Panasonic SD9 capture AVCHD

[Ken Berry]

Re Magix -- why did you create an AVI? And what kind of AVI was it? In any case, I thought the idea was to try to get a program which could handle S9 AVCHD in that format. Magix 14 Pro Plus is certainly supposed to handle AVCHD. But the question is whether it can edit, play and reproduce in the same format a new AVCHD file from the S9 source... Anyway, I am currently downloading the trial version of if and will report back.

[Astacus]

Ken, I know so little about this area that I wouldn't know what would be a serious test. I was just seeing if the software would import AVCHD and then write out any useable file -I mostly use AI in presentations. At the moment, I have no HD TV, and no specific interest in home viewing - this may change. I am sure that your tests will be more revealing though.

It's a big download isn't it?

[Ken Berry]

Yes, and I was doing it overnight, using a tried and trusted download manager program. But it stopped at 39%, and the download manager won't or can't restart it. Looks as thought I will have to start it again from the beginning!

[Ken Berry]

Finally downloaded Magix trial. Importing AVCHD into required special instructions. Using the S9 files, each time I tried to import a file which was 11 minutes long, Magix froze and I had to use Task Manager to close it. I tried that around 5 times. Next, I tried importing a file which was only 1 minute long. This time I got a message saying the file might not be in a form suitable for frame by frame editing -- did I want to convert it to a format which would make it so? (No details given as to that format.) I said OK, and it took around 3 minutes to "mixdown" (the term used) the AVCHD to what turned out to be high def mpeg-2 (1920 x 1080i VBR max 15,000 kbps cf the original max. 16800 kbps).

The other major change was that it converted what was UFF to Lower Field First. However, when I played that new file back on my PlayStation, playback quality was superb. I also inserted the original disc with the original AVCHD files and played back the relevant one. I could not tell the difference in terms of quality.

I then inserted that new .mpg file into VS11.5+ and it had no trouble with it at all -- played fine in Project and Clip mode, and I could not get it to crash VS in any of the other circumstances mentioned above in earlier posts.

So that is at least some progress, in terms of excellent quality in the Magix conversion. But the remaining problem for Magix seems to be fact that it cannot import even 11 minute files, and there could be lots of those...

[olegyk]

I have a Panasonic SD5, which I believe shoots in HG mode similar to SD9, at a rate of 11-12 Mbit/s. However, although it is not the highest 17 Mbit/s of SD9, there are a lot of crashes when used in VS 11+ with upgrade to AVCHD.

I would like to use native AVCHD with some reasonable effects, titles and audio to preserve encoding and resolution in order to save time and quality. Going to MPEG2 esp. of DVD resolution as suggested in other posts is out of question for reasons of enormous time and quality sacrifice--I could use other and better software if I had to resort to transcoding; I buy into Ulead only for the promise of native AVCHD editing.

I have a Core Duo 2 2GHz 2Gb RAM intel computer with Windows XP.
The crashes occured at several places: going to Audio, starting to create AVCHD DVD, and couple of other places. I will start to pay more attention.

So one thing is a way to extend to Ulead the urgency of better testing their software with various AVCHD formats. Panasonic (a hardware company) did a great job with HD Writer--much faster in palyback (full frame rate) and going between varios edit modes and encoding to HD and MPEG DVD; not crashes what so ever. So software can perfectly do if done properly.

The second is, in the meantime, do some workarounds. Has anybody tried the "Smart Proxy" where it down-converts frames to 325 x 240 resolution just for editing to compensate for performance but then actually encodes the final result in HD smartly?

Otherwise I am perfectly happy with AVCHD format and the camera. I hope the software will catch up. But for convenience and quality, it a great way to capture the memories now and worry about processing it later.

[Ken Berry]

I agree with you on a number of fronts. AVCHD *is* probably the wave of the future as we move into solid state on a number of other fronts. And its quality is excellent, especially when compared against its lower bitrates and file size. But I also blame the camera manufacturers for launching the technology on a public which has no idea how difficult the format is to edit and how demanding it is of computer resources. Yes, I acknowledge that Panasonic in particular has done the right thing in at least providing a basic program for importing the AVCHD from their cameras and editing it. And the other software companies are scrambling to catch up.

