[Andy Abulafia]

Can I elaborate on my confusion?

Mainconcept vs Sony AVC.
Sony AVC vs. AVCHD vs. MVC etc.

Here are the options I get. Sony Vegas 11.
I apoligize, I cannot figure out do I use mainconcept or Sony firstly.
Secondly, (I assume I should use Sony) do I do Blu Ray Sony or AVCHD/AVC sony?

And if Blu Ray Sony, do I use AVC, AVCHD or MVC – and if so, they all give me the option to use .avc, mp4 or m2ts.

There are a lot of permutations and my ancient plasma TV is way past its best so to be honest if I was viewing great or moderately good quality I may miss it in the course of my analysis… so any clues appreciated!! thanks
andy

Render as…

Render template…

Mainconcept MPEG2

[option] Blu-ray 1920×1080-60i 16mbps video stream
(this gives blanks under all dropdowns if i look in Custom Settings)

[option] Blu-ray 1920×1080-60i 25mbps video stream
(this seems like overkill because my source material does not need > 16mbps)

Anyway under Customize I get the following options
Output Type – MPEG2

Sony AVC/MVC

[option] AVCHD 1920×1080-60i
under customize I get the following options

Video Format – AVCHD (only)
FORMAT i get the following options
MPEG2 transport stream (.m2ts)
MP4 file format (.MP4)
Video Elementary Stream (.AVC)

[option] Blu-ray 1920×1080-60i 16mbps video stream
under customize I get the following options

Video Format –
AVC
Format gives me options
Video Elementary Stream (.avc)
MP4 fileformat (.mp4)
MPEG2 transport stream (.m2ts)
AVCHD
Format gives me options
Video Elementary Stream (.avc)
MP4 fileformat (.mp4)
MPEG2 transport stream (.m2ts)
MVC
Format gives me options
Video Elementary Stream (.avc)
MP4 fileformat (.mp4)
MPEG2 transport stream (.m2ts)

———————-
Vegas 11, Win7, Intel i7 w/12GB RAM – In need of a decent SSD, methinks 🙂 Sony TG5V, Kodak Zi8, Playtouch.

[Andy Abulafia]

thx for detailed explanation, Dave!

as you mention – my choice depends on what it’s for.

As I am an ignorant consumer who knows very little, I am hoping that my final videos will be compatible enough to play on a bluray player in years to come. I don’t actually make the BD disks anymore(too much hassle) but play the files on my popcorn hour, WD TV live or other marginally convenient media players.

I also have one other requirement. That the final videos *could* be editable in the future if I was to ever lose the source files. I am fairly religious about keeping my media together, but who knows when my next moment of insanity will strike and i delete my videos and the backups in one go 🙂

OK so compatibility with “the future” is my big one I think. Not worried about file sizes etc as much. An editable if possible in the future.

cheers !!

aa

———————-
Vegas 11, Win7, Intel i7 w/12GB RAM – In need of a decent SSD, methinks 🙂 Sony TG5V, Kodak Zi8, Playtouch.

[Andy Abulafia]

to continue a theme …. I guess the only other thing we must all tolerate (and I think this applies equally to Vista and Win7) is Search (with or without indexing), or rather – the lack of it.

This is something that worked nicely in Win98/XP but was completely destroyed in recent years without every being acknowledged by MS as a problem.

Deep down, I bet I would love a mac – – but I spent years evangelizing how a “cheaper” platform which required infinite tweaking and hard labor was a superior, more worthwhile endeavor…… agggh the humiliation! 🙂

———————-
Vegas 11, Win7, Intel i7 w/12GB RAM – In need of a decent SSD, methinks 🙂 Sony TG5V, Kodak Zi8, Playtouch.

[Andy Abulafia]

Hi John, thanks for responding! Basically it’s 4 or 5 Sony TG5V AVC files “glued” together as follows

c:> copy /B 00000.mts+00001.mts+00002.mts+00003.mts bigfile.mts

As i said, it’s not a big problem but just wondering 🙂

Hey so one more question for you… just curious – on a pro-grade Sony camera, I assume the issue of big files rolling over is resolved? Do they save as one big NTFS file? I guess the problem is the low grade cameras can’t quite keep up with themselves when writing the video to disk/memory…

thanks!

