From AVCHD to WMV to AVI

[Chamber005]

I was just wondering, if I go from WMV to AVI to MPEG4 and then back to AVCHD, am I ending up with the same thing I started with? I wanted to edit my AVCHD footage in the lowest possible grade available, and then bring it up to AVI or MPEG4 for showing. Does the information in the file stay the same?

 

[PerroneFord]

Going from WMV to AVI could be lossless or VERY lossy. AVI is a container, not a codec. Going from AVI to MPEG4 *WILL* lose information. How much is a matter of bitrate. Going from MPEG4 to AVCHD could be a recompression or not depending. If it's a recompression, you *will* lose information.

You can't "bring up" footage. Once you've thrown the data away, it's not coming back.

 

[Chamber005]

Going from WMV to AVI could be lossless or VERY lossy. AVI is a container, not a codec. Going from AVI to MPEG4 *WILL* lose information. How much is a matter of bitrate. Going from MPEG4 to AVCHD could be a recompression or not depending. If it's a recompression, you *will* lose information.

You can't "bring up" footage. Once you've thrown the data away, it's not coming back.

That's so weird because I always read people here talking about editing in lower formats for speed. Editing in AVCHD is awful (with my set up) -- and a lot of people have commented as such.

So what do people mean when they say they're editing in lower formats? Are they potentially editing the footage, getting the cut, and then just mirroring that edit in their raw AVCHD file (e.g. are they doing the edit twice? Once to know what they want it to look like and then once in the actual footage??)

 

[PerroneFord]

That's so weird because I always read people here talking about editing in lower formats for speed. Editing in AVCHD is awful (with my set up) -- and a lot of people have commented as such.

So what do people mean when they say they're editing in lower formats? Are they potentially editing the footage, getting the cut, and then just mirroring that edit in their raw AVCHD file (e.g. are they doing the edit twice? Once to know what they want it to look like and then once in the actual footage??)

Bingo! You get the speed of editing at SD size with native HD quality. The drawback is that it takes time to make the lo-res version, and you have to store two versions.

 

[Chamber005]

Bingo! You get the speed of editing at SD size with native HD quality. The drawback is that it takes time to make the lo-res version, and you have to store two versions.

Makes sense...

I've been trying out this Sony Vegas Movie Studio Pro 9 and it seems to edit my AVCHD fairly quickly. I notice that I need to let the footage play all the way through once, though, to really have smooth playback.

I was using that Corel Video Studio program and it's just god-awful. Makes sense that Sony would do well with AVCHD since they kind of helped pioneer the using of it.