AVCHD, Vegas Pro8, and Vasst Gearshift

C

ctann

Member
Hi all,

I was in the process of specing out my new PC build for HD editing - I was just about to push "buy" on an i7 setup, when I came across some comments on other sites that even with this high-powered rig, I would have problems with Real-Time preview in Vegas - specifically at transitions (which is exactly the place where you want a rock-solid preview!)

Is anyone sucessfully using Vegas Pro8, Vasst Gearshift, and AVCHD footage? That seems to me like the perfect solution (in theory). I have the demo of Vegas Pro8 (full version is on order), and downloaded the demo of Gearshift. Admitedly my machine is no powerhouse (P4 630HT @ 3.0G, 1.5GB RAM), but my first test on a 6-minute AVCHD clip (1080i60) got to "10% done", and then just hung Vegas (although the time-to-completion counter kept on counting).

I am playing around with the settings, but I just wanted to hear if anyone else has this working, to see if its worth persevering. If I can get it to work, I may be able to squeeze a little more life out of my current HW setup before upgrading...

Thanks,
Chris.

ps - I think the "perfect" solution would be to come up with an AVCSD format - drop the resolution by half in each direction, while keeping everything else the same. 75% less data should allow it to be previewed fine in most reasonable systems, and then you could just do a gear-shift-like replacement of the data before final render. The compression should be pretty quick - along the lines of DVDShrink
 
I edit with Vegas on a Dual Core Laptop with Vegas. Previews are fine. My graphics card is an nvidia 8600GT which has MPEG4 acceleration. The processor is a 8300 with SSE4 support.

I would plan on transcoding to either DNxHD (free), DVCProHD and use Raylight with Vegas, or NeoScene and Cineform. These all give you easy editing.

An i7 should rip through this with no problem.
 
kurtmo said:
I edit with Vegas on a Dual Core Laptop with Vegas. Previews are fine. My graphics card is an nvidia 8600GT which has MPEG4 acceleration. The processor is a 8300 with SSE4 support.

I would plan on transcoding to either DNxHD (free), DVCProHD and use Raylight with Vegas, or NeoScene and Cineform. These all give you easy editing.

An i7 should rip through this with no problem.
Click to expand...



But then that's not native is it?
 
kurtmo said:
I would plan on transcoding to either DNxHD (free), DVCProHD and use Raylight with Vegas, or NeoScene and Cineform.
Click to expand...

Well, if I'm going to go through the exercise of transcoding anyway, I'd rather use this proxy method that should, in theory, let me edit with my current desktop (it edits dv just fine), and lets me keep my projects with the original footage.

So I got my first gearshift transcode to complete yesterday - yes, it was slow on my machine, but that's all offline stuff, so I can just run it overnight. Today I'll see how it fares with editing. Still interested to hear from anyone who is actually using Gearshift in anger...

Thanks,
Chris.

ps - I would already have all the bits and pieces to put my i7 computer together, but NewEgg.com "preferred" dropped the ball big time - so in the end, I cancelled my order in frustration. Prices always go down, performance always goes up, so waiting a few months to put my kiler machine together is nothing but good news...
 
I think the real time playback shutter is not just limited to Vegas.


I have Neo Scene from Cineform and outside of the larger file size you should not have any trouble editing these files in Vegas or any NLE for that matter.


I'll still edit native mts files in Vegas from time to time but I'm not seeing any quality drops in my Neo Scene files like I saw in my AVCHD to DVCPRO transcodes so unless I'm under a short deadline with a simple project, I just use Neo.


If real time preview playback is what you're after [and it should be] either get the absolute most fastest CPU on the market today or transcode.


My 2 cents.
 
I edit natively in vegas 9.0 and it plays fine usually, sure it gets hung up sometimes in the preview, but it's probably because i'm running off 3gb of ram and a GeForce 9800 video card, but like kurtmo said, you'll fly through it just fine.
 
ctann said:
ps - I think the "perfect" solution would be to come up with an AVCSD format - drop the resolution by half in each direction, while keeping everything else the same. 75% less data should allow it to be previewed fine in most reasonable systems, and then you could just do a gear-shift-like replacement of the data before final render. The compression should be pretty quick - along the lines of DVDShrink
Click to expand...

the problem there is that you are taking a serious hit in picture quality... there are better picture quality alternatives than using the high-bitrate mpeg2 in the vasst package, as others have pointed out already in this thread.

trying to edit high-quality hd footage with a p4 is going to be very difficult... i can hack through basic edits on a p3, using avchd that's been transcoded to canopus hq, but it's not pretty.
 
