Hi All,

I have PowerDirector 7 and apparently there is a new patch for the SW (that has not been widely released yet) that incorporates SRVT (Smart Rendering) for AVCHD now. I have not got the patch yet so can not confirm myself but here is the thread that talks to it

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/2993.page

Here is a link that explains SVRT:
http://www.cyberlink.com/english/dv-entertainment/articles/svrt.jsp

If true, this is the first full featured editing software I am aware of that smart renders.

Russell

just wante to give an update on this. After updating to the new 1829 version of PowerDirector, I was able to confirm smart rendering (SVRT) does indeed work with AVCHD files.

Combining a 9min clip took about 2.5 minutes and the file size was about 3% larger then the original. When comparing it to the Pixela SW, time to rendor was same and file size was same.

So we now have at least one piece of decent SW that can smart render AVCHD files.

Russell

"smart rendering" for all intents and purposes is pretty much (or SHOULD be pretty much) a copy (unless you did some edit somewhere).... So then why is the file 3% larger?

Smart Rendering means the program only touches the areas that you touched in the editing process. For example, if you trimmed a bunch of the clips, it would need to rendor around the part you clipped to make sure the structure is correct.

I put about 20 clips together (of which I had trimmed every one of them). Interestingly, the first time I produced it, I had changed some of the settings and at every transition, the video was messed up. I reran it leaving the settings as a default and seemed to work a lot better.

Russell

Nero 8 with the HD extra pack also does smart rendering as well....

I have some results of various editing packages here..http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14322602#post14322602

I hadnt heard about PowerDirector7.. i may give it a look as well..

Nero 8 with the HD extra pack also does smart rendering as well....

That is good to hear but I was not aware that Nero 8 was a full blown video editing application. Can it do things like PiP, Color, Saturation, Contrast, etc type editing? Or is it just able to do some menus and simple clipping and combining of files and adding some audio tracks?

Russell

just wante to give an update on this. After updating to the new 1829 version of PowerDirector, I was able to confirm smart rendering (SVRT) does indeed work with AVCHD files.

Combining a 9min clip took about 2.5 minutes and the file size was about 3% larger then the original. When comparing it to the Pixela SW, time to rendor was same and file size was same.

So we now have at least one piece of decent SW that can smart render AVCHD files.

Russell

I have PowerDirector v7.00.1628, but i couldnt find this patch...

The version i have now doesnt appear to have the option to burn to avchd full 1920x1080, let alone a straight bluray format...

That is good to hear but I was not aware that Nero 8 was a full blown video editing application. Can it do things like PiP, Color, Saturation, Contrast, etc type editing? Or is it just able to do some menus and simple clipping and combining of files and adding some audio tracks?

Russell

Its fairly basic in that regard.. you can do some enhancing to the images.. like: edge enhancement (detect edges, light edges, etc).. and all the usual transition stuff.

There is nothing for contrast etc, that i can see..

From what i can tell.. the best bet when doing those is either Sony Vegas (export to avc mp4 on render as, then import this mp4 back into Nero8 and make menu's etc) or Pinnacle Studio 12 (both requiring re-rendering of course)..

I have PowerDirector v7.00.1628, but i couldnt find this patch...

That is an old version of the SW. you can go to their website and download a free trial version of the SW which is build 1829.

You don't happen to have a Radeon HD 48xx card to test the GPGPU transcoding do you? Does anyone here? I'm extremely curious as I'm considering building a computer for video editing.

Found this article regarding GPGPU decoding with Badaboom and NVIDIA, it briefly mentions powerdirector on the final results page.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3374&p=7

Can anyone tell me how to merge multiple avchd files? I added them to the timeline, what settings do I have to input after I click on Produce?

Russellm:
You said you were able to use smart rendering on AVCHD clips. What kind of camera did you use to record the AVCHD clips? I downloaded a trial version of PowerDirector 7.00.2305 today (12/26/2008) and tried to import a 720p, 1080i, and a high speed video clip from a Casio EX-F1, and PowerDirector will not smart render any of these clips. I didn’t trim them or do anything to them, just dropped them on the timeline and the SVRT preview shows everything is red, meaning the video and audio must be re-rendered.

I’m guessing the software just doesn’t support smart rendering of Casio AVCHD files. In the PowerDirector SVRT preview dialog, it seems kind of silly to me that you have to “guess” the format of the video you dropped into the timeline by choosing the production format and profile from the drop-down menus and then updating the SVRT info to see if it will smart render. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there are only a few choices available so you don’t have to sit there all day trying different formats to see if anything will work. Is there any way to tell the software to just output in whatever format the input files are encoded in?

The only way I’ve found so far to smart render Casio AVCHD files is with a really basic program called Avidemux. It works perfectly and pretty much instantaneously with no loss of quality and essentially no change in file size. The only problem is the small detail that the output files are not readable by Sony Vegas, my main video editing software, which makes them pretty much useless. I don’t understand: all I want to do is chop off the beginning/end of a video clip and leave the frames in the middle untouched. I would even be content with only chopping at i-frames, which seems like an exceedingly simple process, but somehow no software seems to exist which can accomplish this task. I can even do this kind of editing IN THE CAMERA, but the editing interface is very clunky and inconvenient to use.

Power director will allso support ati cards in qtr 1 of this year

ATTENTION - ATTENTION

There's consensus in Cyberlink forums that "smart rendering" does NOT work properly with AVCHD in the full paid version of PowerDirector 7 Ultra (2227c).

I can confirm SVRT currently works with Canon HF100 until it has to render ie transition. It then renders all footage from then on (this has been brought up before) and effectively makes the SVRT pointless.
SVRT does not work at all with Panasonic SD9 clips

I have had the same experience with my canon HF-10

Cyberlink is running a survey on Power Director.

On the survey form there is a point where we can request missing feature! I takes about 1 minute to fill out and ask for proper avchd smart rendering!

link to the survey (http://cyberlink.wufoo.com/forms/powerdirector-improvement-survey/)

UPDATE

Smart Video Rendering Technology (SVRT) for AVCHD still doesn't work properly with latest PowerDirector patch 2429a. Cyberlink is aware of this issue from what others have posted in its forum, however 8 months later there's no fix.

It's NOT just that SVRT does NOT work for AVCHD, the AVCHD rendering quality (recoding, re-rendering) is really poor (artifacts, pixelation, etc).