Sony Vegas Platinum Pro 9 Rendered Image Quality

I too noticed a significant difference, but it's in the playback software on the PC. When I rendered to DVD+R using the same render settings, the playback is as good or better than watching it straight from the camera when playing the disc back on a blu-ray player. I know that doesn't help your situation, but I have never seen a PC playback match a dedicated player - DVD or Blue-ray.

How are you playing the mts file? What kind of monitor?

I concur with tshirk above. I frankly wouldn't examine any image unless it's played through a dedicated player to a large HD screen. There are simply too many codec, filter and interlacing issues involved with AVCHD.

IME (and I stand corrected), a PC is fine for editing but not for appreciating the final product.

i've had good luck playing back 24Mbps .mts files with nero showtime, with the interlacing set on strong... it's pretty smooth on my pc 24" crt monitor... remember that smooth-looking playback is very dependant on shutter speed and frame rate, even with the right computer setup.

what you want to retain the picture quality is an editing program that'll do smart rendering, as in, it won't re-render the entire timeline, just the transitions and titles... i'm not exactly sure what sony vegas platinum 9 is, but i know that the high-end sony vegas 8 video editor will not smart render avchd.

from what i've been reading, right now it's the cheap editing programs that smart render and create dvd discs...
Nero
ArcSoft Total Media Extreme
Corel Video Studio X2 Pro
Cyberlink Power Director 7 Ultra

download the free demos and see what works for you.

is your powerdirector the latest version? is it the ultra version? because it doesn't make sense that they would cripple the smart rendering like that... it should work with any legal avchd bitrate.

i think that this is the cyberlink forum:
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/forums/list.page

I currently use a Sony laptop with a dual core 2.3 GHz chip and a 1600x900 screen and before, I had a Toshiba with a dual core 1.83 GHz and a 1280x720 screen. All things considered, Picture Motion Browser gives the best playback on a PC. I've played around with codecs (CoreAVC), mplayer, VLC as well trial downloads. I think that the interlacing of AVCHD is the most serious problem followed by the sheer size of the files. Some posters here have put emphasis on the graphics card but I'm not certain that's the problem.

Bundy, since you seem interested in this, here is a link to a post I made (in the Sony SR11/12 thread) with links to other posts about these issues.

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BTW, I have revised my thinking since that post I'm currently using Sony Vegas Platinum 9.0 to create Blu Ray files (burned on to DVD-R discs, about 25 minutes of video) and then I play them through a Samsung BD player on to a Samsung HD 1920x1080 screen.

My laptop is fine but a bit slow for editing but I don't think you can use a laptop or even PC for a playback of the quality you'll get through a BD player with HDMI link to a HD screen. The software of both the BD player and the HD screen are designed specifically for decompressing AVCHD files. The same can be said about connecting your SR11 directly by mini-HDMI to a HD screen. Current PCs are simply too generic to match the requirements imposed by AVCHD files.

To make a comparison, I bought my first portable CD player in 1985. No PC at the time could ever have matched its sound quality for the simple reason that the software/CPU inside the CD player (a Technics) was dedicated to decoding the compressed files. Nowadays of course, a standard PC has no problem dealing with cda files.

I'm no engineer so I stand corrected on all of this.

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As to your point about the cost of buying a BD burner, I agree. There's an external LG BD burner available for about $350 and BD discs go for about $10 a pop. For the moment, I'm willing to keep my videos to 25 minutes and burn them to a 5GB DVD-R disc which costs me less than 20 cents each.

I do have a BD player though. They're now around $200.

yeah, sadly it is still locked into articifical contrstraints, a real shame, since it is the only one that seems to smart render AVCHD/h.264/mpeg4 at all, but for some ridiculous reason they lock it to a max of 20 bitrate and 1440x1080p for progressive. Silly because you unlimited bitrate and 1920x1080p might take a bit more time to seam together but it sure takes a heck of a lot LESS time than re-render a 1920x1080p by 40 bitrate to 1440x1080p by 20 bitrate. I just don't get why they are adamantly refusing to lift the bitramte limit or the 1440 limit! I had to request a refund and I see other people are as well. The code to allow 1920 and unlimited bitrate must be a trivial change but they won't do it even preferring to lose sales. weird.

i'm almost getting to the point where i'm considering trying to write a very basic cuts and splices only smart render for h.264 1920x1080p and unlimited bitrate, although even the most trivial of editing would still be a majro project, don't think i have time just yet to try it.