Editing AVCHD clips

[Arkady Bolotin]

I have been busy of late intensively toying with Vegas Pro 9.0 (build 10e). It is not that I am fond of post processing and stuff, but I was asked to evaluate the product by our university dean, so I could not reject the offer.

I started from scratch and yet managed to finish a couple of projects with Vegas in a week and so. Now I am ready to make a summary of my workflow stating its main points (along with my thoughts).

1. With regard to the Vegas Pro 9.0 as a software suite, I would not recommend it to someone (like me) who is barely making his steps in video editing (or just wants to use it occasionally). To get the hang of it, you need a ton of specific knowledge and months of actual working experience. Though I think highly of Sony, design wise, this software is far from what we may call a masterpiece or an example of good and intuitive design.

2. The good news is this program can edit AVCHD clips natively, i.e. without in-between conversions into other formats. The bad news is that the Vegas takes a long, long time to achieve this (at least, this is true for mainstream machines like Corei3-based PCs). For example, to render a HD movie assembled from AVCHD clips of overall length T seconds using just a couple of basic video plug-ins consumes time in 9-to-1 ratio (meaning: you will get your result in 9xT seconds).

3. As I realized, in a PAL land, to burn a 24p Blu-ray disc for the 25p-project output is doable but has no much sense in it. If international distribution of the finished project is not a target, then it is better to create a high quality movie file in the MPEG-4 AVC format. Such movie can be watched with any media player then. Apropos, I highly recommend Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player (it costs about $80 and can play HD movies virtually in every existed format and screen resolution including 1080p and 1080p/24).

4. After experiments, I found the following project properties to be effective ones for that purpose:

Template= Custom (1920x1080, 25.000 fps)
Field order= None(progressive scan)
Pixel aspect ratio=1.000 (Square)

Pixel format=32-bit floating point (video levels) (that gives fine detail in the picture)
Compositing gamma=2.222 (Video) (when an output is 8-bit, it’s the standard gamma)
Full-resolution rendering quality=Best
Motion blur type=Gaussian (this is natural way of fast-pacing perception)

Audio sample rate= 48
Bit depth=24
Resample and stretch quality=Best

[Stephan]

Thanks Arkady for this feedback. I once tried Vegas, and although I had been using Adobe Premiere Pro before that (no simple software!), somehow I found indeed the learning curve a bit steep with Vegas - too steep for me. But many people do enjoy it.

About rendering times, I think 10:1 rendering time for AVCHD is fairly standard even today. The latest Adobe Premiere CS5, and also EDIUS 5.5, boast 'real-time native AVCHD editing'. But I read no word whether that's also true for the final rendering - probably not.

PS: moving this thread to the 'Editing' forum.

[Doughie]

I use Vegas Pro and i quite like it.

I do know that the ratio of render-time : realtime does vary hugely depending on what settings you use, and also how much RAM you have. I sometimes render to HD resolutions of around 720p and sometimes to SD resolutions of about 480p.

I might do a coupla tests to see what sort of ratio i am getting. 4Gb machine, corei3. soon to be 8Gb.
Vegas particularly does like extra RAM a lot. it won't make use of Graphics processors, unlike some other packages.

I honestly haven't found it too slow to render. I tend to do a test render of a project of maybe 3 - 5mins and thats enough to tell me what i need to know about how its shaping up etc. Final render : i tend to set it off and go watch a movie / make dinner / sleep. rendering to a Hi-Def 720p or 1080p file is never going to be quick. Quad-core i7 is a big jump up in render-speed and these machines really aren't too pricey these days. I'd like an i7 but i will "survive" with my core i3 for now...

EDIT: yes using plug-ins i have heard WILL slow it down a large amount. I guess for that sort of stuff, just do a test render of a minute or two and leave the final render to an overnight thing.
Remember .... "The watched kettle never boils".

[John McManimie]

Vegas may seem strange to those who use Premiere (I was one of those people) but after a while it becomes very easy and its structure begins to make sense.

I still use Cineform with Vegas. Rendering from AVCHD to Cinefrom is done from Vegas in almost real time.

Rendering back to Cineform after cutting if no effects are added means that no recompression is re required --- so it is very fast.

If you are doing color correction and / or a lot of effect editing, you are better off converting it to a codec like Cineform to maintain the quality of the footage (though effects will render at a much slower rate).

[Doughie]

Hi John

Coupla questions : you have Cineform NeoScene? or Neo HD?
and you say that you can convert from AVCHD to Cineform AVI's from within Vegas? So you don't just start off by converting MTS files to Cineform AVI's outside of Vegas and then just importing those AVIs into Vegas? just trying to get a handle on your workflow.

I have read a few 'complaints' from people saying their Cineform package takes a loooong time to transcode from MTs to AVI. What's your experience on transcoding times and also how much larger are the files created? Is it around 3 or 4 times the filesize?

[John McManimie]

I have Cineform NeoScene. I still run everything 32 bit on Windows XP.

I like to add the MTS files to a Vegas project and do basic cuts / editing and then render out to Cineform.

I then import the Cineform files into the same project (if I want to mark the same basic cuts) and do color correction and other effects.

I often do Color Correction and then render it out as Cineform again and then do my final editing to that new version. If I want to do any special effects, I will usually render a particular portion of footage out and add effects to it in After Effects and then replace the original section in the Vegas project with the new footage (though I also do many effects in Vegas).

I usually save the edited, color corrected version of footage in Cineform codec on two external hard drives (yes, it does take more space) and then backup my Vegas project with any titles and other additions so that I can render it out the final way on a later date --- I just worry that I may want to change something and do not want anything that covers the footage. For instance, I made a video with words on the screen next to a person doing a presentation. If I only have the version with the words on screen, I could never use that footage again for a different reason).

I then render out the final version(s) such as for dvd or wmv.