GH13 Edius 6 vs Vegas 10 for final renders of GH13 / GH2 footage

Blackout

Blackout

Veteran
I am starting to use Edius 6 more and more for pure speed and being able to blaze through things while seeing the FULL hd quality while editing.. but I still find some of its power limiting in effects and color correction compared to Vegas 10 which seems far more powerful, yet does get clunky in longer edits.

I am doing some documentary edits that don't need all the power of vegas I just need the speed.... but I do go a little crazy hopping back and forth between the programs as I am far more used to vegas than Edius.

Here is what is bugging me. Edius 6 edits like butter, but when I am ready to finally render out to an mp4, its avchd mode is NO WHERE near as good as Vegas 10s, and worse than that.. it's slow as all hell. Am I missing something?

I have a simple 7 min video and it's taking over a half hour to render out in Edius 6.... where as it takes about real time or faster in Vegas 10 and looks WAY cleaner. Many of you have seen my encodes... the cleanest are from vegas 10.

Also Vegas 10 renders it out as a .mp4 where as Edius renders it out as a .m2ts

Does this even matter.... is anyone having similar issues? I'm a quality nut and I am not seeing the same level of quality from 20mbit avchd renders... yet I like editing in Edius and want the option.. but I wish I had the sony AVC codec export in Edius. This is frustrating me.

- Blackout
 
Why don't you export the Edius edit as Canopus HQ, HQX or Canopus Lossless and import into Vegas. The resulting avi files are compatible with Vegas and Vegas will also export Canopus files as well. They are visually lossless and Edius exports to HQ very fast. These files are the equivalent to Cineform codec, actually i like them better and i have both.

Rambo
 
Vegas to the Web for the Videophile - A Tutorial http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=752833

This is very interesting for the very fussy.

I've been using the AVCHD->Vegas->DNxHD->HandBrake->H.264/MPEG-4 method and it encodes are awesome even when uprezzed to 4k or double sized in Media Player Classic player.

More in detail here http://www.jazzythedog.com/testing/DNxHD/HD-Guide.aspx

Sony and Mainconcept AVC exports out of Vegas are found to be very poor by comparison. Handbrake uses the highly regarded x.264 codec.

I think this will allow you to encode same quality but at much lower bit rates.

BTW, DNxHD exports out of Vegas as a MOV so you have to select the Quicktime template to access it.
 
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I'm been on the Canopus site but they don't like to hear about Vegas too much. Will look at some of the other links.

Thanks
 
Watch out when using x264 to encode if you're going to upload it to sites for re-encoding.
By default, it uses average bit rate encoding (most encoders including the Vegas variant offer constant), so while you'll end up with smaller files, the quality might suffer more when it's re-encoded by Vimeo or YouTube (the reason being because certain areas of the video will have been encoded at a lower bit rate than the one specified).

I wouldn't recommend Handbrake either! (Moan moan..) I've had issues with incorrect video levels whilst importing DNxHD, leading to crushed blacks and whites. Not sure if that issue is prevalent any more, but a much better alternative is StaxRip with Avisynth.


StaxRip is a pretty comprehensive x264 frontend, and if you export Canopus Lossless or HQX from Edius, you can simply feed it the video through Avisynth using:

Code: 
DirectShowSource("F:\Path\To\File\Video.avi")

Although it's not recommended, you can force x264 to operate at near enough CBR by lowering qpmin and qcomp to 0.0 (known as QP Minimum and QP Comp in StaxRip). I use this for my uploads to Vimeo/YouTube and the quality turns out really well. For YouTube's benefit, I also mux to MKV rather than an MP4 container, because half of the time it completely fails to decode the latter..


Also, +1 for Edius, especially the latest version. I tried it on a whim because I wanted to move away from Quicktime and I haven't touched Avid in months!
 
