Avchd editing best practives sticky

[ESTEBEVERDE]

Can we please get a sticky where we can post our best practices ie what seems to be working smoothly native or otherwise?

Thanks so much! :beer:

[Thomas Lew]

That wouldn't be bad!

[edy4eva]

Good thinking.
Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12.1 was useless in my case, as it took the 25p files as 50p, and so video played back at double the speed, whereas audio remained intact.

Edius Pro 5 is great, I was able to edit and print the output file in DVD format without a glitch. Ah the only sticky point was a couple of clips that I shot that kept on playing back slow mo. Could not figure out why this happened (although they were all shot using the same settings).

Avoid Procoder 3: I transcoded some native AVCHD files to mpeg2, and they showed weird coloured lines across the centre of the clips.
TMPGENC Xpress was a stellar in this domain, transcoding was ok (this was done just to test out the software and the camera output).

Here is what I do now:
Load onto Edius, edit;
Print into the format (in my case DVD);
Then use TMPGENC Authoring Works 4 (easy to create menus/chapters/subtitles) to output to |DVD (no transcoding necessary, and so the building/burning process takes about 8 minutes all in for a full DVD).

Hope this helps :)

[Thomas Lew]

Is Edius a widely used editing system?

[Barry_Green]

EDIUS is widely used in broadcast and is growing in consumer/prosumer. EDIUS Neo is an inexpensive alternative specifically aimed at the HDV/AVC-HD crowd, and can be bought for as little as $179 at B&H.

[William_Robinette]

Barry,

How is going to EDIUS from Vegas? I've used Vegas for years and love the way it handles (interface wise) compared to FCP/PP-CS3 but I am looking at other options here in the next 6 months.

Easy transition?

[David Saraceno]

EDIUS is widely used in broadcast and is growing in consumer/prosumer. EDIUS Neo is an inexpensive alternative specifically aimed at the HDV/AVC-HD crowd, and can be bought for as little as $179 at B&H.

Does Edius Nero handle AVCHD HMC150 PH footage in real time and natively and with what specs for hardware?

If you know?

[Barry_Green]

I don't know about Neo as I haven't used it more than as a brief demo, but from what I recall on my laptop it handled AVC-HD PH footage at about 1/2 real time (meaning, 12fps playback speed). No file conversions, drag it from the SD card to the timeline and play.

Getting to EDIUS from Vegas isn't the easiest thing in the world. EDIUS is stable, fast, and reasonably powerful, but Vegas is just magical when it's working right. EDIUS works very well, it's just in a different way.

[ESTEBEVERDE]

We seriously need a thread that sorts all of this out.

At least until all of the editors support the footage natively...

[ESTEBEVERDE]

O.K. Sooooo..... :)

Who's happy with their work flow?

What has been working for you?

[Kit_L]

Hello all,

I have shot about six hours of footage for a bunch of YouTube clips and two SD DVDs.

I am completely happy with my workflow, which is superior to the tape workflow I have used until now, for two reasons: I can view footage without replaying a tape, no dropouts, and over twice as fast.

Here's the workflow and the hardware setup:

I transfer the AVCHD files from a Sandisk card reader to one of the internal HDDs (there are 4).

I copy these files to a second internal HDD; this is my archive version and it is never touched. As this grows, I will copy to a FW external drive for final storage.

I point FCP at copy 1 (having names the PRIVATE top level folder to the name of the project, the shoot day number, and the date). I don't use the Log and Transfer window for setting In and Out points; I only use it as a viewer to select the takes I want. I drag the selected slips into the Queue window; select the logging Bin (usually as a Reel number), and FCP goes to work.

With my computer, the transcode time is 30-40% real time (the faster time is when shooting people against an infinity background; plenty of redundancy there).

When the transcode is over, all clips (named from #1 to end number) are in the right bin. I then view, set rough In and Out points, and name the clips.

FCP has a really nice capacity that I was unaware of until I started poking around in the A/V settings: I found I can I use the DSR-11 to feed an SD version of the Apple ProRes codec on the timeline out to a monitor, so I can see my footage, synced to the sound monitors on a calibrated Sony PVM 14M2A studio monitor—not HD, but good for assessing colour, and of course in an HD to SD DVD workflow, will do until I get the Blackmagic HDLink to drive a spare Apple 23" Cinema Display.

hth, kl

[bluevoyagetv]

Edius pro does handle AVCHD. I used EDIUS, I owned AVID Newscutter and I currently own and use FCP6 studio. EDIUS was the easiest to learn and operate. I never liked Vegas Pro.
Cheers

[bluevoyagetv]

How fast are your SD cards?
There is a noticeable difference when downloading cards to your HD with a faster card.
I also use FCP6 and not once had a problem downloading clips.
Cheers.

[Strobe Media]

So far the only complaint i have with using Vegas 9.0 Platinum is that it doesn't handle 720 60p well at all, i just get glitchy clips with weird bars in it. Otherwise my other footage plays great.

@bluevoyagetv: all of my cards are SDHC class 6, correct me if i'm wrong but those are the only ones that work with the HMC150?

[willber]

Its class 4 and above, and can someone help me out with importing 720 60p into premiere pro cs3? I know avchd isnt supported natively, but there must be a way.

And I heard used the free transcoder reduces the quality of your footage when converted to dvcprohd?

[David Saraceno]

It isn't supported natively in CS3.

There is a thread on some lossless encoders that are available. Or try Cineform.

[burnandreturn]

Could this Avid DNxHD codec be used by Edius to transcode AVCHD footage?

[pgovotsos]

Could this Avid DNxHD codec be used by Edius to transcode AVCHD footage?

Why would you want to use this instead of Edius' native Canopus HQ codec?

[burnandreturn]

Why would you want to use this instead of Edius' native Canopus HQ codec?

To compare the speed between the two in the transcoding process.

[ATL Media Group]

The difference between Edius and the others (Premiere/Vegas on the PC) is Edius doesn't render a "preview" so it requires a very powerful PC. The good news is it doesn't render a preview! It plays full rez out from the timeline with little or no rendering. So, if /when PCs become more powerful (which they will), you will have full non-rendering output from the timeline!
You can throw virtually anything at Edius and it'll play it without having to "conform" or pre-render in a native format (like FCP)

[David Saraceno]

Okay, I understand the Edius doesn't render a preview. However, soon a later you need to export/encode to a delivery format.

Seems to me that takes a bunch of time.

[ATL Media Group]

True, but that is the case with ALL NLE's. Not rendering a "preview" has other benefits. Such as real time color correction on an external monitor. Not to mention that if you had a standalone BD-R/DVD-R recorder you could play the timeline out in real time directly into the recorder with no rendering for a quick copy. The others would need to render while I'm out the door on my way to my clients office/home.