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Playback or rendering?
These things can just be completely random (yeah, I know computers don't do random things but...)
Currently I'm on about my 20th attempt to get my current project to render. It's just a matter of gradually deleting stuff it doesn't like, but boy, it's time consuming.
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Because only the last one is in stream format I guess.
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Dreven, we're talking about a very specific problem in this thread. Yours is different.
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(Addendum - saving the project makes no difference).
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I swore I wouldn't keep picking away at this but you guys are setting an example!
To be honest I'd thought up to this point that the problem lay with the particular footage from the particular device (Panasonic GH1) especially as I've seen comments on the net that the GOP structure it produces is unusual.
However, some further tests now indicate that here at least, on my system, PD8 won't handle any video in this particular AVCHD format (1280x720 progressive 50fps).
What I did was to use another program to convert the original problem video (a series of real-world clips not the uploaded test) to the original format using that program's smart rendering. That proved that the conversion settings I used were the same as the original format (otherwise it wouldn't have smart rendered). The intermittent freezing of video when playing from one clip to the next in PD8 still happened when playing the resulting footage which isn't surprising as it ws essentially the same as the original having been smart rendered.
Then I took some full HD format AVCHD from another camcorder and using that other program converted it to the format of the problem clips (using the same settings that I'd just tested as being correct). The problem of intermittent freezing of video when playing from one clip to the next in PD8 still happened. (I should add that the conversion in the other program is from that program's timeline, creating one long clip. Then I use PD8's scene detection to break it down into the original clips again).
So that proves it's not the source but the particular format that gives trouble.
As a further test I tried to use the footage in that last test in its unconverted full HD format and it played without problems.
Next I took the original problem clips (1280 x 720) and put them through the other program's converter again, but this time with smart rendering switched off, to force a complete re-encode (which would be expected to remove anything non-standard from those clips). Once again, they would not play through without video freezing on the timeline.
Finally, I took the problem clips, and in the other program I shortened them at each end then smart rendered them to a new file, the idea being to exclude the possibility that there's some problem with the original start and / or end of the original clips. Again, in PD8, video freezes occurred with the resulting cut-down material.
So, it's clear that PD8, on this particular system at least and perhaps on some others, will not work happily with 1280x720 50fps progressive AVCHD, regardless of the source. YMMV. The fix is to convert to an intermediate format eg full HD mpeg2 and work with that. No other workaround (discounting shadow files) works every time (unless someone can come up with one!).
Anyone wanting more test footage can easily create it in the full version of the software I was using, which is quite often found on PCs and whose name has Roman associations. I'll let Dafydd have full details of the method offline.
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Doesn't help here.
More tomorrow...
Goodnight!
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Preview quality and/or cuda makes no difference here. Nor does the presence or absence of a transition. I've tried it on my laptop but that's so slow that it's really not playing the files properly at all so no conclusion can be drawn from that. (Heh, it used to be considered fast...!)
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The chief issue with this kind of format of video is that here at least, when you get to the point where PD8 plays from one clip to the next (with or without a transition) the audio carries on but the video freezes. Press stop or pause, there's some seconds of vigorous CPU usage, then one can attempt to replay again. It doesn't always happen and a better test might be putting the sample clip ten or even twenty times onto the timeline and see if it plays end to end with no video freezes.
Meanwhile I have done a complete uninstall, and deleted from the registry everything that appears to be related to PD, and uninstalled all versions of VB runtime (and ffdshow) - and the problem is still there. So that's not a solution.
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There are those who are satisfied with the general quality of AVCHD renders, and there are those who are not. I get the impression that nobody who complained before feels that the new release improves matters. The problem appears to relate to AVCHD files from specific devices.
From my devices AVCHD renders seem fine - except that there's the problem of repeated or jumpy frames where SVRT comes to a transition. That doesn't particularly surprise me - it's very hard to integrate the rendered frames with the unrendered frames at such points, and I've yet to see a program that can do it completely successfully.
Going from one iteration of a highly compressed video to another is bound to cause some quality loss. Going from a bitrate higher than that used in PD to the lower bitrate of PD is also far from ideal. Presumably there's a reason (licencing cost based??) why PD8 doesn't render at the higher rate used by certain camcorders.
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Never mind any reports from others one way or t'other, I would recommend that if feasible you download the trial and see whether it works on your system with your files. That's the only way to be sure.
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One thing I will try is the complete uninstall, registry clean, reinstall thing. Who can tell...
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Working with shadow files means you are no longer playing the problem clip, just a low-res conversion of it.
It also means that with a large number of clips, you're having to wait around while the shadow clips are created, and for some reason that seems to take longer than one would expect as compared with the performance of MediaShow Espresso in doing conversions. It's intended for users whose PCs are simply not up to AVCHD replay at all. With the excellent performance of PD8 in replaying full HD AVCHD on a Cuda / quad core PC, it completely spoils the point of using PD8 in the first place to use shadow files.
I've spent so much time on playing around with every combination and permutation of possible fixes for this that I'm now seriously behind with many other matters, but I'm not particularly blaming Cyberlink for this type of clips not working happily in PD8 - so far I've only found one NLE which seems happy to handle it with no problems (problems in others range from similar freezes, or low fps playback, or flat refusal to play at all) - and that NLE is so simplistic that it doesn't provide a solution. However, it does show that it's possible to handle this format.
I did try converting the problem material AVCHD > AVCHD with MediaShow Espresso but then PD8 smart renders it with the known problem of jumping frames at transitions, so that doesn't work.
