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Sony Vegas Cant Handle Even The Poorest Quality Of Video
Hey guys, I have an incredible annoying issue that I have no idea why is happening.
Before I say anything, its important to say that I have just edited pretty sucessfully a 5 minute HD video that was from my Canon XF 150 in MXF format 1920 X 1080, In vegas was able to edit and handle the clips, mind you they didnt play 100 percent smoothly but I was able to edit them together fine without lag
Now, I have this other movie that im working on and it is from my older camera, they are AVCHD files, at first I edited just raw but found that my computer couldnt handle them, I understand that AVCHD is very hard to edit with, so not a big deal, Ill convert the AVCHD to HD MP4 quality and it should be fine right?
No, it was still laggy and was un-editable, so I had a brilliant idea to save the hd AVCHD and convert the files to VERY VERY poor quality, like smaller resolution than Standard definition and bitrate at only 200, so the clips were basically filled with pixels, and to my surprise of course I was able to edit the film very well.
Now here is my problem, I dont know what happened to my computer but for some reason now I cannot edit these crappy files well at all, they lag so much that I cant even edit it, I dont understand since before I was able to edit them perfectly!
And thats why I explained how I just edited a FULL HD MXF files fine! if my computer can handle that How come it cant all of a sudden handle poorer than VHS quality material?!
If anyone has any ideas please let me know!
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12 Replies
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Your “full hd mxf” file were probably mpeg-2 encodings.
AVCHD is AVC (H.264, mpeg-4 part 10) encodings.AVC is a more complex specification capable of greater compression and it requires more work(compute effort) to decode than mpeg-2.
That is my guess as to why you had difficulties with the AVCHD files.
Vegas 12 has a smart proxy feature which may be of help. The smart proxy is mpeg-2 encoded and is used when is display mode of preview or less, otherwise the source is used.
I need to smart proxy my GoPro 1080p60 files (AVC). I smoothly can edit 1080p30 but the 60fps files are too much for my machine.
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MPEG 4 specifies several things including the MP4 container*, MPEG 4-Part 2 encoding (Divx, Xvid, etc.), and MPEG 4-Part 10 encoding (h.264, AVC, etc.). People use the term MP4 and MPEG 4 loosely.
*The term “container” refers to the way data is organized within the file, regardless of what compression schemes are used.
AVCHD files are often in an MP4 container, so converting your AVCHD to MP4 probably did nothing. And a lot of unnecessary work.
If your PC is underpowered, just use a proxy file. (Look for “Creating Proxy Files” in the Help menu).
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
You are going about your editing workflow all wrong Jackie…
Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia
1-876-832-4956 -
Be sure your project settings match your media.
I switch back between 1920, and 1440 all the time and if I forget and don’t change my project settings it slows down vegas as it attempts to convert on the fly. Every time you changed your media did you change project settings to match?
From what I see this isn’t a Vegas issue. Google “premiere AVCHD” and you will see many complaints, I believe Final Cut still requires file conversion to edit. Vegas has the added advantage to work with native files if your computer can handle it. If not you are forced to use the options that other editors use, prerender, drop preview quality, or convert media. My computer does pretty well if I match project settings to media type.
Hope this helps.
Bi7 2600 3.4 Ghz 8Gig Ram , Win 7 Pro, Vegas Pro 12
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I work exclusively with AVCHD files (Sony NEX-VG10 prosumer camera) and my video quality is outstanding (well, when I get the lighting right!). My camera is 24mb/sec, so maybe yours is lower, hence the poor quality?
Dave
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Wow, I would never of have guessed that!
So all I should do is instead convert them to mpg2 instead of mp4 and it should work!
I cant beileve I didnt know this all these years!
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Wow, thank you so much!
I looked up Proxy Files, and I have been doing my editing that way the entire time minus the fact that there converted to MP4 which you said was probably unnecessary work because the file doesnt really change!
But now I will try it going AVCHD to MP2 instead of MP4 now, that makes so much sense that it will work because my MXF files are mp2
On another note… My Canon XF150, does that mean its bad that its records in only MPE2 and not MP4? all this time I thought MP4 meant it was better overall
Anyway thanks for your help! you saved me hours worth of editing, for about 3 years now Ive been struggling editing my converted AVCHD files haha what a relief now! 🙂
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Yeah really eh, you think you know just about everything there is to know and then I find this out!
I guess I do have A LOT to learn! thanks for your help guys!
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“I looked up Proxy Files, and I have been doing my editing that way the entire time”
No, I don’t think that you are using a proxy file. You are re-encoding your video to a lower resolution file. Where in your workflow do you go back to the original higher-resolution media to make your output files?
With proxy editing, you let Vegas make the proxy file and you do all of your editing on the proxy file. When you are ready to “render as” your output, Vegas uses the original full-resolution media files.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Interesting.. I saw a guide on youtube a guy showed how to do this and he just made a crappy mpg version and the avchd version and just swapped the files after he was done editing smoothly with the crappy mpg ones because his system couldnt handle the avchd which is what I was doing just ONLY with me converting the avchd to mp4 instead of mpe2
But with what your saying it seems its different! ill check it out thank you so much!
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