AVCHD: Converting with VoltaicHD

[StarsFan4Life]

Kaido,

I took your advise and purchase the VoltaicHD application. WOW!

To be frank, I was trying to edit the straight .MTS files in Sony Vegas Pro 8.0c and it was taking forever! Lastnight at about 11pm, I started 13gb's worth of .MTS files to convert to AVI through VoltaicHD. It is still running and should be done around 5pm today. I expected this.

Now, with that said, my next move is to edit these files and burn them to dvd's for family members (yes DVD's because most of my family have not moved up to Blu-Ray players yet). Should I be converting these .MTS files to AVI or to WMV? I am going to be using Sony Vegas Pro 8.0c to edit the video. I heard that AVI's don't carry the audio over into Sony Vega...is that true?

Also, on this conversion that I just did...I checked the checkbox under preferences to "extract 5.1 audio". Was this needed?

After I edit the video in Vegas....what do I need to render these back out as for final production to a dvd? What application should I use to create a great looking and well organized DVD?

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Also, Kaido, what about the following setup would you change/upgrade for HD video editing:

* Cooler Master Elite 330
* Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H 780G motherboard
* AMD X2 AM2 5600+
* 4GB Kingston ValueRam (4x1gb)
* EVGA 8600GTS 512MB video card
* 2 X Dell E207WFP 20" WS LCD
* 1 X 500GB WD Hard Drive
* Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit
* Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 + Magic Bullets

I then store all of my video's/raw footage on my WHS server with 2TB of empty space. Would upgrading the a Quad Core AMD chip help me at all?

 

[Kaido]

Yeah, even though most video apps include a converter tool, I still use VoltaicHD for AVCHD the most. It's just so convenient and easy. As far as the 5.1 stuff, unless you have a 5.1 mic (I think there's a Sony with this), I'd just leave it alone since most cameras just record in stereo. If you have Sony Vegas, then I'd suggest just going with their DVD solution, DVD Architect Pro:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/dvd

It also does Blu-ray, so you'll have some options to play with in the future:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/bluray

A popular workflow for Vegas seems to be converting the AVCHD to M2T, edit the HD version in Vegas, export to standard-definition (720x480) MPEG2 set to "High" Quality, and then burn your DVD with Architect. I'm a Mac guy, so I'm just going off what I'm reading from some quick Google searches, but try this for your workflow:

1. Use VoltaicHD to convert AVCHD to M2T
2. Edit in Vegas
3. Export to SD "MPEG2" with "High" Quality
4. Use Architect to create the final DVD

Be sure to test the DVD on a non-HDTV. DVDs on HDTVs will always look at least a bit grainy, so if you want to make sure the DVD is good, find a tube TV or something that isn't HD to play the movie on to make sure it outputted correctly, with good quality.

As far as the computer goes, yes, upgrading to a Quad-Core chip will help reduce video conversion time, as long as your video conversion tools can recognize and use all the cores (I'd imagine both VoltaicHD and Vegas can). One thing that may be worth doing is building a second render slave box, hooking it up with a Gigabit connection or an eSATA hard drive, and VNC'ing into it for file conversion so that your main box isn't slammed all the time. AMD has a 2.3ghz Quad-Core CPU for only $95:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819103244

Add a couple gigs of RAM and a 500 gig hard drive, a cheap motherboard and case, and you have a nice little render node for a few hundred bucks that you can offload video conversion too. This is probably overkill for most people, but if you feel like geeking out and you do a lot of video conversion, it's a fun little project

 

[StarsFan4Life]

So taking the raw .MTS files from the HF100 and converting to .avi or .wmv and then editing those is not the best route to take? You are suggesting I just pull the raw data from the HF100 straight into Vegas and go from there?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life
So taking the raw .MTS files from the HF100 and converting to .avi or .wmv and then editing those is not the best route to take? You are suggesting I just pull the raw data from the HF100 straight into Vegas and go from there?

Oh right, duh, sorry. I believe they are transcoding the AVCHD M2TS files to HDV M2T files, which they then edit in Vegas. Again I'm a Mac guy, so you'll have to give this method a test run on your own machine to see how it fares both on your hardware and in your video editing software platform.

