importing avchd in to vegas?

[liverlipsyyz]

hi. great forum y'all have here. looks excellent. i am a newbie and have a question. i have a sony handycam and sony vegas. i tried importing the avchd directly in to sony vegas but when i tried working on the clip it was difficult because it would not play back smoothly. is there something i need to do in vegas with avchd before i can work on the file? if i convert the avchd to avi with pmb software (comes with the handy cam) and then import it to vegas everything works fine but i hate having to wait up to an hour just to convert 20 minutes of avchd with the pmb software that comes with the handycam. i guess there are two things i am getting at:

1) if i am just uploading to youtube do i need to work with avchd to upload high def or can i convert to avi?
2) is there a way to work with avchd in vegas so that things work smoothly or is there a way vegas can convert the file to avi?

thanks for any help you can offer!

~liver

[Baldrick]

1. Well, if you want it in HD on youtube you must edit in HD or else can you convert the HD to avi and edit in Vegas.
2. Faster computer. Whats your current setup?

[aedipuss]

an intermediate codec to convert the avchd before editing might help. cineform neoscene is popular, but not free. it converts the avchd to an editor friendly nearly lossless avi that is easy for the editor to work with.

or like baldrick mentioned, a dual chip i7 might work, but even then transitions would not display smoothly.

[liverlipsyyz]

1. Well, if you want it in HD on youtube you must edit in HD or else can you convert the HD to avi and edit in Vegas.
2. Faster computer. Whats your current setup?

thanks. if i convert the hd to avi then it won't be in hd to upload to youtube, correct?

[aedipuss]

HD refers more to the size 1920x1080 or 1280x720 than the type of container the video is in. the avi files converted by neoscene will still be HD as they will maintain their original size.

youtube works better and displays a better video if the source files were shot progressive video, and uploaded as progressive. make sure your cam is set that way.

[guns1inger]

Try dropping the quality of the preview back down to a lower level. That should smooth out the playback. However if you put your PC details in your profile we could tell you if your system is even up to AVCHD editing or not.