tips on previewing AVCHD???

[John Rofrano]

[Gilles Gagnon] “What can I do to make previewing smoother? “

Make sure that your project properties match your source properties. This will give the smoothest playback. You can also set the quality on the preview window to Preview (Half) or Preview (Auto).

[Gilles Gagnon] “Also, when I ram preview (Shift-B), only a part of my selection gets rendered… don’t know why that is.”

You need to increase the Dynamic RAM Preview setting under Options | Preferences | Video. Remember to set this back to the default before you render because this setting unfortunately steals memory from rendering.

[Gilles Gagnon] “what’s the proper workflow in this situation?”

If you can’t preview AVCHD smoothly and you can’t work with choppy playback, then converting your source to a digital intermediary like CineForm might be a good alternative workflow.

~jr

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

[Gilles Gagnon]

Thanks for the tips John.

How can I make sure that my source/project props match? i simply dragged my footage into my project.

I wasn’t aware of the “RAM stealing” bit 🙂

How would I convert to CineForm if I were to take this route?

Gilles

[John Rofrano]

[Gilles Gagnon] “How can I make sure that my source/project props match? i simply dragged my footage into my project.”

Either select the proper project Template from the project properties or use the Match Media Settings button:

[Gilles Gagnon] “I wasn’t aware of the “RAM stealing” bit :)”

Many people aren’t and then they set their RAM preview memory too high and totally ignore the warning dialog that clearly states that this will take memory way from the application for other uses like rendering.

[Gilles Gagnon] “How would I convert to CineForm if I were to take this route?”

Buy CineForm NeoScene ($99 USD) and batch convert your source files after you take them off of your camera. Then edit with the CineForm AVI files. You can also use VASST GearShift and it will create DV Widescreen proxies to edit with and then swap your AVCHD files back for in for rendering.

~jr

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

[Gilles Gagnon]

Thanks John.

I matched the settings, the only param off was the width/height and the pixel aspect ratio.

I made the other changes you suggested and I’m seeing some improvement. (Especially the Preview-auto setting)

I’ll have to read up on the Draft-Preview-Good-Best dropdown as it’s not obvious what they mean.

Thanks again!

Gilles

[John Rofrano]

[Gilles Gagnon] “I’ll have to read up on the Draft-Preview-Good-Best dropdown as it’s not obvious what they mean.”

It just relates to how accurate you want Vegas to be when displaying a frame. I mostly work in Preview mode because it’s a good balance between accuracy and playback speed. I switch to Good when I really need to check that something looks the way I had planned. Draft will give you even better playback speed but the picture will be rather pixelated because not all of the bits are processed.

~jr

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

[Gilles Gagnon]

Thanks for explaining John,

Makes sense. can you explain a couple more things?

What do you use “BEST” for?
and…
what about the sub settings choice “auto ,preview, good, best”… what does this one refer to?

Gilles

Gilles

[John Rofrano]

[Gilles Gagnon] “What do you use “BEST” for?”

I would only use BEST if I were rendering to BEST quality and I would only render to BEST quality if I were resizing media in my project. So if you have large still images, you might want to use BEST because it uses a different resizing algorithm which is more accurate, but takes much longer to render. If you are not resizing, you can save render time by rendering to GOOD which is the factory default.

[Gilles Gagnon] “what about the sub settings choice “auto ,preview, good, best”… what does this one refer to?”

The sub settings are: Auto, Full, Half, Quarter and this refers to resolution. So for 1920×1080 HD, Full would show 1920×1080 resolution, Half would show 960×540 resolution and Quarter would show 480×270 resolution in the preview window.

So Draft, Preview, Good, Best controls quality, and Auto, Full, Half, Quarter controls resolution for that given quality.

~jr

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

[Gilles Gagnon]

Ahhh.. got it!

I would only use BEST if I were rendering to BEST quality …

Are you referring to the actual rendering process (render to file) or rendering in the preview window or ‘on-the-go’ as i preview my footage?

Gilles

[John Rofrano]

[Gilles Gagnon] “Are you referring to the actual rendering process (render to file) or rendering in the preview window or ‘on-the-go’ as i preview my footage?”

I’m referring to the actual render to file process. In fact, if you see a difference between Good and Best in the Prerview, you might want to render to Best quality but most times these will look exactly the same.

~jr

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

[Gilles Gagnon]

Why does Vegas put the settings for the actual file rendering quality in the Preview window? I would think that what is in the preview window is for…. the quality of the previewing? Hmmmm…..

Gilles