New Info re: AVCHD transition "blips"

[oRBIT2002]

I'm so disappointed. I purchased this software yesterday, unaware of the "blip"-problem (I should have google'd more..).
I discovered this blip-problem aswell, during transitions and titles, and I've got 1080i HD material from my Canon HF-200 camera.
The answer from Corel is that it's something wrong with the files, but by reading in this forum, obviously there's something wrong with everyone's cameras..
The problem has been around for more than a year, I find it quite weird that they haven't located and fixed this issue yet.

[Ken Berry]

pwholzel -- have you tried using the overlay tracks? I mean, if you have one AVCHD clip in one overlay track and the second in a second overlay track, with the end of one and the beginning of the other overlapping, though in separate tracks, do you still get the blip? I don't, but then again I don't this very often.

[pwholzel]

Hi Ken,
That would mean that the two tracks would dissolve into each other, right? Even if this does work, that would mean every cut would have to be a dissolve, which I wouldn't want. But thanks for your suggestion.

[Xyzzy2]

BTW, anyone has seen a list of VSX2 supported camcorders??? The closest statement I could find is "all new AVCHD camcorders".

[Xyzzy2]

BTW, anyone has seen a list of VSX2 supported camcorders??? The closest statement I could find is "all new AVCHD camcorders".

I've submitted a support ticket with a simple question about it. We'll see.

[pvreditor]

FWIW, I'm disappointed that there isn't a fix for this seemingly basic problem after more than a year. However, I've been doing all my editing from AVCHD to WMV, and that works perfectly -- no glitch! It's not the best for motion (WMV is 1080/30p, and my Canon HF11 is 1080/60i), but it still looks good and it's easier to distribute to friends. I've been uploading HD videos to YouTube and they look great there, despite being converted to 720p.

I know that editing to WMV is not what many of you need, but it will work for casual videos and YouTube uploads.

--Bob

[laidback]

FWIW, I'm disappointed that there isn't a fix for this seemingly basic problem after more than a year. However, I've been doing all my editing from AVCHD to WMV, and that works perfectly -- no glitch! It's not the best for motion (WMV is 1080/30p, and my Canon HF11 is 1080/60i), but it still looks good and it's easier to distribute to friends. I've been uploading HD videos to YouTube and they look great there, despite being converted to 720p.

I know that editing to WMV is not what many of you need, but it will work for casual videos and YouTube uploads.

--Bob

Yeah, Well' Wait until you see them videos played on a 60" HD monitor with a 7.1 THX certified capable Sound system, Err~not that I am bragging..

So I would suggest one never deletes ones raw video's, so that one day one will be able to create a video that will be EXPERIENCED at it's full potential.. I repeat - so that the recorded event is once again EXPERIENCED at it's full potential <mwah~hey!>..

Cheers,

Pete..

[Clevo]

I keep reading this thread but have nothing to add to it because I still work in SD formats.

but....

Having spoken to other editors about this problem what we come back to is perhaps it has something to do with the way AVCHD organises the GOP's and then the algorithym used to interpret them makes an error at transition points where the cut/transition start point; is in the middle of a GOP sequence.


Can an experiment be performed to test this theory and paying particular attention to where in the transition in the GOP sequence begins?

[pvreditor]

Having spoken to other editors about this problem what we come back to is perhaps it has something to do with the way AVCHD organises the GOP's and then the algorithym used to interpret them makes an error at transition points where the cut/transition start point; is in the middle of a GOP sequence.

If this was the problem, than I would expect glitches when rendering to WMV files. But when I render my AVCHD video to WMV, it's clean as a whistle... no glitch. The glitch isn't visible in the Smart Proxy files I use to edit the video. It's only visible when I render from AVCHD to AVCHD.

VideoStudio handles the AVCHD GOP structure well enough to render correctly to WMV. If it did AVCHD properly, this would be completely fantastic software.

--Bob

[Clevo]

Having spoken to other editors about this problem what we come back to is perhaps it has something to do with the way AVCHD organises the GOP's and then the algorithym used to interpret them makes an error at transition points where the cut/transition start point; is in the middle of a GOP sequence.

If this was the problem, than I would expect glitches when rendering to WMV files. But when I render my AVCHD video to WMV, it's clean as a whistle... no glitch. The glitch isn't visible in the Smart Proxy files I use to edit the video. It's only visible when I render from AVCHD to AVCHD.

VideoStudio handles the AVCHD GOP structure well enough to render correctly to WMV. If it did AVCHD properly, this would be completely fantastic software.

