video editing and rendering software

Hi all
ive been using pinnacle studio 12 for ages now and am getting a little cheesed off with the time it takes to render and burn.im using a sony pc3 digital video camera and transfering by firewire.
yesterday i started doing some 3 minute to 15 minute clips for my hospital department. the 3 minute clip once edited and added transitions took 20 minutes to burn to dvd. the 15 minute video with added music took well over 1 hour. thing is next week ive got to do a lot longer clips and am dreading how long its going to take.
the 2 options to burn to are dv or mpeg2. i chose the mpeg2 thinking it would be quicker.

so over to you. i need recomendations on any other software package out there. willing to pay upto £80/$150 for the best package. i dont need all the mod cons as long as it can edit/add titles/transitions/add music and voice over and render and burn a lot quicker.
thanks

 

If you're otherwise comfortable with pinnacle for editing, try a render in dv format (the format of the input footage) and author the DVD with a different program such as AVS to DVD. It may encode and burn quicker that way.

 

MPEG 2 is very very slow. Export it to DV format and encode it to h.264 would offer the best quality and speed. It can also be done for for free.

 

ok thanks olyteddy,ill give that a go.

edit:
posted at same time
not heard of that one before. whats h.264 jack?
thanks

 

h.264 a.k.a AVC is one of the most efficient (space wise) codecs available. That, however, makes it virtually the slowest to encode. There are also very few standalone players that can play it, and a lot (most?) PCs choke and stutter on it too. MPEG2 is less compressed (quicker to encode, especially if you use the Qenc encoder) and is the standard format of DVDs, making it playable almost everywhere.

 

thanks for that explanation olyteddy

 

However, if one has a semi modern processor or graphic card, encoding into h.264 will be much faster than say encoding to mpeg2. MPEG2 is notoriously slow to encode because most codec cannot utilize more than one core. The codecs are very inefficient thus slow to encode.

A netbook can handle low bitrate 720P h.264 videos and any dual core laptop can handle 1080P medium to high bitrate video.

Most DVD player nowadays can play mpeg4 files. Thus.. h.264 will work on those standalone dvd players. You can even put the file on a flash drive and play through usb storage devices.

 

What about burning it independently? I.e. create the video then burn it with secondary software?
(I've not tried burning in Pinnacle Studio myself...)

(On a side note - I recently got Pinnacle Studio 14 HD for my 5D MK II...)

 

thanks for the continued advice.
downloaded a trial of sony vegas last night but need a degree to work the thing out. might try the trial of pinnacle 14 later.

going to try a 2 minute clip today in both mpeg and dv mode to see which is fastest and check if it uses dual core or just one.

 

i use cyberlink powerdirector .
i supports cuda/gpu acceleration and is probably the fastest renderer in that price range.
it also supports i7 technology.
its very easy to use unlike sony vegas pro, but i dont know if you can do advanced effects like a demon face or laser swords with powerdirector.
check out the free trial version and see if it fits your needs

 

great minds think alike trvelbug
downloaded the trial about an hour ago and just finished the same video editing again and it done the 15 minute clip in about 17 minutes so happy bunny. takes a little getting used to where everything is button wise but its the best ive seen so far.
it also scored number 1 in the top 10 editing software test so im sold.
downloading the full version now.
thanks for everyones advice. really appreciate it.

 

That's a pretty big if, also graphic cards so far can only accelerate playback...

MPEG-2 encodes quickly even on a single core because the amount of compression is much lower. And there are too multi-threaded MPEG-2 encoders. HC Encoder being one of the free ones.

Again you are assuming they have fairly modern equipment to play it on. The OP said ...to burn to dvd... Distribution of video, like it or not, is still largely done on DVDs as DVD video.

I know of no standalone player that supports h.264. Most will play Divx / XviD in an MP4 or AVI container.

 

Both current ati and nvidia which support ggpu features will support gpu encoding of h.264.

If a dvd player can play dvix/mpeg4, it can play h.264 file in .avi container.

 

...since when? H.264 is not even close to DivX. DivX is MPEG4, Part 2. H.264 is MPEG4, Part 10. Completely different, even if they're both MPEG4.

