great codec. However like AVI, it’s just a wrapper and there’s a few types of MP4. That H.264/MP4 that the Xacti uses (I have the 1010) is easily mistaken for AVCHD (MP4) They use the term ACV so we assume it’s AVCHD when it’s not I found out thanks to John.
To get those files into Vegas, I use Streamclip and convet them to MOV files. Just a habit I guess. I could use the AVI. Vegas handles those MOV files just great. I’m working on a series of music videos I shot. Surprising since my editing computer is an old HP P4/3.0ghz 2gb Ram w/hyperthreading. I got to set my preview to “Preview-good” and it runs somewhat smoothly. 😉
Can’t wait until I get my MAC Pro with XP and Vegas on one side and OSX and Final Cut Studio on the other side! Although I do like my set-up now with my Mac Book Pro and my HP. If Final Cut’s processing, I can slide over and work on Vegas.
However Final Cut is a different story. If they were AVCHD files you could use the log and transfer to get them in, but those Xacti MP4’s? FCP doesn’t like them and Apple doesn’t support them yet.
I’ve tried. I used Streamclip for MAC, converted them to MOV and get them into FCP just fine. A few transistions and a title and out to a DVD okay as well. However when I started messing around with composites and getting creative, FCP said NO WAY! Crashed or locked up.
So we got to live with things the way they are now. Hopefully in the near future, universal support for the H.264/MP4 will be a reality. However I don’t know anything about Premiere or Edius or any of the other editors. I got my hands full just with Vegas and Final Cut! 😉
As a final note, I recently shot some music vids at a banquet hall. I used my Sony DSR-250 on the tripod set at 16:9 recording to my nNovia Digital recorder, and my Xacti 1010 for B-roll (converted using the Streamclip). All MOV files and they match quite good on the Vegas timeline. Encoded MP2/AC3, into DVDA and made a great DVD.
FWIW
AllenASX Media Group, Inc.
http://www.asxvideo.com
NEW DVD – Europe, Trains-n-Trams -
> Tell these customers you don’t accept this non-standard format and ask them to only submit DV, AVCHD or HDV.
more than half My business is to edit customers own material. Mainly weddings etc, which people shoot themselves.
Up to day, there were no problems, as the material is usual from DV cameras. But these MP4 cameras are spreading
> Charge customers extra for submitting a non-standard formats
Would love to, but I think my orders will stop there.
Now I try to manage this low end “CyberLink PowerDirector” as this one is simple cutting with added sound and text project. It handle these Xacti MP4 files without any problems (with realtime preview)
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> Would love to, but I think my orders will stop there.
Then you need to find a way to convert all of these formats to something Vegas can edit. Try Super(c)… try MPEG Slipstream, try anything you can find until you find one that does the conversion for you. That’s your only other option.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
yep, i wandered here because i googled the samsung sc-hmx20c and “vegas problems”…i bought vegas 9 because i thought it would better handle the realtime preview of files. no such luck.
((for the record, if i import the m4t files as-is and render out into one long file, then reimport, the file plays back in the preview window WITHOUT ISSUE))so i got the mp4 to avi converter. got it working.
also bought the elecard converter studio. but for some reason, i cant find a reasonable template to transcode the mp4’s into a good .ts file which will import into vegas. im also having an issue making a template that doesnt crash Vegas.can anyone help me out?
—shane
soundsubs@gmail.com
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