UVS 11.5 crashes when editing AVCHD format

[Ken Berry]

Just an interim answer... I too have a Quad 6600 computer and it works fine with AVCHD video. Mind you, as you will see from my System button, I have a separate high performance graphics card with 256 MB of its own RAM, quite apart from the 4 GB of system RAM. But I normally wouldn't think that would make any difference since I find that my HP Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz laptop with 2 GB RAM and an NVidia 8600 GT graphics card with 512 MB of onboard RAM can also handle AVCHD video quite OK without SmartProxy being activated.

That being said, I am not sure what Corel claim as their minimum system requirements for AVCHD, as opposed to high def video more generally. Certainly my now superseded P4 3.0Ghz with HT and 2 GB RAM running XP Pro could handle HD except for AVCHD. And it could even edit that using SmartProxy but not play it back smoothly.

The only thing I can think of with your having trouble playing back an AVCHD project smoothly in Project mode is in fact possibly related to your onboard graphics (though I normally would not have thought so). However, IMHO AVCHD is the greatest resource hog in the video editing world, bar none. And so you are asking your computer to play back this format on the fly to give you an idea of how your edited project might look. It could just be that the onboard graphics might not have enough oomph to do this on the fly. You could thus try to change the settings to High Quality playback. This would in effect mean the program has to render the project to a temp file, and this would take time. But it might at least give you a more stable idea of what the project looks like.

That, or accept that even with a Quad, but with onboard graphics, you might not have any alternative but to use SmartProxy.

[lb44]

Thanks Ken for your prompt response, I also have a HP laptop;Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66Ghz; ! Gig Ram; nVida GeForce 8400M 64MB DDR memory;
and it cannot play AVCHD non proxy but all systems can play and edit non HD video without a problem.
I notice Pinnacle Studio in their notes state you must have a dedicted graphics board with memory for AVCHD editing so I thing I will have to try one in my Quad Core Q6600 system.
regards
LB44

[today_on_ulead]

I'd like to comment with my experience with the brand new Panasonic HDC-SD9. Like Rickasaurus I haven't had much luck. I tried the Pinnacle software supplied with the camera - crash. Videostudio - crash. After reading above thread I had hopes for Vegas (tried Platinum,Pro) - crash, crash.

I felt like continuing to try other software when I read CNET's Crave blog written 3 weeks ago where the author stated "Then I began my attempts to open 1,920x1080 videos shot with the Panasonic HDC-SD9. In short, every application I and our Labs' tester tried--iMovie, Pinnacle Studio, Ulead Video Studio, Sony Vegas and Avid Liquid--at best could open but barely play some clips, and more often simply hung or crashed."

That being said I think I just need some patience here. Actually I am very optimistic for a ULEAD solution for the following reasons.

- When I first purchased VS10, it was because VS10 was clearly the only editing software that would work well on my old slow computer. I figured that if it could do that well on an old computer, imagine what it does on a new computer. And I was 100% right. Except for 2 problems that I reported in this VS forum (which consumed a lot of troubleshooting time), VS10 has been worth every cent and more. I cringe using anything else.

- I know the generic answer is to get a faster pc, but I have evidence that good software will do the trick. Specifically Panasonic includes software to convert the AVCHD files into MPEG2 files. It works and it works fast, but unfortunately there are only 2 settings. If Panasonic or ULEAD could just up the setting a bit, I'd be happy and then could easily do all I want in Videostudio. (Right now it all ends up maybe 20% better than SD and 80% worse than HD).

Note that with Videostudio web site, I keep clicking on 11.5 PLUS but I get directed to 11 PLUS software and the 11PLUS Powerpack so I'm hoping that they're back tweaking 11.5. As well, within my Videostudio program, starting this week I get a pop-up for 11.5 PLUS Upgrade of $59 but when I click through there is no page. On the web site I cannot find any upgrade price as well. But I will hold off until it makes sense to upgrade.

[Ken Berry]

Just a quick comment on your final point about the upgrade path. VS11.5+ does not exist as an individual package. You buy VS11+, and apply both the 6 November 2007 update patch and then the 8 Nov Power Pack, and the latter upgrades VS11+ to VS11.5+. With both applied, you will have version 11.5.0157.2 which is the latest upgrade.

But hold fire since the release of VS12 is, we believe, imminent...

