Video editing again...

Northwind
Northwind Posts: 14,675
edited October 2010 in The Crudcatcher
OK so... After recommendations I tried PowerDirector, which I hated. So just got the trial for Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD, and it can't preview my videos effectively- HD MP4 from a Gopro HD- the preview constantly stutters

(before anyone says it's a system requirements issue, usage is below 50% on all 4 cores and on RAM, so I think I can rule that out- but checking forums finds loads of people complaining of the same. Converting seems to be the only way round it)

So... Vegas seems great to work with but the preview stutter makes it almost a dead loss, you have to be able to see what you're working with. I'm using it just now with a high quality .mov file from my TZ7 and it's ace. But I think I need some more options! Anyone using Elements?
Uncompromising extremist

Comments

  • download a trial of each you'll end up going through them all till you find one that suits you and you click with


    http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... bview=tab0

    ^ VideoStudio Pro X3


    or you might make do with...

    http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... bview=tab0


    and if you buy, shop about because those prices quoted are horse puckey - and be careful solely going off online reviews of video editing software, there are some intelligent spastics out there, so decide for yourself based on your own experience
  • i use pinnacle studio 11 plus.
    it needs the unlock codes for hd movies... but i have them too!
    its pricey, but is the easiest and most powerful one i have used so far.
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    Oh man, I'm surprised vegas doesn't open them. The one at work opens everything, but we do have a blackmagic card - maybe that came with a ton of codecs or something.

    One problem I can foresee is that MP4 is not great to use as a source for editing. Mpeg2 used to have similar issues.

    Anway, sorry to lead you on a wild goose chase then, I really honestly though Vegas would have opened it.
  • chedabob
    chedabob Posts: 1,133
    I tried using Vegas the other day and it was a steaming pile of shit. It struggled to load 100 non-HD videos into the Media Manager. It would just hang after I'd added about 70 videos and I'd have to kill the process.

    Even Adobe "WTF is optimisation?!?" Premiere managed to load them into the workspace without crashing.

    Northwind

    Your issue could be IO bottleneck. Put the videos on a different drive to where Vegas is installed. That made it run slightly better for me, but it still choked on 70 videos instead of 50.
  • Northwind
    Northwind Posts: 14,675
    Anway, sorry to lead you on a wild goose chase then, I really honestly though Vegas would have opened it.

    Nah, not at all mate, it's a nice bit of kit for my purposes otherwise so it was a good shout. It'll open them OK, and edit them and all, it just can't preview them effectively so you end up editing by pure guesswork. Seems to be just the gopro vids it collapses on, it can handle big AVCHD files from the TZ fine.

    Chedabob, I'll give that a crack, cheers

    Blisterpus, thanks for the suggestions, I'll see what I can find there too
    Uncompromising extremist
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    AVCHD files should be ok for editing. If I understand correctly, the reason MP4 and MPEG2 files don't edit well is because they lack generally "keyframes".

    I first became aware of the problem when dubbing a TV show. We'd been given a compressed MPEG2 video stream as a guide for the visuals, and whenever we jumped back and forth across the timeline, the video would take an eternity to play.
    Our video guy told us about the keyframes issue, and what he did to fix it for us was to take the entire MPG stream, and re-render it as a DV format AVI file. Even though that file was about 10 times the size of the MPG stream, it played perfectly.
    The lack of keyframes in MPG meant that whenever we played from a certain point, the machine had to calculate where to play from, so it was effectively playing from the start of the file, and fast-spooling invisibly to where the timeline was, apparently.
    With the AVI file, it has keyframes every frame or thereabouts, so it can instantly play from wherever the timeline currently sits, and jump around as we move from one place to another..

    Something like that anyway.
  • Northwind
    Northwind Posts: 14,675
    Ah hah! Sorry for thread revival but it turns out it's only specific versions of Vegas that choke on the gopro files, Platinum is absolutely spot on with them. Bit more expensive obviously but it seems to do the job I want and it's pretty nice to use. So maybe we have a winner.
    Uncompromising extremist
  • coxy17
    coxy17 Posts: 401
    download a trial of each you'll end up going through them all till you find one that suits you and you click with


    http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... bview=tab0

    ^ VideoStudio Pro X3

    +1 use it at school its great and easy to use
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    Northwind, that's still a abrgain at just short of £60. I thought I'd sent you on a wild goose chase there by recommending that. The one they use at work is the pro version, and that works.
  • Northwind
    Northwind Posts: 14,675
    Yeah, I'm going to play with the demo a bit more, it definately does the job I need so just need to make sure it's fully compatible with my small brain :lol: Strange that their basic package just completely fails with such a common format but the nicer ones run fine, that's just saying "We can make it work with this but only when we can be arsed" to me ;)
    Uncompromising extremist
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    almost all codecs cost money though, that's why they're not included in basic packages.
  • Northwind
    Northwind Posts: 14,675
    I could understand that if it wouldn't work with it at all, but it's compatible, it just works incredibly badly. So not a codec issue I think, just a coding issue.
    Uncompromising extremist
  • Anonymous
    Anonymous Posts: 79,667
    Hmm, I see what you mean.
  • Have you compressed your .mov before importing. Its best to edit from raw footage with all associated timecodes etc.

    Those editing packages though are basically cheap, you pay for what you get. Often times they will impose an pixel ratio on imported footage without asking. The high end editing gear (FCP and prem) wont do this without letting you know and will pre-render. With a big file size (such as a HD) it will cause a noticeable stuttering effect as the prog is effectively rendering on the fly.

    Not sure about yeehas explanation about keyframes, I think he's referring to the problematic bitrates of MP2, this does indeed cause jumpiness.
    The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns
    momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
  • Northwind
    Northwind Posts: 14,675
    Have you compressed your .mov before importing. Its best to edit from raw footage with all associated timecodes etc.

    Nah, just straight off the camera onto the PC then into the software unadulterated. Though it's .MP4 not .mov.
    Uncompromising extremist
  • bobpzero
    bobpzero Posts: 1,431
    look in http://www.avs4you.com/index.aspx if theres anything there useful