So for the time being all that can be done is to convert to full HD mpeg2 and work with that - and MediaShow Espresso does that very quickly, and the end result is very acceptable (to me at least). But it would be nice if one day this particular flavour of AVCHD would work natively in PD8. I'm pretty sure it's being looked at.
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I suspect the references to other products above may get moderated, but I'd simply suggest to anyone considering the evaluation of any video editing program using AVCHD should search the forum of the product concerned for "AVCHD" before bothering to download it. You'll see the grief encountered by the users, which in the case of one product even extends to the users developing their own patch for the software due to the tardiness of the company in fixing the problems.
You'll probably find that the general level of AVCHD problems here is somewhat less than elsewhere.
But as we can see from sundry posts here, individuals' experiences with any product can vary widely depending on the hardware they are using, what else they have installed on it, and the source of their AVCHD footage.
If one product worked for everyone, we'd all be buying it.
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A transition has to have an overlap to work with.
In some programs, the transition when placed will reveal what is after the out point of the outgoing clip and what is before the in point of the incoming clip.
With PD8, inserting a transition will (in the case of a simple crossfade for instance) fade out the outgoing clip up to the out point you chose, and fade in the incoming clip from the in point you chose. So long as you know how it works, you choose your out and in points appropriately.
The PD8 method has the advantage that if you have allowed no overlap - in other words, you are using the full length of the original clips - it takes care of that, whereas some programs in that situation will use a still from the beginning and end of the clip, which can look rather odd.
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Well... a direct competitor to PD has it as a standard transition - and as I say, it's not like it's some hardly ever used facility - it's the absolute staple of professionally produced video and technically must be very easy to implement compared to many of the clever transitions that come with PD8 - but which you really couldn't use more than once in a while without irritating your audience more than somewhat.
However, that direct competitor doesn't like the source files from my GH1 at all, so PD8 scores well there!
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Something along those lines (thanks) seems to be what one has to do.
Method:-
1 - Edit video on video track in the usual way. When you've trimmed the clips as required (and to crossfade the audio, you must trim the clips at least a bit at each end) then ....
2 - Go through each clip and right-click-select "Split Audio" which sends the audio down to the Voice Track without creating another file. [Comment - it's a real pain to have to do this clip by clip, rather than selecting all of them and doing it in one go, but the option isn't shown if more than one clip is selected. Also, clicking the confirmation box every time seems quite unnecessary and a further obstacle].
3 - Drag each alternate clip down to the music track. Do this carefully without moving it sideways else sync to the video will be lost. [Comment - there seems to be no key combo for doing a vertical move without going sideways - I would have expected something like ctrl/drag to do this.]
4 - Now you can drag the right edge of the first clip's audio beyond the right edge of the first clip's video. Do the same for the left edge of the second clip's audo. Using the volume line or the mixer fade out the first clip's audio and fade in the second clip's audio at the point where they overlap. Voila, butt join video with smooth audio transition, just like almost all edits on the TV.
5 - With luck, if you do need to adjust your video edits, the audio edits will more or less adjust to compensate, though you may need to redo the fades at the point of change. I'd recommend saving your project to several version files (eg at the point where you finish video editing, and the point where you finish audio editing before doing anything else, etc)
BUT - good grief, that's a long winded method compared with simply dropping an audio-only transition between two clips. I really do hope Cyberlink will add this badly needed but quite simple thing before too long.
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Hmmm - is it merging frames as part of the processing, I wonder?
Just from the stills, I'm not sure that I see the use of using the 'enhance' thing anyway, but presumably you see the need at your end!
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Perhaps the one thing that makes me keep going back to "product X" is the ability in that product to join two clips together without a video crossfade (which is the type of transition, or lack of one, which you see in 99% of professional and broadcast video productions) but with the audio crossfaded to avoid a disturbance in the sound at that point.
Is there any way in PD8 to achieve this? Or any way to create or hack effects? It seems a glaring omission - video butt join with audio crossfade is the most frequently used editing technique - no point in providing all those rarely used gee-whizz transitions if the basic one isn't there.
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I've just spent a couple of hours comparing a PD8 render to AVCHD DVD and a render of the same material using competitive product "X" - I was able to go through them on 22" monitors side by side, checking individual corresponding frames - and I could see no material difference between them. In particular I was looking at textured and patterned areas, diagonals, points of fine detail, foliage, moving water, anything likely to cause the AVCHD codecs some difficulty.
I then did the same with a shorter comparison against the original clips in the two monitors side by side. Then I compared a single frame grab from the original and the PD8 render on the same monitor, to be quite sure differences in the monitors were not covering anything up.
Now none of this would be relevant unless I stated the source and bitrate of the footage - it was from a Panasonic GH1 in both 1080 and 720 resolutions, at an average bit rate of 17.
Maybe with higher bitrate material problems arise - I don't have any to test. But with my source material, fortunately, I'd say that PD8's AVCHD rendering is first class.
I could upload the captured pair of frames if anyone is that interested.
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Now if I could just get the ability of my camera to cut, split, and join the native files but in a software program in my computer it would really make editing a breeze, no re-encoding, just full clarity and definition.
Most (or many) cameras come with some sort of simple program for that purpose, but in the case of my Panasonic cameras the software isn't really worth using (though I've kept it on the PC just in case).
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The reason I was asking about the source of the 50p video is that some devices output 50p but only read the sensor 25 times per second - so you've got doubled frames at the outset, and you don't lose anything going to 25fps.
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