-
Multicamera editing with AVCHD footage – how to improve performance…?
I need help speeding up my machine. I am currently running a Dell Studio XPS, Intel Core i7 2.8GHz CPU, 8GB ram, 2 great Radeon video cards, and two 7200rpm harddrives internal, several HDs as external backups. Let me know if any other stats would be helpful.
Normal editing, no problem. I am mainly editing AVCHD footage (Panasonic HMC150 & GH2). The performance issue I’m having is when I’m editing, for example, a multicamera concert. 4 cameras, avchd, 1080p 24fps (or 720, 60fps) is doable but sometimes the frame rate drops below what I would prefer, especially when starting and stopping through technical edits.
What is my next step? New harddrive/workdrive solution? Core i7 processor holding me back? Double up on ram?
And before you mention it, I know I can transcode to a lossless format, I don’t want to do that. My goal is to have a smoking machine that can edit a 4-camera avchd shoot, without stressing at all.
Thank you in advance for your help!
-
7 Replies
-
AVCHD footage takes up a lot of processing power. I have a computer that’s very fast and with any effects like fades or dissolves on AVCHD footage my preview would stutter. What you should do is get Cineform Neoscene, which you run your footage through and it turns it into much more manageable AVI files. It’s very simple to use and is $130, only $100 if you find the Creative Cow discount code, which you can search for.
-
Drake, i agree with Angelo.i have a similar system to yours, and routinely do 4 camera shoots, until recently with avchd.it’s not an editing codec, it’s for compressed shooting. A transcode “should” help. But to be clear, this is very CPU intensive stuff! Get cineform.
Alf
-
Dang. I was really hoping I could just make some type of hardware modification. Thank you for the honest feedback. I knew AVCHD was ‘difficult to edit’, but I guess I never really hit the wall until I tried to do a 4-cam-multi edit.
I will get NeoScene and call it a day!
Thank you!
-
I am a bit confused though, in that I am having no real ‘slowdown’ in editing multicam. I wonder if there’s something else going on? I mean, it all works about the same, whether I’m multicamera or not. You might take a look at your CPUs and see if they change while running multicam. You are running the 64 bit version of Vegas, right? It’s easy to download the 32 bit version by mistake, I’ve done it once.
You do now how to do a CNTRL-Alt-Delete to get into Task Manager and see CPU utilization, correct? If not, look it up on the web and look at the CPU tab. Also, low disk space might cause a problem.
Good luck.
Alf
-
Yes, I know how to see my CPU. Yes, I am using the latest 64bit build.
You say you haven’t seen any problems editing multicam… Have you edited 4 avchd videos in 1080p, 24fps (GH2’s 24mbps codec is heavier than others) on multicam? The slowdown is not horrendous, but it creeps in here and there.
I did not notice any slowdown until I moved past 3 cameras.
-
While we’re on the subject, for a few months I was using Vegas 9 and would do three camera shoots with footage I ran through Cineform and had no issues. Only with Vegas 10 (latest version downloaded) does Vegas tend to crash, though closing and re-opening the project usually fixes it. Someone suggested it was how Vegas deals with Cineforms codecs, though I updated that. Opening Vegas without any project and then loading it seems to help.
Also, multicam editing avi footage converted from AVCHD makes Vegas somewhat unresponsive. It seems to chug along when I do a lot of starting and stopping, which I tend to do when cutting multicam footage and going back over it to see that it all flows the way I want it to. It’ll take a second or three to pause, which makes it pause later than I wanted. The whole thing’s a little annoying and only started with Vegas 10. I’ll be upgrading to 11 when it comes out, hopefully that fixes it.
-
I don’t use Cineform and regularly edit HDV, MXF and AVCHD in a multi-cam situation using Vasst Ultimate S Quadcam. Even on my i7 970, I cannot set the preview higher than Preview Auto. I can set it to best/good Auto, but the preview chokes up and transitions/FX are hard to preview. Interestingly, adding an external monitor has had some negative effect on the preview, but I put up with it as at least I can see what I am doing!
I was expecting more when I upgraded from an i7 920 to an 17 970, as the raw specs seemed to suggest double the grunt, but I only see about a 20% improvement. Well, at least the render times are much shorter.
I have to admit I had no preview issues with SVP V8, and only noticed them in V9 and even more so in V10. Having a 64-bit system has not helped one iota IMHO when it comes to preview lag. I no longer get out of memory errors with Vegas x64 though.
Alf, if you really want to test your system, you can try loading 4,000 small jpg images of a time lapse sequence of a duration of 1 frame 🙂 Even in a single track project with no FX, it brought my entire system to its knees. Preview was laggy. About 20 seconds between each adjustment on the timeline.
My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up