Improving AVCHD support

[k9byrd]

Like some of the other forum members, I too encountered difficulties editing AVCHD files from my Panasonic camera. In my case, the frames appear blurred (sometimes totally smeared) in the preview window. And when I play back the video (before as well as after rendition) a couple of frames will be distorted at the clip junction ... causing a disturbing glitch. The suggestions from forum members is to convert the video format. I consider that a good workaround, but not a solution.

 

I know that VP is one of the few applications that can handle HD video at all, but ... My question, therefore, is: has anyone heard whether NCH is planning to release a new version that fixes the various symptons that forum members have experienced when using AVCHD video?

[timzett]

Like some of the other forum members, I too encountered difficulties editing AVCHD files from my Panasonic camera. In my case, the frames appear blurred (sometimes totally smeared) in the preview window. And when I play back the video (before as well as after rendition) a couple of frames will be distorted at the clip junction ... causing a disturbing glitch. The suggestions from forum members is to convert the video format. I consider that a good workaround, but not a solution.

 

Hi mate,

 

I really can confirm what you are talking about.

I'm using MTS files from a Panasonic HDC-SD100 camera. The first few seconds of a clip are always distorted - coarse-pixelating frames which one just can't accept.

But not only that, this negative effect is not only in the preview but also in the exported video files

 

Another bad thing I noticed is that you cannot use the Save Movie (Computer / Data) feature to create DVD compatible amorphous 16:9 video files, where the PAL DVD resolution of 720x576 is fully exported into your MPEG2 video.

Instead, the footage is just letterboxed which means considerable loss of image quality when burning such stuff on DVD.

The funny thing is that when you use the Disc saving feature, you can choose the aspect ratio before saving, and then the application exactly seems to consider this, because when using different tools like MediaInfo or VLC to analyze the finished video you will get 720x576 pixels as result with native aspect ratio still 16:9.

But well, one doesn't always want to create a DVD right away, mostly you want to combine such files and create a DVD menu later...

 

So I will try to create a DVD with 1024x576 (VideoPad's TV Wide setting) MPEG2 as basis using DVDStyler, we'll see if that is going to work.

If not, the application unfortunately is only using half of it's potential, because the rest is actually great.

 

To sum it up: Better native 16:9 support for video file export and flawless Panasonic MTS file handling, and this software would be a masterpiece.

Hopefully NCH will consider this in the next program update.