Smart render available for AVCHD files?

[tony62]

Excuse my ingnorance, but exactly what is Smart Render and how does it work.
I have never turned it off when making AVCHD files and disks. They look OK to me, but if turning it off helps the quality, then I will do it.
Thanks

[Ken Berry]

SmartRender essentially means that if you edit video in one format, and then produce a final, single edited file in that same format, then with SmartRender turned on, only those parts of the video which have actually been edited, are re-rendered. This can be important with the mpeg class of video types since it is a 'lossy' format i.e. each time it is rendered, it loses some quality. AVCHD is highly compressed, but high definition, mpeg-4 so falls into this category.

The downside of SmartRendering is that for some people, or some computers, with SmartRender turned on, the video sometimes get out of sync with the audio. Given the extreme complexity of the format, I guess etech, when he says he turns it off for AVCHD, thinks that the possibility of something going wrong its magnified. Moreover, since the AVCHD format is already high definition, then if you re-render using the same high quality settings, any loss in quality is not going to be detectable to the naked eye if the re-rendering occurs only once or twice...