AVCHD Files not playing in VLC, MPC

[Desp]

I'm trying to play some .mts (AVCHD) files from a Canon HD camcorder, after copying them over to my HDD I try and open them with VLC, it'll play a few frames and then pretty much freeze but the audio continues to play. I downloaded Media Player Classic and tried it with that, it'll play the first 3 seconds smoothly then stop playing but the audio continues. With windows media player it'll play it continually but it seems to be a bit laggy, and the video quality isn't that great.

Whatever issue VLC and MPC is having Sony Vegas 9 Pro is having the same issue, I can't preview the video without it being extremely jumpy so I can't edit it.

I have Haali Media Splitter and CoreAVC Pro installed.

My system is an X2 4200+, 2 gig ram, Nvidia 9600 with windows XP, SP3 installed.

[creamyhorror]

Check your CPU usage during playback (I use Process Explorer). Is it near maximum? Your CPU might not be fast enough to handle the clip. But with CoreAVC Pro, if you're using CUDA decoding, you should have no problems decoding it.

Upload a short raw clip and we can take a look.

[aedipuss]

try installing ffdshow/reboot then play and see if it helps.

[Desp]

Whenever playing through windows media player the Haali icon pops up by the clock, but trying to play through VLC it doesn't, does this have anything to do with my issue?

I have a test clip I can upload but it's 30 mb

[creamyhorror]

VLC uses only its internal codecs so you won't see the Haali icon pop up. When you use MPC, does the CoreAVC icon appear, and is it green or blue? (Green indicates it's using CUDA decoding.)

30MB is fine, or you can take an even shorter one. Upload it to Mediafire.

[nitro1973]

forget about vlc for avchd.
did you try Splash?

[turk690]

One can have all the correct codecs in place but if h/w is not up to par, native AVCHD playback is unpredictable (tending to the bad/unplayable). Say what you will but for any kind of productivity at all with AVCHD (including NLE), I found out two things are a MUST (NOT optional): at the minimum an Intel i7 (or i5?) processor, and an intermediate codec (like Cineform Neo Scene).

[poisondeathray]

But for simple playback, a dual core , or using dxva with a cheap $40 graphics card is sufficient. Certainly a 9600GT using MPCHC (configured to use dxva in the options) should work predictably. But turk690 is right on for the editing part, you need better hardware, or a 3rd party plugin that allows you to use graphic card in vegas/premiere (e.g divide frame)

[Desp]

I uninstalled all of my codec packs, and then reinstalled CoreAVC, now using MPC it'll load the Haali button when it's playing, and everything plays back smoothly. I guess my other question would be, how do I get Vegas to be able to play it? I searched for Divide Frame and some people said it'd make vegas crash

[creamyhorror]

You can convert it to an intermediate codec. Ut codec, Lagarith, Huffyuv or FFV1 will work - all are lossless. NeoScene falls under this category, although it isn't lossless.

If you take this route, you'll probably want to deinterlace, unless your final export format is at the same resolution and interlaced.

[Desp]

You can convert it to an intermediate codec. Ut codec, Lagarith, Huffyuv or FFV1 will work - all are lossless. NeoScene falls under this category, although it isn't lossless.

If you take this route, you'll probably want to deinterlace, unless your final export format is at the same resolution and interlaced.

The video is coming off of a Canon HD camcorder (HF20) which records at 1920x1080 and I believe it's interlaced. That being the case should I deinterlace and to which resolution? The videos will pretty much all be played on HD displays, and maybe put on blu-ray sometime in the future (played off of the PC or internet right now).

Thanks for the advice

[creamyhorror]

Blu-ray only supports 60i and 24p (or 50i and 25p in PAL land). Your video should be 60i. So you shouldn't deinterlace in the case of Blu-ray/AVCHD-on-Blu-ray authoring.

On reconsidering, I have to correct my earlier comment. Deinterlacing makes sense if you do it well (using a good deinterlacer like one of Avisynth's). If not, it might be better to leave it interlaced. Maybe someone experienced will have better advice.

[poisondeathray]

If it's 1080i30 , leave it interlaced. If you shot 1080p24, you will have to do pulldown removal because it's 24p in 30i stream. For web delivery/pc, yes you should deinterlace

Eitherway, you will need a beefier PC to do serious editing, or use cineform. I doubt you will get fast enough playback using UT or huffyuv-mt on your PC. You definitely won't using lagarith or ffv1. Editors impose extra overhead over that of simple media playback

[Soopafresh]

NeoScene will convert the AVCHD video into Cineform AVI, making Vegas workflow an actual possibility. Cineform is an extremely efficient codec. I think NeoScene has a 2-3 day evaluation period. Try it out. At $130 it might delay your need to upgrade your hardware (although a faster PC is always better when working with HD res stuff).

[Desp]

If I wanted to bypass vegas is there another program that could handle the file type without converting it first?

[Soopafresh]

The latest Premiere with all of the service packs will open MTS files. I'm sure there are several others, but the problem you face is the speed of your machine and the lack of RAM. Good luck.

[Desp]

Here's what my camcorder is recording on the highest quality setting (this was pitch black so the video isn't great)

http://www.mediafire.com/?nqzn2idynjd

That being the case, to make it 1280/720p, how would you recommend me encoding it to retain as much of the original quality?

I figured I'd go with 720p because it's pretty much the same as 1080i, right? And with 720p you can upload it to youtube

[creamyhorror]

The question is whether you are encoding for playback only or for future editing. For the latter, you shouldn't be resizing it to 720p.

720p is not pretty much the same as 1080i. They're fundamentally different in terms of how they capture moment and detail. And you can upload any resolution to Youtube; it'll resize it as it likes.

[travs69]

I'm using Pinnacle Studio 12 to edit AVCHD from my Canon HF10. Mine also came with player software to play the .mts files correctly.

[turk690]

Neo Scene is just $99 at videoguys.com. In the end, buying this codec made it possible to edit the *.avi files converted from AVCHD on a mainstream Core2Duo E7300 PC as smoothly as DV AVI ever was. If for whatever reason you do not presently want to upgrade your current vintage Pentium 4, Neo Scene will at least save your day for now. It will still be needed even if you graduate to i7.
I tried Lagarith, HuffYUV, and a Vegas-specific YUV AVI codec, but they ballooned a 2GB AVCHD file (about 16m minutes, Sony FH setting 17mb/s) to between 80GB and 100GB! Not very practical, is it? Neo Scene only created a (visually indistinguishable) 9GB file from the same at medium quality setting. For some reason the resulting files do not seem to be recognized by Pinnacle Studio.