Editing problems with AVCHD

[John Rofrano]

[Geralyn Ryan] ” I’ve tried to import directly into Vegas 10 but glitches appear.”

What kind of glitches? What version of Vegas are you using? Recent Vegas versions should have no problems displaying AVCHD. It may stutter when it plays but there should not be any visible “glitches”.

[Geralyn Ryan] ” Tried to convert using neoscence and now the audio and video are out of snyc.”

Did you contact CineForm about this? They should be able to help you.

[Geralyn Ryan] “My computer (HP dv6 notebook Intel core TM 2? The camera?”

Well… AVCHD is particularly difficult to edit. Most people recommend a Quad Core processor. The minimum Sony recommends is a 2.8Ghz Dual Core for HD. That’s probably the minimum for HDV but AVCHD requires much more. Your laptop has a 2.40 GHz i3-370M Dual Core Processor which is slightly below the minimum recommendation from Sony for working with HD. Also the Core i3 is really just for casual Internet use and word processing. You really need a Core i5 or Core i7 for working with graphics and video.

I would contact CineForm and try and get it working. That is probably your best approach for working with AVCHD on that laptop.

~jr

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

[Geralyn Ryan]

Thanks. I will contact cineform. In Vegas the glitch is a stutter- that disappears after it renders- but makes it difficult to edit

[John Rofrano]

[Geralyn Ryan] “In Vegas the glitch is a stutter- that disappears after it renders- but makes it difficult to edit”

That’s because your computer is not powerful enough to handle AVCHD. It’s not a problem with Vegas. If you are using Vegas Pro, you also might want to look at VASST GearShift. It will help you make DV Widescreen proxies that will edit smoothly and then swap them for the original HD before you go to render. There is a 15-day trail that you can use to see if you like it.

~jr

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

[Dave Haynie]

This is not a problem in Vegas, it’s simply the performance of your PC.

AVC is a very complex format to decode. Have you tried even playing the video files in a regular player on that PC? I have an older 2.4GHz dual-core laptop (in addition to my 3.2GHz 6-core desktop, which is just dandy at editing video from my HMC40), and honestly, AVC files can barely play without stuttering, unless I use a player that can use GPU acceleration.

As you can imagine, editing is a more involved process than simply playing things back. I would definitely make the claim that a minimum of four cores are what you want for AVCHD editing. Yeah, it will work with less, but you won’t enjoy the process.

-Dave

[Darren Butcher]

I had the same problem, and took the advice from the other people on this post….until!!!! I found out that in fact it wasn’t my computer at all.. Its all about the codecs buddy.

Try this…Splash Player lite

You will find that it plays your video’s fine, but still doesn’t sort your Sony Vegas problems out.

I still have the same problem, but at least it stops you from taking advice and spending on a new graphics card and processor when in fact its more of a software issue

Hope this bends light in a new direction 🙂

[Matt Crowley]

Splash Player works so well because it uses the GPU (graphics card) to decode video, and GPUs are quite effective for decoding video. However, Vegas doesn’t (yet) use the GPU for decoding so all the hard work is done in the CPU, and that means there’s not a lot of CPU power left for editing if you’re trying to decode several streams of AVCHD on a modest spec PC.

[Dave Haynie]

It is your computer. And Vegas.

I did benchmarks on playing a 1080/60p file, twice the CPU power you’d need for most AVCHD decoding. I have an AMD 1090T system, 6 cores at 3.2GHz each, 8GB memory, and a nVidia GeForce 8800GT graphics card (fairly old).

I have run various programs, software-only, doing full screen decoding (on one of two 1200p monitors), and I see 50-65% CPU use. And I have a really, really fast computer, as computers go (sure, it’s no i7x6).

When I play the same video in Windows Media Player, I’m under 10% CPU. That’s because I’m running 64-bit Windows 7, and Microsoft’s own AVC CODEC is using GPU acceleration, via Microsoft’s own DXVA 2.0 interface. When I run Splash Lite, which accesses nVidia’s GPU acceleration API directly, I see more like 6% CPU.

The reason this is a Vegas problem is simple: if my PC takes 60% or so CPU to decode 1080/60p AVC in realtime in the player, it’s not going to be much different for rendering or display. If you just did the decode using the GPU, the rendering (on screen or to file) would get a big boost in performance.

-Dave