workstation to process gh1 footage

T

teuron

Active member
it is only a matter of time before i end up buying a hd video capable dslr and it will probably be a gh1 or one of the upcoming panasonic releases (g2 or g10?)

before i take that step, i would like to know as to what sort of machine i will need to process the footage (from what ive read here it seems the compression that panasonic decided to use is not the most editing friendly choice)

i have built pcs in the past mainly for the purpose of music production, however my current DAW is simply a laptop with a external MOTU audio interface (along with monitors, controllers, and some analogue gear) and im guessing that this setup (laptop) will not cut it when it comes to processing/editing avchd files?

also wondering what is the optimum video editing software for avchd?
i was thinking of investing into sony vegas, would this be a good choice?

thanx
 
Would I be condemned by the forums if I supported torrenting? ;) I used to use my laptop for editing till it broke from overheating. Can't do anything film related till I get it fixed up. I don't think a laptop is a bad choice for editing. I have a nice quality gaming laptop so it works well for editing. But of course a desktop would be better... but don't go buying one if your laptop can edit.

PS: If you decide to use your laptop, I'd suggest getting a laptop cooler. Keeps it from overheating. Of course mine broke from gaming too much... but you can never be too safe.
 
Vegas does not correctly reverse telecine and deinterlace the FHD AVCHD files from the GH1. In fact, it messes up the GH1 footage worse than any other editor/player/convertor that I tried. So if you use Vegas, you will have to convert your footage into another format before editing. AFAIK, the only editor that works correctly with the native video from the GH1 is Edius Neo 2 Booster, and it works so perfectly with the GH1 video files that I purchased it.
 
i do a lot of editing on the go, and am looking for a dedicated mobile conversion/editing workstation. i have the opportunity to get set up with a new macbook. do you guys see that as a workable solution, or is it a bad idea, in the long run?
 
the Intel i5 (high-end quads) & i7 (preferably the non-1366 variety) are the processors one should aim for in editing. Starting at $299 for the processor.
Laptops now integrate the i7, no sure of the exact model. They should be including the i5 too. Battery life is abismal but will do HD editing.

Sony Vegas seems to be the de facto, put on a pedestal. I like Magix Video Pro & plan on trying CS5. I want to learn a bit of After Effects.

I purchased components Dec 2009 for my workstation/editing rig, $13xx.00. I saved approx. $800 assembling it myself due to the newness of components at the time.
 
noirist said:
Vegas does not correctly reverse telecine and deinterlace the FHD AVCHD files from the GH1. In fact, it messes up the GH1 footage worse than any other editor/player/convertor that I tried. So if you use Vegas, you will have to convert your footage into another format before editing. AFAIK, the only editor that works correctly with the native video from the GH1 is Edius Neo 2 Booster, and it works so perfectly with the GH1 video files that I purchased it.
Click to expand...

Does it work on a Mac? So what's the difference between the Neo2 Booster and something like Neoscene?
 
noirist said:
AFAIK, the only editor that works correctly with the native video from the GH1 is Edius Neo 2 Booster, and it works so perfectly with the GH1 video files that I purchased it.
Click to expand...

just to clarify, with this Edius software i can just import the files directly pulled from the sdhc card? (without prior conversion/transcoding? even if 24p?)

is it smooth working with the gh1 avchd files? does it require a powerful machine to edit the avchd 1080 24p with this software?
 
teuron said:
just to clarify, with this Edius software i can just import the files directly pulled from the sdhc card? (without prior conversion/transcoding? even if 24p?)

is it smooth working with the gh1 avchd files? does it require a powerful machine to edit the avchd 1080 24p with this software?
Click to expand...

I haven't figured out how to do proper pulldown removal with Edius Neo 2 Booster yet (hope someone who knows will comment here) - but I can say that it does handle the AVCHD footage better than any other NLE I've used on the PC side - it handles Cineform better too - I don't know what it is about this NLE but it is so much faster than the other NLEs that it will make your head spin - I'm fully converting to it - I have a fast system i7 w/9gb ddr3 ram and it's got to be...geez I dunno, 10x faster than either Vegas or Premiere on my system? If I were using a lower end system I'd absolutely try Edius Neo 2 Booster first - all that it really lacks is good audio editing capability, but you really should be editing audio in another sound app and then just dropping it into the timeline where of course you can adjust levels, pans, etc.

I honestly don't know why more people aren't using this version of Edius - it's rock solid stable too - no crashes where Vegas and Premiere crash all the time, it can also show effects processing in real time - it's amazing after being on Vegas/Premiere.
 
Vegas 9 pro does NOT 'mess' up the footage... and it works pretty well, you just have to know how to set the setting right. This is for 720 60p though, not 1080 24p.. NOTHING that I know of works with panasonic gh1 1980 24p footage wrapped in that stupid 60i wrapper - you HAVE to remove the pulldown with some 3rd party software first (idiotic.. isn't it?). But yes, get a nice beefy i7 quad core with 12 gigs of ram and put a sticker of donkey kong on it to prove it's powerful to anyone who dares question you.

If you want to spend 6 times the money, there is this computer called a macintosh too that people like.
 
