saving to AVCHD?

[Stanley Szpala]

I'd like to save my edited video into avchd files, but the highest bitrate for avchd is 16Mbps in Vegas Platinum Studio 9.0b. Is it equally low in Vegas Pro?

My camcorder records in 24Mbps, so I clearly am loosing on quality in my final production.

[Perrone Ford]

Even if you could save your videos at the same bitrate your camera shoots, you'd still lose information. AVC as a codec is lossy in it's nature. If you wish to save your video without further loss, the file size will increase by an order of magnitude.

How do you want to proceed?

[Stanley Szpala]

I'm new to HD video, so forgive my lack of knowledge.

I want to save finished video clips (typically several minutes long, 1920x1080) onto my hard drive, and later into a data dvd, and in the future into data blue-ray.

I realize some loss of quality is unavoidable, but I would naively think there would be little/no loss of quality for clips that consist of copy/cut/paste, as long as the bit rate is preserved. Am I wrong? If I adjust the color balance, or do other cool stuff, it's a different game, though.

I tried saving into mpeg2 at 25Mbps. It works, but I need to figure out how to combine video with audio (saved as AC3). Is there a tutorial on this issue available? Can it be done in Movie Studio Platinum?

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Stanley Szpala

I'm new to HD video, so forgive my lack of knowledge.

No need to ask for forgivemess. We are all here to learn.

Originally Posted by Stanley Szpala

I want to save finished video clips (typically several minutes long, 1920x1080) onto my hard drive, and later into a data dvd, and in the future into data blue-ray.

No problem. This is done all the time.

Originally Posted by Stanley Szpala

I realize some loss of quality is unavoidable, but I would naively think there would be little/no loss of quality for clips that consist of copy/cut/paste, as long as the bit rate is preserved. Am I wrong? If I adjust the color balance, or do other cool stuff, it's a different game, though.

There is no need to lose any quality at all. Many of us work with lossless video all the time. The tradeoff is very large file sizes. It's just a compromise we are willing to make to preserve the quality of what we do. Your idea of cut/copy/paste, not losing quality is reasonable, but not accurate. Your camera records in a format in which each frame is dependent on it's neighbors. So a change to a neighbor forces a recalculation (and recompression) to happen. This can be avoided by moving your video directly to a different codec BEFORE editing, making the changes, and then saving the file. This is how many of us work.

As far as "preserving bit rate" this is where the theory falls down. When you press record on your camera, you are presenting the encoding chip inside with a signal that is ~1500Mbps. It's job is to compress that incredibly clean signal down to ~24Mbps. A TON of loss happens in this process. You then put that 24Mbps file on the timeline, make some changes, and then send a 24mbps source with all kinds of noise, blockiness, and other artifacts to a software compressor and ask it to do the same job without introducing more noise. A nearly impossible task.

Originally Posted by Stanley Szpala

I tried saving into mpeg2 at 25Mbps. It works, but I need to figure out how to combine video with audio (saved as AC3). Is there a tutorial on this issue available? Can it be done in Movie Studio Platinum?

Mpeg2 is an even MORE lossy format than AVC. You'd need to use Mpeg2 at about 50Mbps to get quality equivalent to AVC at 24Mbps.

There is an excellent support system here. But the problem you are facing is not unique, and does have solutions. But it requires a bit of work from you, and a bit of learning. Not to mention some disk space. The world of HD is quite a bit more technical than the world of SD video.

So when you're ready to embrace a "workflow" that can preserve your quality, and get you prepared for what you want to do, let us know, and you'll find many people willing to help.

[Stanley Szpala]

Very interesting, thanks.

Is there a compromise solution that would be appropriate for me? At this point I aspire to produce video that is technically decent, but I know I'll never reach the quality of a professional film studio. Also my camcorder (Canon Vixia HF200) is not a professional one, so I can't expect miracles.

Uncompressed video would be probably impractical for me, but can it be done in Movie Studio Platinum anyway? Increasing the file size by a factor of two or four could be reasonable, if the quality gain is meaningful. I already noticed some artifacts in video of moving objects, and I realize I need to learn how to minimize these artifacts.

Are there options for saving video files in high quality that I haven't discovered yet in Movie Studio Platinum?