AVCHD confusion
 

I have a HP Workstation with a Xeon and 8 Gigs of RAM, running both Windows XP and Windows 7. On the XP side I have Vegas 8.0c 32-bit and on the 7 side I have Vegas 8.1 64-bit.

Today a client came in with 1920x1080 AVCHD files which from my understanding should work quite well with Vegas. However on the XP/Vegas 8.0c side I can import the files and drop them on the timeline but as soon as I try to do anything including down-res Vegas just crashes. Not too surprised considering the RAM issue in 32-bit. BUT, on the Win7/Vegas 8.1 side, Vegas does not even recognize the AVCHD file. It says it's an unsupported format so I can't even import the files.

Any ideas as to why Vegas would be having problems with AVC at all?

What cam did the avchd files come from?
Will VLC player open them?
In VLC what does the codec information say?
A few weeks ago, I had one file that crashed vegas whenever i browsed to it to open it. Could not work it out, moved the file to a diff drive, all was good. Dont know why, might be worth trying.

Vegas 8.1 was not fully fleshed out. So no surprise it won't handle the AVCHD files. And 1080p in Vegas 8. Memory problems galore.

No clue what camera shot it. The client just brought me the files (and trying to get real info out of clients can be somewhat frustrating.) I don't use VLC but MediaInfo is telling me it's AVC 4:2:0 and not much more than that.

I did try moving it to another drive but it's the same result.

Perrone... yeah I'm not surprised at 8.0c either and the memory issue. But 8.1? Really? You'd think they have thought of that. Guess it's time to head up to 9.0 maybe that'll help.

I'm cutting several flavors of AVCHD on VP9.0. You MIGHT want to stop at 9.0b unless you have a pressing need for 9.0c

-P

Stop in Vegas 9.0b ?
 

Hi Perrone, why did you say stop in Vegas 9.0b?

I said stop at 9.0b if you can, because 9.0c seems to cause some trouble with certain kinds of AVCHD files. Especially the Panasonic GH1.

Do you have older versions of Vegas? V5 is the most stable of all. I've had stuff that only opens in 5 and crashes all other versions up to 9c, I transcoded to CF or something else in v5 and reopened in 9c.

Version 5 wouldn't support any of the formats I use. I have V6, V7, V8, V8.1, V9

I think I lied, I used V6 to open and transcode some unstable files. I have heard V5 is the most stable though. Some Soundies still use it.

I still think it's a bit poor when Vegas 8 crashes on AVCHD even though it claimed that it would handle it when it was released.

Now they expect you to go out & buy Veg 9 even though you are otherwise happy with Veg 8. They should put out some sort of upgrade just for this without having to go to the expense of a whole new version with features you may not want.

RonC.

Update
 

Well this was not fun to learn. On the WinXP side I also have Adobe Premiere which for some reason pulled in the AVCHD just fine. Working with it was still a pain because of the RAM issue. But, I rendered out the AVCHD files to the exact same file (AVCHD) into a different drive, opened up Windows 7 with Vegas 8.1 and sure enough those new AVCHD files went in and I could cut away to my hearts content.

Absolutley strange. It had to be something with the clients camera or something. If it's not one thing it's another.

Thanks guys for ideas and info.