+ 10 for Vegas here. After trying to jump through the hoops of using x264 I have just recently discovered Microsoft's free expression encoder and it gave me stunning results. As close to the original as possible with decent data rates. You can go up to 150 Mbps I think if want. I average CBR at between 30 and 50 to play otherwise you need a workhorse for playback. I export out of Vegas to Cineform and then encode that in Expression. Preserves the sharpness, grain and nuances of the image very well.:thumbup:
 
i tried edius 5, thought it was the first editor that support canon h.264 in realtime
my finding is that it can not play the canon h.264 at full resolution, play back and render are much softer than vagas 9 at the time of testing
i think you still need to transcode it to edius's native formate to get the full resolution output.
 
henryolonga said:
+ 10 for Vegas here. After trying to jump through the hoops of using x264 I have just recently discovered Microsoft's free expression encoder and it gave me stunning results. As close to the original as possible with decent data rates. You can go up to 150 Mbps I think if want. I average CBR at between 30 and 50 to play otherwise you need a workhorse for playback. I export out of Vegas to Cineform and then encode that in Expression. Preserves the sharpness, grain and nuances of the image very well.:thumbup:
Click to expand...

Why would you do the extra step of outputting from Vegas to Cineform? If you are editing native avchd in vegas why not just output directly to Sony's AVC codec at 20mbit cbr?

As for keeping a master around I save the entire project file with all the media to an external hard drive and backup.
 
henryolonga said:
After trying to jump through the hoops of using x264 I have just recently discovered Microsoft's free expression encoder and it gave me stunning results. As close to the original as possible with decent data rates. You can go up to 150 Mbps I think if want. I average CBR at between 30 and 50 to play otherwise you need a workhorse for playback. I export out of Vegas to Cineform and then encode that in Expression. Preserves the sharpness, grain and nuances of the image very well.:thumbup:
Click to expand...

According to the following page:
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Encoder4_Overview.aspx

free version cannot encode/decode X264 files.

James, StaxRip seems quite complicated on the first sight. Even more on the second. It does not work at all on my machine (XP), since, apparently, it requires some encoders which do not seem to be freeware. When I input the AVS file it opens applications window on Source Filters = DGDecodeNV and shows the status that Application is not found.Funny, why does it need it BEFORE I even decide about output format and why does it select payable option by default, anyway. :-(
By the way, +1 for Edius.
 
Osteed Grenn said:
When you say "Microsoft free expression encoder", is that what you are talking about?

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Encoder4_Overview.aspx

If i'm using adobe premiere n after effects cs5, could it improve the quality of the render?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Yes sir - IMHO you will definitely see a very high quality render from the software over your NLE. Import out of your NLE at the highest quality you can - in my case Cineform and then render from your visually lossless master file. You will get results rivalling the stuff that costs a bundle. It is scalable like I said so you can trade between file size and quality. The renders are in wmv format only in the free version so not for everyone but the pro version does mp4 - $199 I believe. I would bet that it will be up there with all the top level encoders - you can try the software for free so don't take my word for it. x264 does a great job and is highly favoured as it is free but I struggled to get smooth playback at decent bit rates and I hated needing other additional front ends to make it work....just my 2 cents
 
Regarding x264-encoded material being difficult to play back smoothly - the great thing about the encoder is you can disable a lot of the bells and whistles. This makes the resultant videos easier to decode, and often it will still look better than most encoders using similar settings. The easiest way to do this is through the speed presets - for example you have Fast, Normal, Slow, Slower, Placebo, etc..

Where x264 really shines is if you're hosting your own videos (through something like JWPlayer). YouTube, and to some extent Vimeo, uses very basic encoding settings to ensure the videos will play back on low-end hardware, but if you're catering to a narrower audience you can ramp the detail up and make the videos look less compressed. A 720p video at 700kbps, with proper pre-processing and suitable encoding settings, can look mighty impressive, and even a 1-meg connection would stream it comfortably.

