Difficulty of AVCHD

S

Steve_in_MD

Hello,

I'm going to be purchasing an HD camera soon, and after months of research, I still cannot decide between HDV and AVCHD. There are advantages to both. I'm not a big fan of tapes but AVCHD is more expensive and harder to edit. My main question I have is, how difficult is editing AVCHD with Sony Vegas Pro 9? I understand that Vegas supports the AVCHD files but I don't know if I'll be able to edit in real time or if it will be very slow and freeze often. I'm assuming my PC's capability makes a big difference. My PC is an HP P6320Y with 8 GB of DDR3 RAM and an Nvidia Geforce 9100 graphics card.

I love the instant playback ability of flash memory without running the risk of taping over things. Plus, flash captures much faster than tape. But the cameras are more expensive, plus if I have to spend another $100 on Cineform NeoScene to convert the AVCHD files...I don't know. I'm just trying make a good investment without breaking the bank, because I'm going to need a mic at some point in the near future as well.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks.
 
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Steve_in_MD said:
Hello,

I'm going to be purchasing an HD camera soon, and after months of research, I still cannot decide between HDV and AVCHD. There are advantages to both. I'm not a big fan of tapes but AVCHD is more expensive and harder to edit. My main question I have is, how difficult is editing AVCHD with Sony Vegas Pro 9? I understand that Vegas supports the AVCHD files but I don't know if I'll be able to edit in real time or if it will be very slow and freeze often. I'm assuming my PC's capability makes a big difference. My PC is an HP P6320Y with 8 GB of DDR3 RAM and an Nvidia Geforce 9100 graphics card.

I love the instant playback ability of flash memory without running the risk of taping over things. Plus, flash captures much faster than tape. But the cameras are more expensive, plus if I have to spend another $100 on Cineform NeoScene to convert the AVCHD files...I don't know. I'm just trying make a good investment without breaking the bank, because I'm going to need a mic at some point in the near future as well.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
You'd probably want to get Cineform even if you go with HDV over AVCHD.. it's just one of those tools that makes editing HD footage a LOT more managable.
 
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I have a pretty weak PC and I edit in Vegas Pro 8 using AVCHD format. It doesn't freeze on me ever, but it does not playback smoothly in the preview. It might be my system or it might be the touchyness of AVCHD. I think Neoscene would clear this up for me but alas, my system does not meet it's minimum requirements.

One note on the skippy playback. Audio playback is smooth and I think if you narrow the work area bar it will ram preview more smoothly, although I don't know what the max is. After render it's always smooth, and usually if you import that back into Vegas it will preview smoothly until you add a bunch of effects and such.

I still would recommend it over tapes, but I'm just a millenial and biased towards digital :P
 
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I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but with my computer specs: Intel core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz, 2 GB of RAM on a 32 bit operating system, would AVCHD editing be possible even with Neoscene?
 
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phebus said:
I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but with my computer specs: Intel core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz, 2 GB of RAM on a 32 bit operating system, would AVCHD editing be possible even with Neoscene?
Click to expand...

The manual says core 2 duo w/ 2.66 GHz with 3 GB of RAM minimum, so I don't know. Neoscene converts the file to Cineform, so you would be editing that instead of AVCHD format.
 
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My old Macbook had issues with certain HD footage that was recorded at a high mbs. I don't have any problem editing AVCHD footage on my new one and it is a Mac laptop as well. 4GB RAM and at least 2.0-2.3 Ghz processor should do.
 
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