converting avchd footage - lose quality?

G

GRIMWORX

Well-known member
Im sure this has been answered a hundred times already but im late to the party im afraid!

I have a pretty high spec computer - i7, 5450 1gb card, 8gb ram etc, 7200 drive - and I CAN edit the footage pretty fine in premiere. Once I get into After Effects however, things start slowwwing up, and its a total nightmare.

Can I transcode AVCHD into a more useable format....whilst still retaining quality? I can just imaging by converting to avi or something I will end up with a lower quality image?

Im a PC guy btw.

Cheers
 
seriously, 30 views?

I can totally appreciate this has been answered to death, but I cant find the answer! Please take 20 seconds out of your day to help a dude out?!?

Cheers!
 
ok, if your doing the editing in premiere first then finishing in after effects you can use image sequence(png or tiffs)

export image sequence (like .tiff and audio) and work with that in after effects.

hope this helps, after effects likes image sequence import and export it should be smooth.
 
Premiere CS5 uses the Mercury Engine for speeding up AVCHD editing. That's why you can get several layers of video running smooth as silk. After Effects, unfortunately, does not use the Mercury Engine. Your best bet is to convert your footage to something like Cineform. Check out Neoscene.
 
or render to a high-bitrate mjpeg.
i prefer quicktime formats to avi. even quicktime animation, which is great, but much larger file sizes.
 
I believe I may have neoscene...possibly came on a ic with my camera I will check it out. I bought a high spec pc to cope with avchd, but if I can make it easier in AE i'll try it out.

I just hate the thought of losing quality.


Also, I recently purchased CS5 - though when trying to install Magic bullet looks into cs5, it tried telling me I only had the demo version. Worst part was, cs4 also decided I was running a demo :/ Luckily I got it sorted back to how it was, but I cant seem to get cd5 to be happy with and dont want to ruin it completely.
 
Xian Messerschmidt said:
You won't be losing any quality if you're using Cineform.
Click to expand...

Yes you will - cineform not a lossless codec, it's "visually" lossless - which is marketing speak for: it isn't lossless.

If you use cineform in filmscan2 mode and one of the higher end versions with 12-bit 4:4:4 you can minimize loss between transfers, but even that is minimally lossy and you can see the difference when you pixel peep

Whether or not it makes a big enough difference for your personal goals is the real question
 
If your target audience is more interested in "pixel peeping" than watching your content, maybe Cineform isn't a good idea. For everyone else, including major studio motion pictures, it's more than good enough.
 
Yes you're right, I just wanted to state the facts.

But for many it isn't good enough, especially FX studios. Certainly the neoscene variant isn't good enough.

And it's not only a matter of end "target audience". Often jobs are passed to different people , and some workflows require the highest quality between stages. For example , Neoscene is "only" YUY2 4:2:2, and noticably degrades after 1 generation, and not suitable for any high end FX work.

As mentioned earlier , whether or not it's good enough for you is another matter . You can weigh the pros/cons for your particular situation, but please don't spread misinformation

Cheers
 
GRIMWORX said:
I have a pretty high spec computer - i7, 5450 1gb card, 8gb ram etc, 7200 drive - and I CAN edit the footage pretty fine in premiere. Once I get into After Effects however, things start slowwwing up, and its a total nightmare.

Can I transcode AVCHD into a more useable format....whilst still retaining quality? I can just imaging by converting to avi or something I will end up with a lower quality image?

Im a PC guy btw.

Cheers
Click to expand...

I use Cineform Neo Scene, and visually, it is excellent. Its as lossless as you are going to get and still maintain usability. AE CS4 doesn't handle AVCHD very well at all and so I must transcode it.
 
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