Blackout said:
Vegas 9 pro does NOT 'mess' up the footage... and it works pretty well, you just have to know how to set the setting right. This is for 720 60p though, not 1080 24p.. NOTHING that I know of works with panasonic gh1 1980 24p footage wrapped in that stupid 60i wrapper - you HAVE to remove the pulldown with some 3rd party software first (idiotic.. isn't it?). But yes, get a nice beefy i7 quad core with 12 gigs of ram and put a sticker of donkey kong on it to prove it's powerful to anyone who dares question you.

If you want to spend 6 times the money, there is this computer called a macintosh too that people like.
Click to expand...

I only mentioned the i7 because with a I expected better performance from Vegas Pro 9 64-bit on Windows 7 than I'm getting and I'm quite sure that I've got it tweaked for optimal use - same thing with Premiere - there is just something about Edius Neo 2 Booster that seems to work extremely well with either AVCHD or Cineform files.

I by no means have an ultimate rig, but with the i7 and dedicated drives for storage, render and swap files Edius Neo 2 Booster simply flies and Vegas and Premiere are both really sluggish - my experience is limited to either raw AVCHD files in Vegas or Cineform files in either Vegas or Premiere, but I've been very disappointed with both of them in terms of speed - Edius is so much faster it's honestly hard to believe - it would be worth a trial download.

My PC rig is a Gateway FX-6801 that I got for $999 from B&H when that particular model was discontinued so...I'm hardly spending Macintosh money.
 
I'll have to take alook at this edius neo booster.. I was a long fan of canopus and used the DVstorm 2 for many years.
 
Just to be perfectly clear. I have tested Vegas 9 Pro on the NTSC 1080p24 FHD AVCHD footage from the GH1, and it screws up the reverse telecine big time, worse than any other converter or editor I have tried. It plays it back incorrectly, edits it incorrectly, and when you export your footage to a file in another format, that file will have the Vegas reverse telecine errors. There is no setting that will fix this. IMO, it's unusable, but you can see and judge for yourself:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/attachment.php?attachmentid=15444&d=1265156569

I have also tested Edius Neo 2 Booster, and it works perfectly with the same footage. Meaning that it does the reverse telecine automatically behind the scense so that the footage behaves for all intents and purposes as if it was natively 1080p23.97. So if you use Edius, you don't have to worry about reverse telecine at all, just create your project to be 1080p23.97, import your GH1 footage as it came straight off your SDHC card, and you are good to go.

Some more details are here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.php?p=1882780&postcount=4
 
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Blackout said:
NOTHING that I know of works with panasonic gh1 1980 24p footage wrapped in that stupid 60i wrapper - you HAVE to remove the pulldown with some 3rd party software first (idiotic.. isn't it?). But yes, get a nice beefy i7 quad core with 12 gigs of ram and put a sticker of donkey kong on it to prove it's powerful to anyone who dares question you..
Click to expand...


Unlike Vegas 9 Pro, Edius Neo 2 Booster works correctly with the gh1 1080p24 footage in the 60i wrapper. If you use Edius, you don't have to remove the pulldown, Edius will do it for you behind the scenes.
 
I used the trial version of Edius on a dual core and it played full rez AVCHD files right out of the camera. The only NLE that I have had do that. I didn't like it though so I bought voltaicHD to remove the pulldown and edit in Premiere for now. I don't like the fact that Premiere is a resource hog and doesn't like H.264, I'm still looking for the best NLE solution for my GH1. As for computers at least a quad core with as much ram as you can afford. I used a triple core for much of Betrayal fest and it worked great even with just 2 gig of Ram.
 
Edius Neo Boost REMOVES the pulldown of GH1 1080p?????? are you SURE of this, or it just edits with it correctly left it?

meaning you output to a 23.976 mp4 correctly with NO stutters anywhere, no mixed frames?
 
Also does EDIUS 5 do all this too? Is Edius neo booster just a stripped down version of 5 or a completely different version. I might have access to someone who has edius 5.
 
While browsing B&H I think I saw a package where Neo 2 Booster was included with Edius 5., an extra cost. I cannot remember exactly.

Booster does seem smoother (instantly adds 1080i60 clips), but lack of experience with their interface is the main burden.
 
Blackout said:
Also does EDIUS 5 do all this too? Is Edius neo booster just a stripped down version of 5 or a completely different version. I might have access to someone who has edius 5.
Click to expand...

It is sort of a stripped down version, however the "booster" part of Neo 2 is what makes editing the AVCHD so fast and Edius 5 actually does not have that - Neo 2 Booster is the fastest of their offerings for editing AVCHD. They have trial versions of all of these on their site.
 
I use an i5 system for editing my gh1 footage.
I've tried a few packages from simple cut'n'paste crap through Vegas to Edius.
The cheap software is ok if you literally want to stick some clips together. Thats it.
Vegas is very user friendly but has trouble with gh1 footage and the stuff it outputs is extremely problematic (playback problems on lots of different media players - it also darkened the image despite me leaving everything as standard).
Edius, while being a bit of a ***** to get the hang of, works flawlessly with gh1 footage and exports a nice clean file.
 
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