Best AVCHD codec that will work with Vegas?

[The111]

I am editing AVCHD in Vegas for the first time and it is incredibly painful. Dragging the end of a clip to find a stopping point is very choppy. I used to edit MPEG-2 (.m2t) HDV all the time and it was so much faster.

I have a few codecs installed like K-Lite pack and CoreAVC, but I don't know if they're actually being utilized within Vegas. Even with quality set to absolute lowest (draft quarter quality) on my i7 6GB machine, it is still way too choppy to edit productively.

Using Win7 x64 and have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vegas 9.

Thanks!

[minidv2dvd]

no you'd have to convert to a lossless intermediate codec to make editing any easier. maybe neoscene would work for you.

[The111]

no you'd have to convert to a lossless intermediate codec to make editing any easier. maybe neoscene would work for you.

So you're saying actually convert my media files before editing in Vegas?

Is my complaint pretty standard? Is it not possible to smoothly edit .MTS in Vegas with any consumer PC these days?

[minidv2dvd]

well avchd isn't designed to be editable. it's a consumer display format. long gop and compressed. most likely vegas will only edit on i-frames, which might be the choppiness you describe. so yes converting to cineform lossless intermediate like neoscene before editing would help.

[Soopafresh]

Try the 2 or 3 day demo of NeoScene and see if it works better for you. There are other options, but they are kludgy compared to Neoscene.

[edDV]

Vegas Pro 9 will edit AVCHD but needs a better than quad core to edit as smoothly as HDV. Neoscene is very fast (all I frames) and the best current solution. Normal steps.

Capture AVCHD to HDD and archive.
Convert to Neoscene digital intermediate
Edit in Vegas
Export to format of choice.

[The111]

Vegas Pro 9 will edit AVCHD but needs a better than quad core to edit as smoothly as HDV.

What is better than a quad core? Dual quad cores? Not sure if the hyperthreading on my i7 helps...

[edDV]

Vegas Pro 9 will edit AVCHD but needs a better than quad core to edit as smoothly as HDV.

What is better than a quad core? Dual quad cores? Not sure if the hyperthreading on my i7 helps...

Future CPUs. Use an i7 if you want the best now.

Why don't you have a computer profile? If you are using an i7 and are frustrated, you only confirm my point.

[Soopafresh]

Best to put your MTS file on a separate physical hard drive (not an external USB or firewire device), then feed the file to Vegas. Even better would be a Raid0 array.

[edDV]

Best to put your MTS file on a separate physical hard drive (not an external USB or firewire device), then feed the file to Vegas. Even better would be a Raid0 array.

Disk speed isn't the issue with h.264. The 1x transfer rate is only 17-24 Mb/s (2-4MB/s). Even a slow 5400 RPM drive can handle sustained 15-22 MB/s.

The problem is h.264 takes a beefy CPU just to decode and play 1x. When editing you want to search/scan/scrub and that takes even more CPU even when only looking at I frames. Fine editing to the frame tales 3-10x scrubs and current CPUs just can't do that with h.264 so everything goes sticky and bogs down.

The digital intermediate formats convert long GOP h.264 to all I frames (larger file but still compressed). Cineform also randomizes the decode with wavelets for better filter or resize performance.

If you fully decompress, then yes, you need RAID to play 1x at 800-1,600 Mb/s (100-200MB/s) and 3-5x more for scrub.