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life
So taking the raw .MTS files from the HF100 and converting to .avi or .wmv and then editing those is not the best route to take? You are suggesting I just pull the raw data from the HF100 straight into Vegas and go from there?

Oh right, duh, sorry. I believe they are transcoding the AVCHD M2TS files to HDV M2T files, which they then edit in Vegas. Again I'm a Mac guy, so you'll have to give this method a test run on your own machine to see how it fares both on your hardware and in your video editing software platform.

Kaido...Kaido...Kaido.....


Thanks again!

 

[sswingle]

In my experience, editing the raw MTS files slows the system down too much. (Q6600 CPU with 4 GB RAM)

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Originally posted by: sswingle
In my experience, editing the raw MTS files slows the system down too much. (Q6600 CPU with 4 GB RAM)

So it is effective to turn the .MTS files into AVI or WMV files (using VoltaicHD) and then edit the video that way....correct?

 

[sswingle]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

Originally posted by: sswingle
In my experience, editing the raw MTS files slows the system down too much. (Q6600 CPU with 4 GB RAM)

So it is effective to turn the .MTS files into AVI or WMV files (using VoltaicHD) and then edit the video that way....correct?

I use TMPGEnc, and convert them to MPEG, but yes.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: sswingle

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

Originally posted by: sswingle
In my experience, editing the raw MTS files slows the system down too much. (Q6600 CPU with 4 GB RAM)

So it is effective to turn the .MTS files into AVI or WMV files (using VoltaicHD) and then edit the video that way....correct?

I use TMPGEnc, and convert them to MPEG, but yes.

MPEG is a good standard if your final output is DVD. I use ProRes on the Mac for my editing format. With TMPGEnc, do you have an HD MPEG or just SD Res?

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Good greif! I just converted 13gb's of raw MTS HD footage to both AVI and WMV (took 2 days) and the results are amazing.....WMV is much larger than AVI.....is this good or bad?


Original MTS file - 58.7mb

Converted to AVI - 86.7MB

Converted to WMV - 196MB

Why such a dramatic difference in size?

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: sswingle

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

Originally posted by: sswingle
In my experience, editing the raw MTS files slows the system down too much. (Q6600 CPU with 4 GB RAM)

So it is effective to turn the .MTS files into AVI or WMV files (using VoltaicHD) and then edit the video that way....correct?

I use TMPGEnc, and convert them to MPEG, but yes.

MPEG is a good standard if your final output is DVD. I use ProRes on the Mac for my editing format. With TMPGEnc, do you have an HD MPEG or just SD Res?

Do I just need to get a MAC for my video editing and be done with it all?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life
Do I just need to get a MAC for my video editing and be done with it all?

Well you're already setup with Vegas and a nice computer, all you need to do is run through a few projects to get your workflow down and then you can pop out projects really easily. It's just a matter of playing around with stuff, finding what looks good to you, and then sticking with it (I like to document my procedures because I forget really easily lol).

Macs are nice because they're really easy. iMovie 09 comes with every new Mac (or you could build a Hackintosh if you're so inclined) and works really well for quick edits, then you can pop it out to iDVD really easily. Plus you can do fun musical stuff in Garageband, and you can always upgrade to Final Cut Express or Pro, or Adobe Premiere. I'd only say switch if you're looking at a new computer anyway, because you have a very usuable setup now!

You might try posting at some Vegas forums as well, since they usually have a lot of experts for that particular software suite who can answer technical questions. Here's a couple:

http://forums.creativecow.net/forum/sonyvegas

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/

 

[sswingle]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: sswingle

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

Originally posted by: sswingle
In my experience, editing the raw MTS files slows the system down too much. (Q6600 CPU with 4 GB RAM)

So it is effective to turn the .MTS files into AVI or WMV files (using VoltaicHD) and then edit the video that way....correct?

I use TMPGEnc, and convert them to MPEG, but yes.

MPEG is a good standard if your final output is DVD. I use ProRes on the Mac for my editing format. With TMPGEnc, do you have an HD MPEG or just SD Res?

My final work is almost always DVD. TMPGEnc can convert to either, HDV or SD.

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Is TMPGEnc free?

 

[sswingle]

No, the version I have, Express 4.0, is $99.