[Andy Abulafia]

[John Rofrano] “If by “unnecessary fluff” you mean the Aero graphics, I find them a refreshing change but in case you were wondering, you can make Windows 7 look just as bad as XP if you really want to. ;-)”

LOL how did you know? I actually *was* thinking about Aero 🙂 but to your point, everything *does* run smoothly (i begrudgingly admit) the ONLY issue I really have is around permissions. From Vista onwards everything became “secured” and now I seem to have to run everything as an admin…and mess with the registry just to get to my NAS drives and other attached storage. But, that’s just teething trouble, it is fixable 🙂

HAve a great weekend.

———————-
Vegas 11, Win7, Intel i7 w/12GB RAM – In need of a decent SSD, methinks 🙂 Sony TG5V, Kodak Zi8, Playtouch.

[Andy Abulafia]

[Dave Haynie] “When I upgraded from NT 4.0 to Win2K, and Win2K to XP (in theory it was this same machine, though I’m not sure, with over 12 years of upgrades, there are any original pieces left), I always installed the new OS on a separate partition. I bought three copies of Win7 at the $50 special upgrade price, and put one immediately on my laptop — it shipped with Vista, so really, could it get worse? It didn’t, and as a result, it was a no-brainer: XP had to go.”

funny you should mention NT4… I’d be still running it if only it had USB support!

And rest assured – in 10 years time I will be clinging on to W7 like grim death!

———————-
Vegas 11, Win7, Intel i7 w/12GB RAM – In need of a decent SSD, methinks 🙂 Sony TG5V, Kodak Zi8, Playtouch.

[Andy Abulafia]

thanks John!

One more thing…. I have to say I am glad you guys on these forums persuaded me to see the error of my ways (doggedly refusing to give up XP x64 with Vegas 8.1…..)

Version 11 seems VERY snappy and responsive … and I don’t have to do any of the tweaking I had to do with 8.1 (I had to convert using Quicktime Pro my Kodak Zi8 files and Playtouch files before importing etc)

But BEST OF ALL I can easily render to 1080×1920 AVC Sony with nil effort. Also, I dont get crashes like I used to (unless I accidentally crop outside a clip boundary which is clearly a stupid thing to do, but reliably crashes Vegas)

Still… I am yet to be convinced regarding W7 … i need to do some research and figure out what I can disable to get rid of some of the unecessary fluff. Also, I used to be able to play my hi def videos using VLC – they now stutter on W7. Going from perhaps 15 processes (XP) to about 50 seems (W7) to be the price to pay for progress 🙂

Vegas 8.1, XP64(yes you read that right!), HP Pavilion i7 12GB RAM, separate disks for projects and OS

[Andy Abulafia]

thanks so much for insights everyone!

And I just checked – my GPU acceleration setting was OFF (by default, I assume) – – does that sound right?

Also (stupid question) what *is* realtime rendering?

Vegas 8.1, XP64(yes you read that right!), HP Pavilion i7 12GB RAM, separate disks for projects and OS

[Andy Abulafia]

ok… so I just downloaded the version 11 software off the Sony website. I now need to get a copy of Win7 pro which I am hoping to get tomorrow from Fry’s 🙂

I am HOPING that all my audio sync issues and generally instability issues get addressed going from v8.1 to v11.

(wish me luck!)

One last question before I signoff – – when rendering I should use the Sony AVCH and NOT mainconcept, right? Version 8 does not allow 1920×1080 for Sony AVCHD (only 720) – is this addressed in v11 do you know?

thanks!!!
AA

Vegas 8.1, XP64(yes you read that right!), HP Pavilion i7 12GB RAM, separate disks for projects and OS

[Andy Abulafia]

hey thanks for the tips, i think we are good now. I deleted all the Vegas files created (sfk or .sfl, can’t remember which) and the audio looks good. I can now sync the clips together just fine… However, I now have more weirdness when I try to use in Multicamera mode!

(should I post here or do a new Post?)

so… I get my 2 videos synced up just great. I am viewing in Multicamera mode. I select my track, create a multicamera track, enable multicamera edit, chose some good takes… etc.

It previews PERFECTLY!

But when I render it stays in sync until it switches to a different take. Then it’s out by a few seconds or so. And when it goes back to the roginal camera view it is still out of sync.

Any thoughts? both audio tracks are 48k. One is a Kodak Playtouch MP$, the other is a Sony AVCHD mts file.

thanks in advance!
AA

Vegas 8.1, XP64(yes you read that right!), HP Pavilion i7 12GB RAM, separate disks for projects and OS