I found gearshift to be very effective- edit in SD but render from original AVCHD. Best of both worlds IMO, as long as you have the extra hard drive space for the proxies.

my take:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=152079

the added bonus is that before you "shift" back to the original footage- you can render from the proxies and get a very high quality SD version of your edit (should you need that)
 
ESTEBEVERDE said:
But then that's not native is it?
Click to expand...

I edit some projects natively. I get real time playback when I do. Transcoding is easier and guaranteed.

Vegas has issues with 60p AVCHD and some 24p files.

I agree with others about ditching the p4. For a desktop I would ensure you get the horsepower for a few years out, so a quad core and a good graphics card would be on the top of my list.

If you do any CC or complex composites and attempt to render to HD, a P4 will be ssssslllllllooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
 
Hi all,

I ran into one problem with Gearshift. The first time I ran it, I created an HD transcode (cineform), as well as the DV proxy. When "shifting gears", I could only swap between the DV and Cineform versions. The fix was simple, I just deleted the Cineform version, and then "shifting gears" would correctly swap me between the DV and the AVCHD versions.

So, this looks perfect to me. The DV transcode wasn't exactly speedy on my machine (roughly 8:1, so a 6 minute clip took about 45 minutes to transcode). Editing the clip in DV was silky-smooth, and building the final result back to AVCHD (and thus maintaining full resolution/quality) was a breeze. The DV proxies are quite compact, so it means that I only have to allocate a small amount of extra storage over that I use for my original footage.

This has given new life to my P4 - I know I will have to upgrade sometime, but putting off a $1500 computer purchase for 6-12 months is a big plus right now - not to mention that when I do upgrade, I will almost certainly get more performance for the same price.

So, what are the downsides to this flow? Quality is as good as it gets, interactive performance during editing is +1000%, and the flow will be simple to support and maintain for my "other users" (i.e. my wife), as the user never has to set foot outside of Vegas. Sure there are other flows, but unless I'm going to run into serious problems with *this* flow - it looks like I am all set!

Thanks,
Chris.
 
As long as it works for you, you're good to go.

I agree with holding off on a new computer if you can because it seems as if 64 bit OS's are gaining more and I think most Windows based PC makers are getting ready for Windows 7 which may be out this year.
 
I also heard talk of a free upgrade to Windows 7 for purchasers of an OEM Vista system - but I think it was only for systems bought after March or so. Another good reason to hold off for a few months...
 
another alternative to look at might be cineform neo scene... it's $125, and cineform files might be difficult to work with on a p4, but the final quality could be better.
 
OSV said:
another alternative to look at might be cineform neo scene... it's $125, and cineform files might be difficult to work with on a p4, but the final quality could be better.
Click to expand...

The "final quality" from the gearshift flow should be the best possible - you render from your original AVCHD source footage, to whatever output format you desire (including AVCHD, which if I understand Vegas correctly, means that where possible, no transcoding at all will occur).

Unless I am misunderstanding something, I don't see how any other Vegas flow could give you better results - unless there is really a fundamental problem with editing native AVCHD (aside from the problems of computer performance). Gearshift just enables native AVCHD editing on lower-spec machines. Please, someone correct me if I'm missing something here, or if there is a reason that I shouldn't be doing native AVCHD editing.

Thanks,
Chris.
 
it depends on what kind of editing you are doing... will you be needing any chroma keying? neo scene give you 4:2:2 conversion for editing, and i think that gearshift can as well(?)... how about special effects, re-rendering, or lots of layering?
 
the only advantage I see in Neo Scene over gearshift is if you plan on doing any serious effects processing- as the 4.2.2 will handle it better than 4.0.0

As a test I took the raw AVCHD and the equivalent Neo file and, placed them both on the timeline in Vegas. I added heavy gamma and contast adjustments to both clips, then previewed at best/full to an HDTV and compared both. It was VERY subtle (un-noticable to the average viewer) but the AVCHD did show some slight artifacting where there were gradients, like the sky.

Aside from that, Neo vs. raw AVCHD (via Gearshift), seems a bit of a wash visually IMO.

I will say this for Cineform, they are very good about listening to customers needs and concerns. Not that Vasst is not, but CF seems to jump all over issues with thier products and seem to be constantly updating and upgrading them. They rock :)
 
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The advantage to Cineform for me is that I can work with the files in other programs, such as After Effects which I use as much as my NLE. I like the proxy editing concept behind Gearshift but I can't use it for AE.
 
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