AVCHD as used by the AF100.... EDITING

[PaPa]

alright, so transcording to prores.. I remember there was a company that had a program for about 1 bill that re encoded footage... can't remember the name of it..

the only thing i don't like about encoding and things within that area is the lack of information I have. Setting the bit rate... all the custom options. I just would like one setting that does the trick with the best possible quality without creating a file size that's 10x greater.

 

[eXe69]

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/all/magic-bullet-grinder/

This could be what you're looking for fast conversion to prores

alright, so transcording to prores.. I remember there was a company that had a program for about 1 bill that re encoded footage... can't remember the name of it..

the only thing i don't like about encoding and things within that area is the lack of information I have. Setting the bit rate... all the custom options. I just would like one setting that does the trick with the best possible quality without creating a file size that's 10x greater.

 

[PaPa]

that looks like a decent solution, but there was another company that I was thinking of that I can't quite remember. It's also very popular.

So that red giant software will be a good solution for AVChd conversions?

 

[PerroneFord]

PaPa,

I know you can now get the ProRes codec for PC's. I would recomend getting that and transcode to that. That way you can share files with the millions of Mac users out there running FCP. I mean let's face it most people probably edit with FCP on a Mac. It will only benifit you to be able to have your files play nice with FCP.

No, you can't. You can READ ProRes on a PC, but cannot write to it.

 

[William_Robinette]

that looks like a decent solution, but there was another company that I was thinking of that I can't quite remember. It's also very popular.

So that red giant software will be a good solution for AVChd conversions?

Cineform NeoScene (or any of their other solutions, but this one is $99.00 from videoguys.com).

Bulletproof.

 

[PaPa]

that's the one!

now PC users, what will be the format you will be using when converting your avchd files? I want to know your settings I will copy

It would also be really great to get some avchd files from the af100 ( or any cam ) so that we can see how the editors handle this puppy before the camera ships so that everything is prepared for its arrival.

 

[Barry_Green]

I do not want to transcode. Full stop.

BTW : I use Adobe PPRo CS5 and edit everything native with it.

If you edit on Windows CS5 with an appropriately-powerful system, it cuts like butter.

If using the OSX platform, it's not going to be so smooth. It will depend on if you can get a CUDA-enabled graphics card with enough memory to allow the Mercury Playback Engine to do its magic; in fact, I'm not even sure if that's even enabled on OSX...

On my system (i7 1.6GHz quad with nVidia card) AVCHD edits pretty much like DV.

 

[Barry_Green]

I'm going to be editing the AVC stuff in adobe premiere pro cs4

Now, im running an intel core i7 2.80 with 12 gigs of ram, and if i load a project with hours of footage from the 7D, it can crash sometimes. I really want to avoid this with the avchd workflow.

What are PC users going to be transcording to? I know there are a couple of options.

Strongly recommend you upgrade to CS5. It's much smoother with AVCHD, and it also fixes the chroma bug that affects 24P AVCHD footage.

 

[Steve Kahn]

Barry,

What's your opinion of transcoding to neoscene?

Thanks!

 

[Barry_Green]

I'm not that much of a post guy anymore, so I'm not the guy to ask the hardcore editing questions of. I bought NeoScene with my GH1, but never got decent performance out of it in Vegas, then when the 24pN hack came out I quit using it. I haven't even installed it on my new system.

CS5 does everything I need, in realtime.

 

[Steve Kahn]

So you're not gong to transcode at all?

Is there a legitimate concern about degredation of AVCHD over multiple renders?

 

[Barry_Green]

No transcoding at all, ever, if I can ever avoid it. I hate transcoding. CS5 handles every native codec from every camera, natively.

I don't do multiple renders. Why would I? (ooh, opening a can of worms, I know, but...) Slap the footage on the timeline, slap on the filters, edit, render down once to your final output. That's how I do what I do. I don't do multiple re-renders. If I ever did have to do an exported render, I wouldn't render down to AVCHD, I'd export to the highest-quality codec I could.

 

[PerroneFord]

Cineform NeoScene (or any of their other solutions, but this one is $99.00 from videoguys.com).

Bulletproof.

Hardly.

It has it's place, and it does well with a lot of things, but bulletproof is not something I would say about it. Perhaps that phrase would apply once your source footage is correctly transcoded, but getting it there... that's another matter entirely.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

Yup, if you are on CS5 and have a good CUDA card, you can edit everything from AVCam to h.264 DSLR footage to RED R3Ds in real time.

It rocks.

 

[William_Robinette]

Hardly.

It has it's place, and it does well with a lot of things, but bulletproof is not something I would say about it. Perhaps that phrase would apply once your source footage is correctly transcoded, but getting it there... that's another matter entirely.

As with all things, YMMV.

 

[PaPa]

So i guess i'll have to update from cs4?

 

[Robin b]

I'm With Barry, Update to CS5 and do it native (with mercury playback)

I have been using Final Cut and Media Composer 5, but CS5 with the mercury playback wins hands down for me now (currently using GH13 and soon af100).

I'm not an editor by trade and i'm way to lazy to mess around converting one thing to another when i dont have to!

 

[Lpowell]

So you're not gong to transcode at all?

Is there a legitimate concern about degredation of AVCHD over multiple renders?

Barry made the point explicit that I was hinting at earlier. In CS5 you don't need to transcode because you no longer need to do multiple renders. You can edit your composition directly from the original source files in Premiere (using proxies if needed) and export the entire project to After Effects without intermediate renders. Unless you're exporting to a tool that's not integrated with CS5, there's no need to convert the source video until the final render.

 

[Robin b]

Note* i'm editing with a i5 quadcore pc with 8 gigs ram, in realtime even with some effects

 

[Melvin Harris]

I'm With Barry, Update to CS5 and do it native (with mercury playback)

I have been using Final Cut and Media Composer 5, but CS5 with the mercury playback wins hands down for me now (currently using GH13 and soon af100).

I'm not an editor by trade and i'm way to lazy to mess around converting one thing to another when i dont have to!

Another vote for upgrading... I love cutting in Vegas since I started as an audio man and I use Neoscene and it is ok... but I did the cuda card hack thing and CS5+MPE smokes!