GH1 video for the casual user

B

bdbx18

New member
There's a lot of info in this forum and it will be great to have a sticky threads for the beginner.

What would be the simplest and best software and workflow for the casual family video user?

My needs are essentially to (a) crop off unwanted sections and (b) join the clips for a continuous play in hopefully back to a .h264 file. My videos are all in 1080p AVHC but I really don't want to re-encode them to a much bigger file.

Thanks a bunch.
 
OK, I'm a Mac user, so I can't help you. But at least now Windows users can chime in, as I'm sure they will.

All the best.
 
There are a few NLE's out there that will handle H264 files directly.

1. Windows MovieMaker accepts .mts files directly and lets you edit them. This is a good place to start getting familiar with the concepts of non-linear editing. Even though it is free and part of Windows the program is quite comprehensive. For a freebie this is about as good as you can do.

2. PowerDirector is a step up in functionality but it is not free - it and all of the following programs are in the same (under $100) price range.

3. Ditto for Neoscene. This one has a slightly more complex user interface.

4. I settled on Sony Vegas which is going to offer a new version next week (08 Jun I think) that should fix a number of outstanding issues. Vegas has the most "professional" (i.e. complex) interface but comes with excellent tutorials that get you pretty comfortable pretty fast. I like the detailed control Vegas provides and the basic overall look & feel of the program. Your perception may be different of course.

Each of the 3 commercial programs has a free 30 day trial and I'd check out each one to see which one fits your needs the best.

Regardless of what software you decide on, keep in mind that there are 2 parts to using it: the editiing part and the rendering part. Editing is the fun part and it puts a relatively low level of work on your system. Rendering is where the real work happens and it will suck up all the resources your system can provide. When evaluating any of the above products be sure to do both an editing session and a final rendering to the output format you want. This is the only way to get a true feel for how you will use the software for real work.
 
bdbx18 said:
There's a lot of info in this forum and it will be great to have a sticky threads for the beginner.

What would be the simplest and best software and workflow for the casual family video user?

My needs are essentially to (a) crop off unwanted sections and (b) join the clips for a continuous play in hopefully back to a .h264 file. My videos are all in 1080p AVHC but I really don't want to re-encode them to a much bigger file.

Thanks a bunch.
Click to expand...

Strangely enough, none of the NLEs mentioned in this thread will perform the two basic functions you requested (trim and join the original mts files from a GH1). They all require you to render your edited footage into a new file. The software that ships with the GH1 will allow you to trim clips but you must also use that software to import your clips, and I don't think it lets you join cilps.

Another problem... None of the NLEs mentioned in this thread will even correctly play back the native FHD AVCHD files from the GH1. Neither Windows Live Movie Maker nor Vegas will correctly deinterlace or reverse pulldown. Edius Neo will deinterlace the footage but will not undo the pulldown.

As of today, the only work around for GH1 FHD footage is to first convert your MTS files into a new format that is true 1080p24 (eg., with Neoscene), edit that new format, and then render the edited output to a third format. Anyway you look at it, GH1 workflow is ugly.
 
I would partially agree that workflow at first is daunting but I have learned to manage it well with the Neoscene/Vegas Pro combo and now it seems pretty natural, BTW The files get huge after Neoscene so a Terrabyte drive or more! is a neccesity but it is very nice to render out footage as good as the GH-1 is capable of.
 
Here, in PAL land, on my particular Windows system, "Nero Vision Xtra" will allow you to trim and join FHD clips from the GH1 with minimal re-encoding. It uses "SmartEncoding" to avoid re-encoding any material which is unchanged. At the joins between clips it seems to need to do so for a number of frames.

For instance, I've got a test project in front of me now which has three clips on the timeline, and a total length of 6 minutes. Audio "SmartEncoding ration" is shown as 100% (in other words, nothing will be done to the audio) and Video "SmartEncoding" at 95.1%. Exporting that 6 minutes of material to AVCHD takes 1'26" on a quad core system, with modest CPU activity but the drive is going full belt.

