m2ts files for Sony Vegas 7

[Stephen Mann]

AVCHD files are very compressed.

The only bulwark against the massive compression in AVCHD is sheer bone
crushing-processor power and blazing fast disk throughput.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Simon Andersson]

Ok, that’s kinda bad. Basically all I want to do is be able to edit the videos in Sony Vegas without them losing their quality. Is that even possible? Because if I payed for the quality I want to be able to use it.

[Stephen Mann]

Don’t get me wrong, You *will* get the quality, but editing will be a pain because only the fastest processors can keep up with the requirements. Preview will be choppy, maybe as low as 1fps.

However, all is not lost. go to https://vasst.com/store/sony-vegas-plug-ins.aspx and look at Gearshift. Gearshift makes a proxy file of your AVCHD footage, the proxy file is of lower quality but easy on your PC for editing. When you’re finished editing, Gearshift replaces the proxy footage on the timeline with the original AVCHD footage. You then encode (render as) your final output files.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Dave Haynie]

Depends on your computer. Stephen’s suggestion of Gearshift offers the simplest solution for a lower performance PC. Note that AVCHD records at up to 24Mb/s (28Mb/s, maybe a bit more, for AVCHD 2.0), which is a slow stroll for a modern PC, same basic disk requirements as for HDV and DV. A good PC from 1995 has enough disc speed.

But just decoding AVC is heavy lifting even for a modern PC. Just to playback AVC, I’ll see 30% CPU use on 1080/60i, 60% CPU for 1080/60p, using a CPU only player. Editing is harder still on your system. And I run a six core, 3.2GHz AMD system… pretty fast. You need this, or better still an i7, for really nice AVC editing.

Another alternative is an intermediate CODEC like Cineform. You convert AVC to Cineform, edit the Cineform tracks… much less CPU needed. But disc performance and storage is the price you pay… Cineform is about 100Mb/s. Technically, you can lose some quality, but realistically, very hard to tell. You can download the Cineform Neo demo and give it a try.

-Dave

[Simon Andersson]

Well, that seems simple enough. I’ll try that.

Thanks!

[Simon Andersson]

Okay, but I don’t quite get why the processors can judge wether or not I can open some video-files in Vegas, and when I render the video to some other format I still get the glitched screen, as if there was something wrong with the raw file.

But fair enough, I will accept that it is my processors, but is there anything I can download (for free since I am unable to spend money via the internet right now) that can either make it so I can open the video in Vegas or convert it without quality-loss to another format so I can open that?

I know I’m very picky, but if I can’t open the files in Vegas I’ll have to return the camera to the store and get another one, which would be a shame, since the camera is really good.

[John Rofrano]

If you want to use AVCHD, the best thing you can do is get Vegas Pro 10. Vegas 7 is extremely old and ill equipped to handle AVCHD efficiently. Download the trial of Vegas Pro 10 and see if that solves your problem before you go buying lots of plug-ins to fix old outdated software.

~jr

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

[Simon Andersson]

Okay, I can’t use Sony Vegas 10, because my trial has already expired, so I’ve tried more products from Sony (on a friends computer which has basically the same preferences as mine), such as Sony Vegas 9 and Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum, which both reads the file, but after like 10 minutes of edting the program crashes and I’m unable to do anything with it until I restart my computer.

I don’t see why there needs to be so many problems? I just want to to buy a HD-camera, load the files into my computer and edit them in a program that i recognize. I don’t want to either spend double the money of the camera on a computer that could handle it, or almost as much on programs and codecs.

Okay, let’s say I returned the camera to the store and bought another one. Is there any file that has the same amount of quality, but easier to edit with a computer (that really isn’t that bad AT ALL) that can’t handle AVCHD, and if so, what type of file would that be? Or am i just out of luck and can’t make HD-movies without spending 10 000 dollars on cameras, computers and programs?

Please help me! I have been looking for the perfect camera for me for about 6 months and I finally found one, and it doesn’t work the way I want it to. Now I might have to start the whole thing over again, and in that case I want to be COMPLETELY SURE that the camera will work for me.

Thanks.

[Dave Haynie]

The usual cause of crashing after some specific editing time is loss of resources. It could be that your PC just isn’t up to the task, it could be a bug in that version of Vegas. And of course, in the case of Vegas 7, you’re just fooling yourself if you expect to edit today’s camcorder formats with yesterday’s software or hardware.

Each new advance in camcorder encoding has delivered higher quality video, but at the price of complexity. HDV was much better than DV in quality, but it wasn’t 2x or 4x as complicated, more on the order of 100x as complex to edit. It’s similar going from HDV to AVCHD.. it’s on the order of 100x more complex to edit than HDV’s MPEG-2. A PC that will verry easily handle HDV can be barely functional at AVCHD.

Fact is, quality costs. The price falls every year, but there is no magic bullet. You spent money on a new camcorder, but that’s only one piece of the toolchain. I spent $2600 on my first HDV camcorder, but that was just the beginning. It took three years, new PC hardware, more storage, Blu-ray gear, etc. before I was done. For a year or so, then I started to mess around in AVC.

If you can’t handle AVCHD today, you can use the proxy editing solution or the intermediate format, both let you get by with fewer resources, for a price. You can even try Avid’s DNxHD, or Sony’s MXF formats, as alternatives, each with its own issues.

Another option is taking back the AVCHD camera, maybe find a high quality HDV model, until you can afford to fully support your whole editing toolchain.

-Dave

[Simon Andersson]

Okay I understand that your computer needs to be top notch in order to edit HD-videos, but at the same time I find that kind of hard to believe. I know many people that are able to edit HD-videos on their laptops fromm like 2007, and I know that my computer is better than theirs, but I digress.

I also find it wierd that I can edit the videos in Pinnacle Studio, but not a program from 2011 by the same company who made the camera. Oh, well.

My solution right now is to open the videos in Pinnacle Studio and same them as they are as another format, then open and edit them in Sony Vegas. It’s time-consuming, yes, and there is a risk of the quality being worse than the original, but I really don’t want to find another HD-camera that records in another format. So I guess it’s better than nothing. Thanks a lot for both of you guys’ help. Too bad we couldn’t find a better alternative than this, though.