Why should I not edit native AVCHD?

D

digexpressions

Active member
With my upgraded setup AVCHD flows smoothly in preview and renders to mpeg2 quicker than real time. Always heard that AVCHD is not good editing format. Is there a reason (in terms of quality) I should not be editing native AVCHD?
 
It's not a "good vs bad" issue- AVCHD is more of an "easy vs hard" issue. The format requires a robust machine to handle the decoding duties. Like any camera, the raw footage it records is the highest quality it will produce- and will be the best format to edit and render from. If your machine is hadling it OK, then you are working with the highest quality the HMC can produce.

An exception would be if you shot some green screen footage- converting to a format w/ a 4.2.2 colorspace may prove better when keying in your NLE (vs keying with the raw AVCHD)
 
I have some trouble editing native when exporting I sometimes get duplicate frames or ugly jumpcuts .
Best to be save and transcode .
 
I have an Intel Core Duo middle of the road Vista PC. Editing native AVCHD with Vegas Movie Studio 9 has always been trouble free. I can't imagine ever needing to transcode.

Good luck.
 
dan.carter said:
I have an Intel Core Duo middle of the road Vista PC. Editing native AVCHD with Vegas Movie Studio 9 has always been trouble free. I can't imagine ever needing to transcode.

Good luck.
Click to expand...

There are numerous reasons to transcode in many workflows. Count yourself lucky if you haven't hit that stumbling block yet. I just got the duties of grading the short we just wrapped this weekend. Everything will get transcoded so we can work between Macs and PCs seamlessly.

AVCHD doesn't do well in color grading. It doesn't do well for full frame rate playback with 4-8 layers of effects either.

And it eats up memory badly too with the need to work in RAM for playback decoding. I-Frame only for me on the timeline. And 10-bit where possible.
 
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