 

[sswingle]

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/te4xp.html

 

[francisA]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life
Good greif! I just converted 13gb's of raw MTS HD footage to both AVI and WMV (took 2 days) and the results are amazing.....WMV is much larger than AVI.....is this good or bad?


Original MTS file - 58.7mb

Converted to AVI - 86.7MB

Converted to WMV - 196MB

Why such a dramatic difference in size?

Wow! 2 days to convert 13GB, makes me scared now to work with m2ts files

I have Vegas Movie 9 and HF100 and have about 6hrs of footage from my recent vacation. Got the HF100 just 1 day before we left so video was not as I wanted but shot mostly 30p which is better in low-light than 60i {not sure if this is the "real" case}. Viewing directly on the 42" tv via WD HD TV Media Player is nothing short of amazing.

Anyways, I did a rough edit of just 5mins of m2ts video directly on Vegas, 2 layers with the overlay in PIP (using Vegas pan) about 2.5mins worth. Rendered it to .avi (DV widescreen) and it finished rendering almost real-time with all cores on the Q9550 working hard. Of course the size of the DV .avi is 1GB or so for the 5min clip but I think that's in line with the size of raw DV files that I used to get from firewire capture from my then VX2000.

I'm planning on outputting to DVD for now to share with family/friends. So tried out Architect and it made the 5-min DVD just a little over real-time and footage looks great on a 42" plasma.

I'm also new to Vegas (former Premiere - and still is - user) so lots to learn still.

Now I wonder how long it will take to render out almost 50GB of .m2ts footage into DV widescreen

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life
Good greif! I just converted 13gb's of raw MTS HD footage to both AVI and WMV (took 2 days) and the results are amazing.....WMV is much larger than AVI.....is this good or bad?


Original MTS file - 58.7mb

Converted to AVI - 86.7MB

Converted to WMV - 196MB

Why such a dramatic difference in size?

Eh, don't whine too much - ProRes is 1GB per minute

 

[StarsFan4Life]

I stopped the WMV conversion.....with 5 videos left it had turned my 13.6gb into nearly 40gb's of WMV files.....

 

[luv2liv]

i just got the canon hfs100. the included softwares are useless
i see you are using VoltaicHD or TMPGEnc to convert the mts files. is there anything free? im bankrupt after spending the money on hardwares. i cant believe canon didnt include anything for me to edit these clips!

whats next?
convert these mts to avi, or M2T, or wmv. i plan to edit them in full 1080 for bluray later. hopefully quality will still be intact after conversion.

 

[Kaido]

i just got the canon hfs100. the included softwares are useless
i see you are using VoltaicHD or TMPGEnc to convert the mts files. is there anything free? im bankrupt after spending the money on hardwares. i cant believe canon didnt include anything for me to edit these clips!

whats next?
convert these mts to avi, or M2T, or wmv. i plan to edit them in full 1080 for bluray later. hopefully quality will still be intact after conversion.

I don't know of anything free really for AVCHD. I did a quick google search and found this:

http://www.avchdediting.com/

Might want to give it a try (be sure to scan for viruses first...haha). I believe Sony Vegas does AVCHD natively now, so if you can save up and invest in that, I'd recommend it. It also has a Bluray authoring program. At the very least, get VoltaicHD so you can convert the video files into something you can use in Windows Movie Maker or another free editing app. Cameras are kind of useless without editing software :biggrin:

Edit: here's some more stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD#Converting

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Subscribed.

 

[WelshBloke]

I don't know of anything free really for AVCHD. I did a quick google search and found this:

http://www.avchdediting.com/

Might want to give it a try (be sure to scan for viruses first...haha). I believe Sony Vegas does AVCHD natively now, so if you can save up and invest in that, I'd recommend it. It also has a Bluray authoring program. At the very least, get VoltaicHD so you can convert the video files into something you can use in Windows Movie Maker or another free editing app. Cameras are kind of useless without editing software :biggrin:

Edit: here's some more stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD#Converting

Windows live movie maker will handle AVCHD files natively.

 

[lopri]

Slightly off-topic, but how can I make TPMGenc recognize HD audio stream in .m2ts files? (Blu-Ray rip)