Editing MTS (from CX100) AVCHD in Vegas

[The111 1]

I'm editing my first video based on AVCHD footage in Vegas, and damn is it painful, even on my badass i7 rig (3.8GHz, 6GB RAM). I'm using Vegas 9 x64.

Even with the quality settings dirt low (draft quarter quality) it still is not responsive enough for my likes when I am dragging the end of a clip around or something. I have the CoreAVC decoder which is very good for AVCHD, but I've read it doesn't work within Vegas.

What can I do to speed up my on the fly decoding while working with clips within the project?

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[AHoyThere 0]

Thanks for asking the question. I'm new w/ this too and I've got the exact same issue.
Right now I'm running a Dell quad core. I've got more ram than 32bit XP can address. I brought home 64bit Windows 7 that I'm going to switch to. But I'm not really expecting that to help with editing in Vegas 9.

[Teigen 0]

Thats sounds weird really!

I run Vegas pro 9.0 x32 in XP. With a dualcore 2.4GHz processor and 2GB of RAM.. And it has worked really nice so far..

But im going to upgrade next year though..

Sorry if i got your hopes up about a answer to your issue..

[beowulf 1]

Quote

Even with the quality settings dirt low (draft quarter quality)

What do you mean by this?

[Teigen 0]

The quality setting for the little preview window.

You can choose from many settings and draft quarter is REALLY low quality. I have mine set to preview->auto. It works good for scrubbing through etc.. But sometimes i too have to set it to quarter..

[beowulf 1]

I am currently using Vegas Pro 8 and that setting doesn't appear to have any effect on my editing speed. For editing AVCHD from my CX100 I have the project set to HD 1080-60i (1920x1080, 29.970 fps). My computer has a quad core 2.4 ghz intel processor and 4 gig of memory. It's not an i7 and editing is not slow at all.

[DSE 5]

Which version of Vegas? 9c is very responsive.

[The111 1]

I'm on 9b. Is there really a big difference between b and c?

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[DSE 5]

Very little performance diff on 9b vs c. I've had no problems with AVCHD in 9 at all.
What about background apps? Running anything like Antivirus?

[AHoyThere 0]

Okay, I excluded any folder associated with Sony Vegas and my source (MTS) files from the anti-virus program.

It made a world of difference and solved the problem.
Thanks!

[DSE 5]

FWIW, antivirus shouldn't even be installed on a video station. But...I know that's not practical for a lot of folks.

[The111 1]

Quote

Very little performance diff on 9b vs c. I've had no problems with AVCHD in 9 at all.
What about background apps? Running anything like Antivirus?

The bit about antivirus is new to me, but I don't think it is causing a problem here. Just to be safe, I disabled it, and saw no change.

In the same project (as a test) I have placed a .m2t (from HC5) and .MTS (from CX100). With the .m2t, if I grab one edge of the clip and drag it slowly and steadily to the right, the preview screen updates at a rate of 20+ FPS (my guess), i.e. easily viewable and responsive. With the .MTS, the preview screen updates at a rate of less than 5 FPS (again, my guess, but it's very slow and it takes me 5 times longer to find the right point in the timeline I'm looking for). And this "test project" has settings to correspond with the .MTS (1920x1080-60i).

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[DSE 5]

This would suggest that something else is going on in the machine.
Although you can't compare the performance of AVCHD to HDV (the compression is radically different in terms of CPU decoding cycles) on a reasonably fast machine with Vegas 9 you should be seeing similar performance on playback. I am on my systems, using a mix of XDCAM, HDV, and AVCHD with project settings of 1920/1080 @60p. What else is running in the background? Using USB drives? CPU temps?
FWIW, Trimmer is unbuffered, which is (IMO) a much better way to select and preview clips, especially in Vegas 8/9.
What is your Dynamic RAM value? It shouldn't be higher than 512 unless you're working with a lot of stills.

[The111 1]

Well, I've asked this question on a few other video forums and seem to be unanimously told that AVCHD will never edit/scrub as smoothly as HDV, and most of those people recommend transcoding it first. Spot, if I'm wrong you'll just have to show me this weekend... I would love to see a normal quad-core machine that can scrub through AVCHD footage as fast as HDV.

www.WingsuitPhotos.com

[DSE 5]

Notice I didn't say "scrub" but said "playback."
CPU cycles are MUCH heavier for AVCHD, so buffer space is necessary. HDV is a light compression by comparison (although it's not light by any means).
CPU-based decoding helps too.

[TEXX56 0]

This is pretty much the same thing that happens to me but if you didn't already know its just for the editing playback, after you've rendered it into whatever format your going to use it will play just fine. Although it is a pain when dealing with transitions and other effects when putting them in the video.