 

H264 is very efficient - Agree

Slowest to encode - Probably but the degree of slowness is VERY dependent on your settings. With lax settings it can encode just as fast as Divx/Xvid and still give better results. Likewise with "placebo" quality settings it can take a full day to encode a 2 hour movie.

The settings I use for SD content are visually lossless with very high compression and it renders on my G73 at about 36fps, on my desktop at about 46fps. So thats faster than real time. So if its a 2 hour movie its going to take less than 2 hours to encode it. (I litterly just got done ripping and encoding a movie moments ago, "Best of the Best" took 1 hour and 1 minute to do the conversion from MPEG2 to H264 on my G73 result was a 710mb file that has 100% quality of the 4.36gb DVD)

HD stuff takes about 2x longer.

Stand alone players cant play it? Whats a stand alone player to you? Do you mean a DVD player? a BR player? sure those are devices devoted to playing a DVD's and BR disks. But stand alone players have played H264 for years now. My new phone can play 720p HD H264 without problems, my old phone that is over 3 years old now even supports H264.

I also just got a WDTV Live, and it runs 1080p H264 with full DTS audio with no hassles at all. So to say stand alone players cant play it, I think thats really a falsified statement, your just looking at inappropriate stand alone devices. Its like complaining your card CD player cant play DVDs.

PC's choke on it? Naa, my 1.6ghz single core atom netbook can play H264 content. Not 1080p but SD and even 720p is possible. If a netbook can do it any modern computer or laptop is just fine, and that is before use of hardware accelerated playback.

If your burning stuff to dvd, do yourself a favor and stop. Go get a digital media player and a 2.5" portable hdd and start using H264.

There are so many now.

WDTV
WDTV Live
WDTV Live +
Asus O! Play
Popcorn Hour

just to name a few, with over a dozen more, most of them in the $100 range and they provide a lot more services than just media playback.

> Full HD 1080p support (aka blueray quality)
> Netflix Streaming
> Pandora Streaming
> Flicker browsing
> Youtube Browsing
> Live 365 Streaming
> AAC, Mp3, OGG, FLAC, music playback
+ more

_________________________________________

Seems to be a lot of talk about programs here. Here is most of what I use.

Non Linear Video Editor: If I need to edit a video in advanced ways or create a video
Sony Vegas

Why? Because I think its pretty simple to use and has everything I need. I only create the video here, I export it as a lossless format and encode it somewhere else. (HuffYUV or Lagareth)

Encoding Programs: To encode my final files
MeGUI

Why? Because its not a program its a GUI to the very best programs out there and updated very regularly, its easy to use but yet still fully featured allowing me to do the same stuff I used to be doing with manual command line entry.

It includes (and downloads for you, updates, and installs)

AviSynth - Read up on it if you dont know about it, it allows more power over videos that most editors have.
DGIndex - Indexer, can cut and index DVD rip files
New x264 builds - x264 best H264 encoder/codec
MP4box - The undisputed best MP4 muxer/demuxer
MKVToolNix - The undisputed best MKV muxer/demuxer
NeroAAC - The undisputed best AAC codec/encoder
+ much much more all inside this one great program.

Ripper: DVD Fab

Why? Because of all the rippers this is the only one that never failed on me, not a single movie. It got past all copy protections. Plus it has the added feature of saving time/space by ripping only the audio tracks and movie tracks you want (aka just the main movie, not stuff like the trailers or bonus features)

Extras:

Subtitleworkshop: Best subtitle program I have used, lets you edit, convert, sync, and do just about anything with subtitles

SubRip: A program that extracts the image based subtitles from a DVD and uses optical recognition to convert them into text based subtitles (much better, less space more customizable)

VirtualDub, MediaInfo, AvsP, MKVExtractGUI2, Yamb, and a few others.

I have been doing this for a long time, and I have found there is no best all in one tool. Each job has a program or tree of programs that can do MUCH better than the all in ones. Its not harder or slower to specialize with separate programs once you get the hang of it.

Best part is everything I listed with the exception of Sony Vegas is open source free stuff, yet it still does better and gets updated more often than paid programs.