If finding a decent front-end is a problem, don't forget there's always x264vfw which, though not sanctioned by the development team, should get you in the ballpark. It provides a VFW front-end and you can choose it like you would any other codec straight from your NLE's export options. Of course, if you want to get technical, you can always download the latest x264 build and just use the CLI version, which gives you full control over every setting.


crunchy said:
James, StaxRip seems quite complicated on the first sight. Even more on the second. It does not work at all on my machine (XP), since, apparently, it requires some encoders which do not seem to be freeware. When I input the AVS file it opens applications window on Source Filters = DGDecodeNV and shows the status that Application is not found.Funny, why does it need it BEFORE I even decide about output format and why does it select payable option by default, anyway. :-(
By the way, +1 for Edius.
Click to expand...

Hi crunchy, I think the reason that's happening is because Avisynth can't decode what you're giving it. If StaxRip detects this, it will try and find an alternative way to decode your video, hence the DGDecodeNV option.

You would need to find out what's going wrong in the Avisynth chain, so the best way to do that is to try and open your video in something like VirtualDub or AVSP. I suspect it's simply a case of DirectShowSource not being able to decode your video - what format is it in?

If it's AVC (usually in an mp4 container), and given that you're using XP, you can:

  • Install ffdshow and Haali media splitter, and you should be able to use DirectShowSource fine. It should be set by default, but in the ffdshow decoder options, make sure AVC/H264 decoding is set to libavcodec or ffmpeg (rather than disabled)
  • Use ffmpegsource or DGAVCDecode (both are free), but it will involve reading the documentation to get a grasp on the commands used
  • Use something else entirely! (such as x264vfw)

Hope that helps! Apologies for the geek-out..
 
JamesRitson said:
...I think the reason that's happening is because Avisynth can't decode what you're giving it. If StaxRip detects this, it will try and find an alternative way to decode your video, hence the DGDecodeNV option.

You would need to find out what's going wrong in the Avisynth chain, so the best way to do that is to try and open your video in something like VirtualDub or AVSP. I suspect it's simply a case of DirectShowSource not being able to decode your video - what format is it in?
Click to expand...

I can open avs file by VirtualDub or by Media Player Classic. Moreover, I tried some other video formats and each of them ends in the same way as described before. I have .Net 4 on my XP laptop. Funny that it does not work as expected.

By the way, on two PCs, when I tried to put the file into "Source" field, the pop-up window appears with a message: "The obsolete plugin MPEG2Dec must be removed from the plugin: ...". I renamed the files (by ading extension .old) which start with MPEG2Dec*.*, but after that I had the problems previously mentioned (so on both computers).
 
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I have done tests and my exports out of Vegas 10 (editing NATIVE high bitrate hacked gh13 avchd files) DIRECT to sony's avc encoder offer the best quality I have ever seen and also encode the best on all major online video networks. Encoding to cineform first and THEN encoding to .mp4 adds some noise and loss. It is slight, but it is there.

I did just try a edit in edius 6 that I needed to get done quickly for a model shoot - then popped rendered it to Canopus Lossless, then imported THAT into vegas 10 and here is the result:

http://vimeo.com/25161939


Held up pretty damn well my pixel peeping eyes don't see any degradation.


For some reason on this forum you can't full screen. If you want to watch full 1080p HD click on the link then or if you on a slow machine / connection unclick the hd.
 
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Edius 6 and Title Motion Pro vis Sony Vegas

Edius 6 and Title Motion Pro vis Sony Vegas

First the apology as this may not be the correct thread for my query but its years since I posted...Dont think I'd be giving awards to whoever oversees the marketing of EDIUS. Like many others I upgraded from Edius 4.5 to 5 only to find that Titlte Motion Pro could not be used without purchasing a back copy - I've forgotten the detail but at the time did what was asked of me, then I made an error with teh dongle settings and a big fuss was made of giving a repalcement, despite having all my papers. Now have just received an invite to upgrade to Edius 6 ( July 2011 ) and notice on the small print that TMP "had" a patch to allow TMP to be used with Edius 6 up to end of Dec 2010. Cant help but feel I'd be better to move to Sony Vegas as judging by various posts it seems to be free very straighforward, also understand its terrific on Audio quality, which along with quality titling are my key interests.
 
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