--Bob

I'm not sure if that's what I would expect since WMV would be a complete re-build of GOP structure whereas if it's from same to same you have missing frames from a cut or a re-rendering where a transition begins/ends

[dalemccl]

I had submitted a problem report to Corel earlier this year about the AVCHD transition blip problem, which led to them asking me to post a message in the forum requesting that users of various camcorders upload test tiles to the Corel ftp site. Many of you did so. Last week I updated my problem report to ask Corel for the status of a fix for this problem. Here is the reply I received today.

----------------------------------------------
"After several testing from our department regarding this issue, we have concluded that due to proprietary encoder that Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 has, some AVCHD camcorders may encounter incompatibility issues between AVCHD camcorder's codec and VideoStudio's encoder.

The workaround here before editing the AVCHD video is to re-render the whole AVCHD video produced by your AVCHD camcorder using VideoStudio Pro X2 while Smart Render is disabled. Then, edit the re-rendered AVCHD video by adding transition effects while Smart Render is enabled."
-------------------------------------------

If I am interpreting this correctly, they are saying their encoder has a problem handling the video from "some AVCHD camcorders". (My impression has been that it has a problem with almost all AVCHD camcorders - Sony and Canon for sure, and maybe others.) There was no indication of an intention to fix the problem. Do any of you interpret their message differently than I do?

Their suggested work-around is to render the AVCHD video from the camcorder with smart-render disabled, but they do not say what format to render it to. For those of us who want to end up with AVCHD on standard DVD discs for playback with a blu-ray player, I am not sure that there is a work-around, especially if we do not want to degrade the video quality by doing multiple renders.

[Ken Berry]

They say:

Then, edit the re-rendered AVCHD video by adding transition effects while Smart Render is enabled.

So it is quite clear they mean re-render to AVCHD...

It could, of course, work, though I personally don't have the time just now to try it out!!

But at the same time, I would not worry too much about one re-render in terms of loss of quality. There will be some loss, yes, but given the extremely high quality of the original AVCHD, I doubt anyone could detect the loss with the naked eye if you use exactly the same properties as the original for the re-render...

[dalemccl]

Hi Ken,
I agree that the quality is indistinguishable from the original AVCHD clips if a project is burned directly to a hybrid AVCHD disc (i.e. a regular DVD disc with AVCHD on it). However, I have found that rendering the original AVCHD clips to an AVCHD file, with smart-rendering off, as they suggest, results in a file that plays at a significantly lower bitrate than the original clips, and the drop in quality is quite noticeable. I don't even have to look close to see the degradation. My Sony AVCHD clips are 15-17 Mbps. A VS rendered AVCHD file plays at 9-12 Mbps, even though I specify 18,000 bps and 100% quality in the settings for Share/Create Video File/AVCHD.

In a thread I started earlier this year, I believe there was agreement about this.

http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php ... highlight=

Since your interpretation of the Corel's work-around suggestion is they are suggesting rendering the original clips to an AVCHD file, I will try that. But I suspect it will result in noticeably lower video quality in the rendered file. When that file is then put into a project time line, edited, and burned directly to an AVCHD disc, there would be no further degradation, but the disc would reflect the lower bitrate and video quality of the rendered file.

[dalemccl]

Well, I started to try Corel's work around but realized a problem. At first I was going to put the all the original clips in a project time line, then render an AVCHD video file, which is what I thought they were suggesting. But I realized that the rendered file could not be subsequently edited to add transitions because that file would be one big single clip that combined all the original clips.

So I thought perhaps they were suggesting batch converting the AVCHD clips to individual AVCHD files. But "Batch Convert" doesn't have an AVCHD output choice. It has "mpeg 2" as an output choice, which includes .m2ts among other file extensions, but the settings choices don't appear to be consistent with AVCHD.

So the only way I can think of is to add one original clip to a project time line and render an AVCHD file from it. Then delete that first original clip from the time line and put the second original clip in the time line and render an AVCHD file from it. And so on, until all the original clips have been rendered to individual AVCHD files. Then start a new project and add all those rendered AVCHD files to the time line and put the transitions in. Quality issues aside, that is a very tedious process.

Can anyone think of a better work flow than what I outlined?

[michal_h]

Can anyone think of a better work flow than what I outlined?

The Corel's workflow is really horrible

As all new versions of competitive videoediting softwares are still not able to edit avchd files with smart rendering we have to believe new videostudio will have no glitch problem.