Using SV X2 with AVCHD 1080i Format clips

[ecbritz]

I am a complete novice in the camcorder field and I really appreciate every bit of advice I get from this helpful forum. My following question requires some explanation. Thanks for your appreciated patience with the long story to follow.
The reason I bought SV X2 is that I am trying to produce good quality edited movies compiled from movie clips shot with an AVCHD camera I purchased a few weeks ago. It is a Sony HDR CX500 camcorder.
In HD mode, this camcorder produces movie clips with the extension name .m2ts (e.g. "movie1.m2ts"). These clips are in AVCHD 1080i Format.
The program supplied with the Sony camcorder, called PMB, will organize and play these ".m2ts" files beautifully on my computer (O/S Vista Ultimate). However, PMB cannot edit and join the files, i.e. build up a larger movie from different clips.
PMB does have the ability to convert a ".m2ts" file into a WMV or a MPEG-2 (i.e. HD) file.
However, when I copy these "converted" clips to Movie Maker in Windows, in order to produce a larger, edited movie, the results are disappointing.
Using the WMV conversions will give me very weak results.
Using the MPEG-2 conversions deriving from PMB will give me a so-called HD edited movie. But when this edited and compiled HD movie is played with Windows Media Player, it is full of blimps and not at all like the beautifully clear HD movies played by Sony's PMB (when playing ".m2ts" clips).
In the trial version of VS X2, I noticed that this program will see (read) a ".m2ts" file, something Movie Maker will not do, also not the HD version of Movie Maker supplied with Vista Ultimate.
Here, at last, is my question: Will VS X2 be able to make and play larger movies from the ".m2ts" clips coming from my camera? Would the quality be comparable with the quality of ".m2ts" files played by PMB?
At this stage, I cannot get VS X2 to import these files directly from my camera. But I can copy these files to VS X2 from the folder where PMB stores them.
Will the larger movies made by VS X2 be of the same quality -- when played -- as the ".m2ts" clips they derive from?
If that is the case, I am glad to have bought VS X2 and will get on with mastering VS X2, by studying the 220 page User Manual.
I realize this is a long & weary story. But please advise me about what I can expect from VS X2 used in combination with my Sony HDR CX500. Your advice will really be applied and appreciated.

[Ken Berry]

There is some good news and some bad news. First the good news is that, yes, X2 can read and edit AVCHD video clips, and join them into a new video with the same properties and effectively the same quality as the original AVCHD.

But the first bit of bad news is that you need a fairly powerful computer even to play AVCHD smoothly: at least a Core 2 Duo... The second bit of bad news is that if you use transitions with AVCHD in X2 (and in some other editing packages, though apparently not all), you get a brief blip, which can be very distracting. Look at the very long sticky post on the 'transition blip' towards the top of this forum for more information.

In fact a lot of people convert their AVCHD to HDV (high definition mpeg-2) which is equivalent in quality to the original AVCHD, and edit and use that as it does not have this transition bug.

Corel has been aware of this bug for over a year but have done nothing to correct it.

[ecbritz]

Thanks Mr. Ken Barry for your appreciated good & bad news about VS X2. I have a computer with the following processor: Intel Core2 Duo CPU (E7300 @ 2.66GHz, 2670 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)). The computer has 4GB RAM (1GB more than Vista can use) and a hard drive with 1 Terrabyte capacity. I hope this is powerful enough for VS X2. The monitor & video driver are of the same level.
The quality of an edited and compiled HD movie seems not only a matter of the video editor but also of the player used. I notice that the PMB-affiliated player program supplied by Sony for their AVCHD camcorders will play an AVCHD movie beautifully. Exactly the same AVCHD video file will be a disappointment when played with Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player. (Sony actually calls its player "Player for AVCHD", it is a separate application and it does wonders for an AVCHD movie.) I don't want to try Real Player because that company is becoming more of an adware carrier by the day. Unfortunately Sony's PMB program cannot join clips together and compile a larger movie. So I can't say I feel liberated yet, especially after reading your letter. Will keep trying possible solutions.

[mitchell65]

Hi ecbritz
I can't work out what you want to do with your final video. Play on a TV? Play on a PC? or what. If on a TV have you an HD ready TV? HAve you a Blu-Ray Player?

[ecbritz]

Hi Mitchell65,
I want to be able to create a larger AVCHD video by joining together a number of different shorter AVCHD videos. In the process I want to trim the shorter videos, add transitions etc. Then I want to play the larger AVCHD video on my desktop computer, which has a flat screen large enough for "entertainment" (watching TV etc). I am hoping for a good, blimp-free, AVCHD-quality display of my larger, compiled and edited AVCHD video. To this end I have bought VS X2, highly rated by some reviewers on the web. Although it has been whispered that Sony's entry-level "Vegas Movie Studio HD 9" -- going for much the same as VS X3 -- is currently the answer to all blimps and other problems. But first, I'm going to try out the Corel product, which seems to be in Chinese ownership these days.

[erdna]

PowerDVD8 or 9 is at least as good as the Sony PMB avchd player for PC. Further on, I suggest to read and view my post about AVCHD editing on http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... 3aa95dd62e