However, if you start applying any effects or lengthy transitions, of course the SmartEncoding will not work for the affected (or effected!) portions of the project. So if you're deciding on which NLE to go for, before you put too much emphasis on smart encoding functionality, you need to consider how often you'll actually use that feature in your projects.

The current Nero Vision is vastly superior to earlier versions and is very nice to work with (IMHO), very responsive on the timeline. However, there's no NLE that doesn't have some kind of catch, and in the case of Nero Vision Xtra, the problem is that there's a bug affecting the playback monitor window, which presents a kind of unfocussed appearance. Perhaps they had trouble providing responsive full-definition playback, and went for a lower quality but greater responsiveness. Apparently they plan to fix it - one day.

I've found with other such lower-cost apps that timeline playback can be problematic regardless of hardware power (eg freezes at edits, or serious picture distortion). Vegas Studio seems to require prodigious amounts of memory to render other than very short projects (in my experience and as reflected in posts in their forums - YMMV).

As I've said before, it's essential to use trial versions of these packages before purchase - though some take a strict view of AVCHD licencing considerations and don't provide AVCHD support unless you buy the package - which makes a meaningful trial impossible. If your experience is anything like mine, you may find that you end up with several such packages paid for and installed, and you learn to live with the downsides of each of them.

Funny stuff, video.
 
My needs are essentially to (a) crop off unwanted sections and (b) join the clips for a continuous play in hopefully back to a .h264 file. My videos are all in 1080p AVHC but I really don't want to re-encode them to a much bigger file.
Click to expand...
If you want to keep the files as .MTS without transcoding, then you could try the beta of Voltaic 2.5. Not sure if it's okay with your system:

shedworx.com
 
bbinnard said:
There are a few NLE's out there that will handle H264 files directly.

1. Windows MovieMaker accepts .mts files directly and lets you edit them. This is a good place to start getting familiar with the concepts of non-linear editing. Even though it is free and part of Windows the program is quite comprehensive. For a freebie this is about as good as you can do.

2. PowerDirector is a step up in functionality but it is not free - it and all of the following programs are in the same (under $100) price range.

3. Ditto for Neoscene. This one has a slightly more complex user interface.

4. I settled on Sony Vegas which is going to offer a new version next week (08 Jun I think) that should fix a number of outstanding issues. Vegas has the most "professional" (i.e. complex) interface but comes with excellent tutorials that get you pretty comfortable pretty fast. I like the detailed control Vegas provides and the basic overall look & feel of the program. Your perception may be different of course.

Each of the 3 commercial programs has a free 30 day trial and I'd check out each one to see which one fits your needs the best.

Regardless of what software you decide on, keep in mind that there are 2 parts to using it: the editiing part and the rendering part. Editing is the fun part and it puts a relatively low level of work on your system. Rendering is where the real work happens and it will suck up all the resources your system can provide. When evaluating any of the above products be sure to do both an editing session and a final rendering to the output format you want. This is the only way to get a true feel for how you will use the software for real work.
Click to expand...
The drawback of all of these is that it needs a lot of time to render, even on a good system. For example, my Core i7 920, 6GB RAM, 7200rpm HDD (separate drives for source data, output and boot) renders my projects in real time at best (i.e. a 10 min project takes at least 10 min to render, usually longer).
The reason? The softs re-render everything upon exporting. I understand that if you are exporting to a format that is different from the source. But if I import AVCHD 1080p23.976 and export AVCHD 1080p23.976 at exactly the same bit-rate and quality settings then shouldn't it at least try to save time by not re-enconding the parts that are not changed?
And that's not mentioning the bugs I experienced from a certain software that is named after a city famous for gambling.

