"thumbs" up
 

Thanks, Robin and Mark. I'll have a look at the West Dig Media Player. Do you mean I can "burn" my edited and menued project to a usb drive instead of a DVD or Bluray disk? This would then play like a DVD in the WD media player with HDMI to set? If so, what software enables such a "burn" to thumb (usb drive)?

Jim

Hardware for AVCHD editing and ??? authoring
 

Thanks, Larry - I'll check it.

This is where I think I am going with my hardware setup. Can I get opinions from anyone who will give me one on what will help my video editing and bluray authoring speeds and what might be useless in the package shown below. I suspect I will be trying vegas and, perhaps c4, in the future as my patience and time allows. I intend to secure Neo Scene and test the avchd to avi to blueray scenario described earlier. In the end I want to continue the process of shooting avchd video and creating an assortment of menued bluray or avchd disks playable on the bluray player. Sooo, for starters, how does my proposed hardware set up look? Comments, please.

• CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-965 Extreme Edition 3.2 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
• CD: LG GGW-H20L 6X INTERNAL SUPER MULTI BLUE BLU-RAY DISC REWRITER & HD DVD-ROM DRIVE (Black Color)
• CD2: Sony 20X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
• FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
• HDD: Single Hard Drive (300GB Western Digital Velocity Raptor 10,000RPM SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache WD3000GLFS
• HDD2: Extreme Performance (RAID-0) with 2 Identical Hard Drives (2TB (1TBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
• MOTHERBOARD: MSI X58 Platinum Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/ eSATA,Dual GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394a,&7.1Audio
• MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) DDR3/1800MHz Triple Channel Memory Module
• OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit Edition)
• POWERSUPPLY: 800 Watts Power Supplies BUSINESS DAYS
• LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
• SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
• TVRC: TV Tuner with FM Stereo + Remote Control (watch and record TV on your PC)
• USB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
• VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX295 X2 1.7GB 16X PCIe Video Card [+284] (EVGA Powered by NVIDIA

What software will take advantage of the power of this video card in particular?

Thanks much,
Jim

Jim, you just export your finished video from your NLE in whatever format you choose. I tend to use mpeg2 which gives a bigger file than H.264, but I think it looks better. You can then just drag and copy the file onto your USB drive - either a little memory stick type or something like the Western Digital Passport 500GB USB storage device which is powered from the USB socket on your PC or the WD Media Player.
Dead simple...

Overkill, I beleive!
 

Jim,
That is why I suggested that you read the DIY articles. They put together a great editing system and test and review 3 or 4 video cards with the different editing suites. Some of the suites (Vegas, for example) do not appear to take advantage of the video accelerators, the others may favor one card over another.
That is why I listed the components that I bought; the i7 920, 6 gig 1600 Corsair memory, the ASUS P6T,... One well chosen video card will be more than enough. Go to the VideoGuys forum and you will save enough money to buy the suite of your dreams!
Lp

Jim - I did a few tests today with the media player. I took a DVCPRO HD clip (720p60, 100 Mbs) and used Procoder 3 to convert it into MPEG-2 and into WMV. Both files were then transferred onto a USB thumb drive, and both played very nicely with the media player onto my 40" LCD TV via the HDMI port. There is a pause/play button on the remote, and you can select which file to playfrom the main menu. Both files seemed about equally sharp, but I'm going to be doing more tests to see if one is better than another. I did note that the pause works immediately on WMV, but with a slight delay on the MPEG-2. The video play length is limited only by the size of your thumb drive or hard drive.

Interestingly, I have this package, and although the AVS video converter will not recognize my avchd m2ts files, the avs video editor does. It does not allow for multiple video tracks, but does allow for video overlays. It also outputs to a wide variety of formats mpeg4, h.264 avi, hd720, hd1080i, mov, and m4v for ipod.

Thanks for turning me onto this.

neo avi -
 

[QUOTE=Jon McGuffin;1012717]Well, Neo has nothing to do with the burn process and as for bluray authoring, unfortunately you'll have to wait until the next version of Sony before you can get advanced authoring of menu's. So I suppose that could be a hickup point for you.

Jon -

I just converted 13 gig +or- of avchd clips with Neo Scene. They still wont play without chop on XP and won't play as anything but audio on Vista Home Prem 32 bit. I know I need a faster processor but what cause the audio only play on Vista do you suppose? By the way I have tried downloading various codec programs to no avail ???

Jim

I have a Sony CX12 and Corel Pro X2 for AVCHD editing. The Western Digital player has been able to play either unedited CX12 footage or CX12 files edited with Corel Pro X2. I bought the player about a month ago - there might have been a firmware update in late 2008 that supported these formats, but I can play them now.

I agree re BluRay or DVD production. I haven't burned any disks since I got a PS3 which could play back HD video files and just about everything else. And I bought the WD player to provide the same capability on a second TV at a much cheaper price. My media storage is now all USB drives - one for each player and a third one at work as an additional backup.

Pro x2
 

Tom, did you edit several clips and then save project as what in the "share step?" With SD I used to create individual mpeg files from groupings of edited clips. I later imported these to share with menus. Is it the individual edited video files you are putting on usb drives?
Jim