HDV Editing: Total Disappointment
 

(This issue should have been discussed before but I couldn't find a related thread.)

After having my first serious HDV footage with Sony HDR-FX1, I upgraded my PC for a better editing performance and bought a Intel Pentium D 820 processor (2.8 ghz, dual core), 2gb of ram and a good display adapter.

I captured my videos with Cineform AspectHD and opened the .m2t files in Vegas. Very slow playback performance makes the editing nearly impossible. Then I tried Premiere 2.0 and Edius. Nothing changed, the results are still surprisingly horrible.

If I cannot solve this problem, I will not be able to edit my HDV videos and go back for MiniDV? Then why did I choose FX1? I hope there is a solution for this issue, more effective than waiting for Vegas 7...

Thanks in advance for your interest.

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Btw, I can play my .m2t files with VLC player very smoothly. I can even watch more than one movie simultaneously without having any problems.
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Converting .m2t to .avi with Cineform seems to solve the problem but the file size increases more than 5 times. Still hoping to edit .m2t files :)

I don't think you should be having that problem. I have a computer that's obsolete by today's standards and I can edit HDV natively in PPro 2.0 at an acceptable speed. I have a 2.26ghz P4, 1gb ram. That's strange to me that a computer as fast as yours is having problems. Maybe there's something I'm missing though. Try defragging your hard drive, make sure you have enough space on the hard drive that your OS is on, etc, the usual things.

Dear Ozan and Chris.

Ozan, editing ".M2T" files, which are MPEG2 Transport Stream files, is painful, even with a very fast computer.

While you have a Pentium D, each core only runs at 2.8GHz. Vegas 6.0, in my opinion, will only use one core for basic editing. Thus, for basic editing in Vegas, you have a 2.8GHz processor.

Of course, this may change with Vegas 7.0, as Vegas may have developed code to use multiple processors while performing basic editing. (I have no knowlege of what is in Vegas 7.0.)

I have experience editing HDV (Canon's flavor)(".M2T files) with a 3.4GHz system. It is painful.

Yes, your answer is to use Cineform. This solves the problem. The tradeoff is that the files are larger.

Ozan, I do not think there is anything wrong with your computer. Your experience is completely normal. I recommend that you use Cineform.

HDV has more data, it is much more highly compressed, and uses an entirely different compression scheme in order to capture all of the extra detail. The price to pay for this is an extra step after capturing your files, and also having larger ".avi" files.

There is a product available from Cineform which allows you to capture and convert to ".avi" in one step. Depening on your urgency to edit, this may be helpful to you.

CineForm AVI is definitely the way to go. My computer is considered underpowered by today's standards -- 2.66 GHz Pentium 4, non-hyperthreaded and 1 GB RAM -- but I can edit CineForm AVIs in Premiere 1.5.1 even faster than ordinary DV files. Titles, dissolves and AHD color corrections all display in realtime with CineForm, whereas ordinary DV files need to render. I wouldn't even attempt to edit HDV M2T files directly with this setup.

Fortunately with CineForm I don't have to. Absolutely love it.

Using AMD 3800+
 

I'm using an AMD 3800+ with 2 gigs memory, and a PCI express video car. Having gotten a hint from various forums that the Pentium duals core not primed for HDV editing, I went that way. I can edit and render in HDV "native" on a level similar to what I was doing DV SD a few years back with my Pentium 1.7. With Cineform, performance improves. Choosing Cineform is a quality decision.

Thank you very much for your replies.
And HDV camcorder producers should thank Cineform :)

I'm confused: did you capture the HDV files in M2T format or Cineform AspectHD? I have a computer with the same processor as you and it can handle one layer of native HDV okay in Edius, or two layers if I capture to the Canopus HQ format instead. In any case, HDV in its native form is very difficult to edit effectively, so use Aspect HD or Canopus HQ for better performance. Buy bigger hard drives to handle the increased file size: I find 250-300GB to be about right for a typical wedding video.

Dear Kevin,

I captured the HDV files in .m2t format with Cineform AspectHD but didn't convert them to .avi and tried to edit the .m2t files. That didn't work, I switched to .avi and it worked fine.

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By the way, I have some problems in Premiere 2.0, too. I'm going to write this in Premiere section of the forum but I think you may also know about this issue. Some colorful horizontal lines appear on the preview while editing Cineform Avi files. I enabled the GPU acceleration from the related menu and the lines disappeared. However, when I add a video effect, lines come up again. Any suggestions? :)

Some earlier versions of Aspect HD had problems similar to this. Make sure you're running the latest version.

Why don't you try Gearshift? It is cheap and easy to use. I think Cineform is over-priced.

Ozan,

If you want to edit natively your M2T files, try "WOMBLE Multimedia Inc" product called "MPEG Video Wizard". ( just Google it ).
They offer a fully functional trial version, so you can make up your mind. And if you decide to buy , its VERY cheap (79$ or so..)
It provides decent effects, when feasible it keeps the original stream ( fast and no re-compresison artifacts) and performs very well on my low power portable.
I use it to de-rush and make quick-and-not-so-dirty samples.

And you can still work further to refine your stuff with PPro. Which, indeed with Cineform extensions is the high-end environment of choice !

Alas, Cineform seems to have a virtual monopoly on the HDV editing market.

Please read the thread concerning editing HDV witht he new Vegas 7

I just used it today, and I get full 29.97fps play back with mt2 files and only 20fps or worse with the Cineform. My rig is 3.2ghz-2mb ram.

Simply stated, the new Vegas 7 is amazing.

Read the thread for more details.

That's very unusual because your system is plenty powerful enough. If you purchased AspectHD, you should definitely put in a support ticket. (That is, if you care anymore now that you're using Vegas.)

Yes, it seems slow. Perhaps I will research it more.

I'd like both to work the best they can, but the new Vegas 7 impressed me today.