Ozpeter said:
Here, in PAL land, on my particular Windows system, "Nero Vision Xtra" will allow you to trim and join FHD clips from the GH1 with minimal re-encoding. It uses "SmartEncoding" to avoid re-encoding any material which is unchanged. At the joins between clips it seems to need to do so for a number of frames.

For instance, I've got a test project in front of me now which has three clips on the timeline, and a total length of 6 minutes. Audio "SmartEncoding ration" is shown as 100% (in other words, nothing will be done to the audio) and Video "SmartEncoding" at 95.1%. Exporting that 6 minutes of material to AVCHD takes 1'26" on a quad core system, with modest CPU activity but the drive is going full belt.

However, if you start applying any effects or lengthy transitions, of course the SmartEncoding will not work for the affected (or effected!) portions of the project. So if you're deciding on which NLE to go for, before you put too much emphasis on smart encoding functionality, you need to consider how often you'll actually use that feature in your projects.

The current Nero Vision is vastly superior to earlier versions and is very nice to work with (IMHO), very responsive on the timeline. However, there's no NLE that doesn't have some kind of catch, and in the case of Nero Vision Xtra, the problem is that there's a bug affecting the playback monitor window, which presents a kind of unfocussed appearance. Perhaps they had trouble providing responsive full-definition playback, and went for a lower quality but greater responsiveness. Apparently they plan to fix it - one day.

I've found with other such lower-cost apps that timeline playback can be problematic regardless of hardware power (eg freezes at edits, or serious picture distortion). Vegas Studio seems to require prodigious amounts of memory to render other than very short projects (in my experience and as reflected in posts in their forums - YMMV).

As I've said before, it's essential to use trial versions of these packages before purchase - though some take a strict view of AVCHD licencing considerations and don't provide AVCHD support unless you buy the package - which makes a meaningful trial impossible. If your experience is anything like mine, you may find that you end up with several such packages paid for and installed, and you learn to live with the downsides of each of them.

Funny stuff, video.
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot for this! :dankk2::thumbsup: I took a swing at Nero and am currently very delighted. My 10-minute test project takes 2.5 mins to render (quite nice, considering that about 1/4 of the clips are modified in one way or another and all quality sliders were maxed out). That's about 4X speed rendering speed - not crazy fast but 5 times faster than the usual speed I got from the other NLE.
Btw, I went from NTSC land to PAL land to 24fps land. Totally appreciating Nero to offer 29.97fps, 25fps and 23.976fps options (and 60fps and 50fps as well for 720p).

bdbx18 said:
There's a lot of info in this forum and it will be great to have a sticky threads for the beginner.

What would be the simplest and best software and workflow for the casual family video user?

My needs are essentially to (a) crop off unwanted sections and (b) join the clips for a continuous play in hopefully back to a .h264 file. My videos are all in 1080p AVHC but I really don't want to re-encode them to a much bigger file.

Thanks a bunch.
Click to expand...
Try Nero Vision XTra 10 like Ozpeter recommended. I 2nd that.
 
I've just been trying the new version (10) of Vegas Movie Studio HD, and while I love the interface and features, actually getting something useful out of it still seems to be a problem here at least. It took 40 minutes to render a 7 minute timeline of 1080 and 720 GH1 material to an AVCHD export file, which then wouldn't play properly and seemed to have video / audio sync issues. The same clips in Nero Vision Xtra 10 rendered to the same format in about 9 minutes and played just fine. I wish I could have the Vegas feature set with the Nero rendering engine!
 
Energy80s said:
Edius Neo 2.5 seems to be the best solution at the moment.
Click to expand...
Edius doesn't let you trim or join the original MTS files per the OP's request. You have to render the output of your editing into a new file.

Also Edius Neo 2.5 correctly deinterlaces the FHD AVCHD footage into 1080p30 but it does not remove the pulldown. If you try to export your FHD footage into a 1080p24 format (eg., for bluray) then as Blackout showed, Edius will add shimmering artifacts for any fine detail. Grass Valley is aware of the issue and claim to be working on it.
 
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