Putting H264 in a .AVI is blasphemy period.

MKV or MP4 is the only way to go. AVI is old news and does not support half of H264s features, including many of the important ones.

 

very interesting read even though some went totally over my head . pro's and cons to everything really.

using cyberlink power director done everything i needed so id rather stay with the basics as i only have to do the odd video now and again. if i was doing it on a regular basis id seriously look into all your advice above.

cyberlink let me edit,add transitions,add music and burn a dvd in VIDEO_TS format so it plays on all dvd players. and if i take the vts_01_1 file out it plays perfectly on my computer as well so it can be used for a presentation in a couple of weeks time.
still cant believe how much faster the rendering is compared to pinnacle studio 12

 

glad you found it useful.
of course there are heftier programs out there like adobe premiere pro cs5 but that costs a thousand dollars more. and unless your really into heavy video editing and film production, power director will do almost 90% of what you need. also i find powerdirector faster in both rendering and encoding video.

 

Putting h.264 into .avi is the only way to play a h.264 encoded video on my dvd player through the usb port. Other than compatibility reasons, MKV or MP4 would be preferred.

 

i prefer using avchd for h.264
however i also like using wmv since it compresses quite well and many sites will accept it as an upload format.

 

We should have another encoding showdown like me and Jackluo did a while back

Everybody encode a short video clip and we compare size/quality and mention the system encoded on and the time it took to encode.

We have to pick a source everybody has access too and agree on it.

Just for fun.

I have been converting a lot of my 1080p files to 720p lately to save space. Even on the 52" in the living area you can not see the difference between the 720p and the 1080p files. Looking at screen shots going back and forth with the full screened I see just minor loss in the very small details with the smaller file, but its less than 1/2 the size, very much worth it!

 

@ jackluo923: I'm interested in where I can get a hardware accelerated 264 encoder for free...Also what model DVD player plays 264...Some references to back up your claims, please.
@ ViciousXUSMC: I agree there are plenty of media players that do a splendid job with 264, even my Vizio TV can handle it on USB. However my read of the OP indicates they want a more universal distribution format, and that is still DVD. Not everyone has a media player, but very few people with a TV don't have some kind of DVD player...

 

@olyteddy , the "10.6 alpha" drivers for ATI have a hardware accelerated H264 encoder built into them.

I was able to encode some stuff very quickly with it. While great for a movie to go on youtube or something I would not use it for my archived movies though as the control you have over the quality of the encode is nowhere close to as nice as you have with x264 libraries.

 

What settings do you use? I frequently upload stuff to YouTube and am always looking for the smallest file size possible without looking "compressed."

 

Using the new preset system i newer builds of x264 I do not list out every setting anymore. I just use the Preset -Slow Tuning -Film for most movies and maybe bump up the MeRange to 24. For bitrate I never use a fixed bitrate I use CRF values between 18-24.


In my AVS script I use a Undot() noise filter to improve compression and crop away any black borders.

I have a lot I can learn for Avisynth scripts, I use just very basic noise removal, crop, and resize filters. But you can do a lot here, sharpening, contrast, brightness, debanding, you name it Avisynth can do it.

You can actually improve quality of the source and make your encode look better than the original but I generally just keep it as is and leave it looking exactly like the original.

I always use Anamoprhic for my widescreen DVD encodes to keep the original pixels rather than a resize/crop option.

Here is a good post with some examples of more complicated Avisynth script usage, and even what he is using is not complicated compared to some stuff I have seen.

 

Ah, I was hoping you'd be able to tell me what bitrate I need to get DVD quality out of h.264 when editing with Vegas.

 

I can give you general guidlines but there is no definite answer. It always depends on your source.

But bitrate based encoding has no real purpose outside of targeting a specific file size. Your far better off with a CRF encoding. Its faster and will give you a better final product.

Try a CRF of 20-22 for DVD quality with a good file size.

Also I NEVER use the H264 encoding directly from Vegas, quality always sucked hardcore. Colors were off and things were too dark.

I use a loseless compression like HuffYUV or Lagareth like stated on the last page, and then encode that with a better encoder like MeGUI to get my final product.