But heck, the software companies can't be totally blamed, as you seem to be doing. There are still only a small handful of companies out there who even claim to be able to handle AVCHD, and they all appear to have problems. Yes, the Panasonic software works, but it is with Panasonic cameras. Heck, Adobe does not even seem to accept AVCHD as input as yet, though Premiere Pro 3 can at least output to AVCHD. But it does so in two completely separate audio and video streams (and resulting files) using the .m4v extension which only seems to be recognised by its own authoring software.

And that is one of the points made in earlier threads -- Panasonic, as they did in the past with some of their mini DV cameras, also use their own proprietary technology on their cameras which may not be compatible with other AVCHD technology. And companies like that are often reluctant to share that technology with software companies.

The point is that VS11.5+ does at least seem to work with at least some AVCHD from at least some cameras. I have edited, joined, added titles etc to AVCHD from a non-Panasonic camera (Canon) using VS11.5+ in real time, and output it to a new AVCHD files with no crashes (although, admittedly, one playback in Project mode hung halfway through, though the program did not crash and the end product played smoothly). I also now regularly use VS11.5+ to convert my own HDV high def video to a hybrid AVCHD DVD. While the process is rather slow, it works without a single crash. What is more, I can build proper HD menus for these discs using VS11.5+, which is, I think, more than any of the competitors which claim AVCHD capabilities can do currently.

Yes, there is certainly room for improvement, and I hope and pray that VS12 will do a much better job all round than VS11/11.5+, and particularly with reference to AVCHD. But I would not be so quick to lay all the blame only at the feet of the software developers...

I have, by the way, used SmartProxy, but I only did so once just to see how it worked because, Panasonic video apart, my Quad seems to be able to handle AVCHD without SmartProxy enabled. It was slow in creating the proxy files even on my Quad, but after that it worked as advertised. The actual application of the edits to the real HD files was also slow. But I have found that any editing/authoring which involves AVCHD (Panasonic software aside) is slow. The other day I was trying out the Nero capacity to produce hybrid AVCHD discs on standard DVDs. I was using 3 files totalling 34 minutes of video to be burned on a single layer DVD. And it took 7 hours for the conversion on my Quad. Admittedly, I was using two pass encoding, but even so, that is an incredibly long time and much longer than VS11.5+ takes, though that is slow too!

I should also add that I was not using Panasonic AVCHD, but from a Canon camera. But SmartProxy worked... Give it a try yourself and please report back. As you can see, we are all just learning to deal with AVCHD...

[olegyk]

Ken, thank you for reply. I will do more testing and come back with results a little later.

Here I would like to address the blame issue. (1) Panasonic is one of the founders (with Sony) of AVCHD format and doubt that they would even casually be introducing incorrect or non-standard bits in their AVCHD stream; (2) Panasonic proved with their software that fluent crash-free real-time viewing and processing is possible with HD Writer; (3) AVCHD and it various profiles is a standard that is available for software developers; (4) there may be variations in the standard (different profiles, constant of VBR encoding, etc.) and (5) since it works with Canon output and crashes on Panasonic, Ulead only properly tested their software with limited samples of output; (6) nevertheless Ulead claims that their software supports AVCHD in general and not just Canon. I could go on, but I think the point is clear.

With some software development background and I believe that it should be easy to identify and fix those issues, provided that enough proper testing is done. There aren't so many samples needed: Sony, Panasonic, Canon. And this is just a data format, albeit with high data rate, but this is much easier problem compared to hardware compatibility, drivers, video cards etc.

I find it interesting that you blame electronics manufacturers for delivering to us more advanced technology earlier. On the contrary, I view it as a very good thing: bring it on. I was totally amazed with convenience and performance of these little camera devices. Now software needs to prove that they can catch up.

[Ken Berry]

No - I was not blanket blaming the hardware manufactuers. But I *do* think they have, jointly, been guilty of advertising the great advantages of AVCHD (and I agree it is the wave of the future!) without one word about the current difficulties of dealing with it on the great majority of computers and (with the exception of Panasonic) the majority of software. That is all I was saying. Yes, the software manaufacturers are falling over themselves to catch up with the technology and some (and I include Corel in this) have got further than others... whatever the continuing shortcomings.

If you find a program, apart from the admittedly otherwise basic Panasonic one, that does a good job with AVCHD across the board, then please let us know. And I am not being snide here. I am very serious. More hands make light work and all that...