CS5 + AVCHD = Disaster (Same clips work perfectly in Vegas) - EDIT: Saved by NeoHD
 

Just wanted to see what luck others are having.

I am playing with 1920x1080 AVCHD files with 5.1 channel sound.

Premiere just dies. I press play, maybe it will play, maybe it won't... and if it does, it will be after 5 seconds of thinking about it.

I also get popping sounds on the audio track that are not there in the source file.

I downloaded a trial of Vegas Pro 9 to see if it was my system letting me down: smooth, instantaneous playback of AVCHD with no audio issues at all.

So I am seriously considering buying a Vegas license just for the AVCHD because it makes Premiere look like windows movie maker.

I just wish I knew how to work Vegas - it is by far the least user friendly program I have ever encountered.

UPDATE:

Installed Cineform NeoHD v5.whatever and put the same clips into a CS5 Cineform timeline and I get instantaneous smooth. full screen preview monitor, OpenGL assisted, MPE assisted playback at full resolution.

Why didn't Premiere do this on its own wuithout NeoHD?

O well, what do I care, I own NeoHD.

Thanks again, Cineform, for being all that Premiere was supposed to be.

... audio still clicks randomly though...

John,

I'm editing AVCHD off my Panasonic HMC41 at 1080p on CS5 without Cineform with no problems. I think I'm just using normal stereo instead of using 5.1 channel audio.

I'm running a fast-ish Intel i7, 4GB RAM, no RAID array and a modest Radeon graphics card.

Not sure if that's much help, but it shows it can be done!

John,

Got some thoughts of my own on your situation (as it relates to mine).

Having just purchased CS5 MC, I'm coming from the Vegas world thinking it was the easiest vid edit program I've ever tried. Premiere may prove me wrong, but not being able to find a User's Manual isn't helping.

As for AVCHD with Premiere, there's a hit, but it's not that different than Vegas 9e. What is weird is the kaleidoscope color effect you get in Adobe while running it real-time on the timeline. In my shroom days, that might have been fun; but today, I'd like to see both Vegas and Adobe improve here. However, in their mutual defenses, AVCHD is the best tight-encoding codec I've edited to date. Fact is, I wish my Canon DSLR used it so I'd have more latitude in post. But compressed as it is, it's a nightmare to unwrap real-time for any current processor. I work off a Sony - VAIO Laptop (Model: VPCF126FM/B) / Intel Core™ i7 Processor / 16.4" 1920X1080 Display / NVIDIA M310 with the CS5 acceleration in the latest firmware / 6GB tri-memory / fast, replacement 500GB drive… And that's just my laptop. Point is that I'm used to fast computers, and yet the AVCHD footage is wrapped so tightly that every machine I've loaded with Vegas and CS5 (3, including trials to run tests) struggles to deal with AVCHD (one stream) and the typical CC and effects I add. The best proof is the expansion ratio using Cineform's newest codec set to best in NeoScene. The Canon DSLR footage expands, but only by <2X (although larger to begin with); whereas the AVCHD my Sony camera captures expands by 3X-5X. CCing the transformed footage seems to support the AVCHD wrapping potential.

As for my question(s), I'm curious to know how AVCHD renders directly out of Premiere? If you have any insights on this, I'd like to know as there may be times I can't use my trusted Cineform codec for anything but the final master, well after a demo gets handed to someone.

Looking forward to the CS5 potential, but dern if I'm not struggling just to find good guidance.

Brad

(P.S. I'll probably die still retaining a Vegas license, if for no other reason than the Noise Reduction plug-in. And good luck finding anything that does audio better than Sony / Sonic Foundry (the former developer who made the audio editing side as good as software gets).

John what are your PC specs because I have dropped Cineform as I have no need for the product now.

Intel i7 and 12GB of ram will cut with AVCHD without any problems. MPE is a bonus!

Unfortunately I couldn't tell you. I still haven't managed to get through an AVCHD project far enough to render an output! I have Cineformed them all successfully and have been happy with the final product.

David,

I'm running dual Xeon 5450 quad cores at 3.00GHz on a Supermicro X7DWA-N. 20GB RAM, GTX480, 300GB Velociraptor system drive, 4TB RAID 0 storage. Pretty good system I think. But apparently not good enough or AVCHD...

John,

I'm running an Intel i7 overclocked to 3.8ghz at the moment with 12GB of DDR3 and Nvidia 275 with the MPE hack and my system handles AVCHD fine so there must be something else wrong as my system is well under the spec of yours.

Have to got MPE enabled via the cuda text file? Even without that it should power through those clips.

Where is the AVCHD footage from? Camera wise?

Cineform is a good choice because Premiere isn't suitable for native AVCHD due to the chroma bug documented here...

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...hroma-bug.html