[lb44]

Re: Editing Panasonic SD9 AVCHD files: Hi Ken, I have installed a GeForce 8500GT Graphics Card with 1Gig memory in my Intel Core2 Quad system and Video Studio still stops after a few seconds when playing in "project" mode using non-proxy. It did not make any difference.
VS runs fine in proxy mode and non/HD editing. As my system is similar to yours maybe its Panasonic's AVCHD format that is the problem.
Has anyone edited Panasonic's AVCHD with VS with smart proxy disabled.
Thanks for your interest
LB44

[Ken Berry]

For what it is worth -- and I suspect it *will* be interesting to you -- rickasaurus, who started this thread, has been in touch with me in the background, and asked if I could test some of his Panasonic AVCHD. He sent it to me just today (Monday 28 April). Here are the results (and remember my System details are in the relevant button below):

Have been playing around with your video as promised, but I have to report mixed, though generally positive results.

The clip you sent had the following properties:
PAL HDMV
H.264 Video, Upper Field First
24 bits, 1920 x 1080, 16:9
25 fps
Variable Bitrate Max 16,800 kbps

Dolby 5:1 channel audio,48000 Hz, Bitrate 384 kbps

I used those identical properties throughout.

The clip itself played back fine, smoothly and high quality in VS11.5+. It was also a clean reboot.

I cloned it and put the two clips in the timeline and added a simple cross fade transition. Then rendered this ('Same as first clip') to a new AVCHD file. The 8 seconds took 25 seconds to render. The resulting video played back equally fine.

I then added it to the other two clips in the timeline. I added an 8 second colour block to the start and put in a simple title with fade in and out, followed by a cross-fade. Then I arbitrarily cut the first clip and added a cross-fade. I added a 3D transition after the second clip. Then arbitrarily cut the new 8 second clip and added another transition. Then a 3 second blue colour block at the end, separated by a cross fade. Then rendered it all again to an AVCHD. The project (now approx. 25 seconds long) took 2 minutes to render.

Now the problem. After completing the render, with the new thumbnail in the library pane of VS, I tried playing it back. It started fine, but when it got to the middle, about where I had inserted the 3D transition, the whole program just closed with no error message. I tried it a couple of times and it did exactly the same thing. So I rebooted the computer, but with the same result.

Curiously, though, and more positively, I opened the new file in PowerDVD 8, and it happily played through several times, smoothly and with all transitions etc perfectly rendered. High quality too.

So the verdict is a bit mixed, it seems. VS11.5 could handle, play back, edit and render a new file. It could play back a simple newly rendered file, but folded on a longer more complex playback of a file which it had nonetheless successfully rendered. And the new file seems to be perfect and plays back happily on a software DVD player...

I should also note I sent a further message to Rick after the above, noting that all the foregoing was done without SmartProxy enabled.

One other thing which I forgot to mention to Rick, but which your msg just reminded me of: playing back the edited (not original) clip in Project mode proved to be difficult. It was erratic. Once or twice, it played back in full, but mostly it stopped at the first added transition and I got only a frozen frame, though the video was obviously continuing to play in the background until the end. Different from your own experience, it did not cause VS to crash playing back in Project mode. The crash only occurred -- but occurred each time -- I played the completed, edited and newly rendered file back in VS, but not in software DVD players, where it was perfect.

[rhjph]

I too have a Q6600 2.4GHz Quad Core with 2 GB RAM and a Radeon 1300 graphics card. I am working on a 2 hour AVCHD combined video and slide project. The VSP file takes about 8 minutes to load. The AVCHD has been captured from a Panasonic HDC-SD5. If I play the project it runs for about 15 minutes before becoming unusably jerky, whether or not Smart Proxy is enabled. If I now insert an edited clip, X2 will probably crash and I will have to wait 8 minutes for the VSP to load again. Task manager shews that (a) all processors are running more or less equally; (b) maximum CPU load is about 29%; (c) commit charge is about 1.9 GB (limit 8.2 GB, peak 2.3GB). Where is the struggle being lost?

[Ken Berry]

It is probably the length of the project. I confess that I have never done an AVCHD project which has lasted more than 15 minutes, and I try to keep them to around 10 minutes -- not so much because of the difficulty of editing/playing AVCHD, but more because I think that to retain an audience's interest, projects should be relatively short... Even if I have a longer consistent story to tell, I tend to divide it up into smaller segments, edit them, and produce each as a separate clip. Then burn all of them on one DVD.

I am surprised, though, that you are having the problem even with proxy files... They are standard definition mpeg-2s and should play back in preview mode quite smoothly... Are you sure VS has actually generated the proxy files? They take ages to produce and that would probably be several hours for a 2 hour project, even on a Quad...

[rhjph]

Thanks. This is just a travel record rather than entertainment: I agree too long for that. I'll try sub-dividing though.

I do doubt whether X2 is using Proxy Files, though the Proxy Files Manager lists them all - but there was never any meaningful delay creating them, and as I say, it doesn't seem to mattter whether I turn the function on or off.

How would I check and/or rectify the Proxy File function?