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  #1  
07-10-2015, 03:23 PM
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When I play AVCHD files from my Canon Vixia HF-R20 Camcorder on Windows Media Player, It SUCKS!!!...I know They play better on VLC, But I'd like to send some converted files or DVD to my less tech-savvy friends and relatives who only have WMP...I currently have V-Dub/Avidmux/Womble MPEG Video Wizard DVD (2009)..Which one works best to "convert" AVCHD to MPEG/or Widows Media?...Note end-users aren't picky with quality,..But I am!!!
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07-10-2015, 07:26 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Don't know what the problem is with WMP and AVCHD. Everything plays fine on all of my WMP players on 3 PCs. Not sure what you mean by "sucks". VLC is a little better. A little. MPC-BE and the earlier Media Player Classic (MPC) would be better.

If your AVCHD is already progressive and/or HD format or double frame rate, you need to downsample for DVD. DVD is interlaced, or you'll get juddery motion. The software you mention is OK, but be prepared for some serious line twitter and other problems using their resizers, or lack of sharpness when you see the results.

Windows Media files? You mean WMV? WMV = quality down the toilet, and an obsolete format that won't work on DVD.
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  #3  
07-10-2015, 08:56 PM
premiumcapture premiumcapture is offline
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WMP may not agree with the M2TS or MTS container. If you mux to MKV, or even better for compatability, MP4, you will lose no quality and they should play everywhere.

Otherwise, stick them in Handbrake and share them. If compatability for older computers is priority, DVD is the best way to go.
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  #4  
07-10-2015, 10:20 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by premiumcapture View Post
WMP may not agree with the M2TS or MTS container. If you mux to MKV, or even better for compatability, MP4, you will lose no quality and they should play everywhere.

Otherwise, stick them in Handbrake and share them. If compatability for older computers is priority, DVD is the best way to go.
I believe the original post was for sharing with the 90% of the Earth's populatio0n that doesn't have BluRay players and doesn't watch every piece of video on a PC monitor -- which is, BTW, a really crummy way to watch Hollywood movies. Why spend all your time remuxing to new containers just because wimpy WMP can't handle some formats? That's like transferring your tires to another car because one of the tires went flat.
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07-11-2015, 07:11 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
I believe the original post was for sharing with the 90% of the Earth's populatio0n that doesn't have BluRay players and doesn't watch every piece of video on a PC monitor -- which is, BTW, a really crummy way to watch Hollywood movies. Why spend all your time remuxing to new containers just because wimpy WMP can't handle some formats? That's like transferring your tires to another car because one of the tires went flat.
If I had a video I needed to share with only a few people, it goes straight to DVD with 2-pass highest settings and PCM if possible.

Interestingly, the codec with the most compatibility is still MPEG-1, followed by MPEG-2, and finally H.264, though DivX still has very wide and growing compatibility.

I tend to over-complicate things. I have also uploaded to YouTube and shared private links, though I don't know what the story is on privacy when it comes to sites like that.
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  #6  
07-11-2015, 09:41 PM
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Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Don't know what the problem is with WMP and AVCHD. Everything plays fine on all of my WMP players on 3 PCs. Not sure what you mean by "sucks".
I transfer the recorded AVCHD files directly from my camcorder's mem card to my Win 7 PC WITHOUT using the Canon Transfer Junk software that comes with it, And 50% of the time They play jerky/studdering Video and Audio, (In Win Media Player) but not all the time, Usually just re-start the file again when that happens, and they do play OK. (I don't want my relatives to have to fiddle around with that, However it would be much easier to just transfer those AVCHD to a DVD so they can watch on their PC/Laptop with WMP, May the jerky/studder problem is only on my PC,but I do keep everything up-to-date/just recently had my PC Guy re-install Win-7 and newer MO-BO/AMD 4 core and SSD "C" drive, but sounds like is best to convert to MPEG-2 to DVD!

Last edited by rocko; 07-11-2015 at 09:43 PM. Reason: add
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07-11-2015, 10:09 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Something is amiss with your playback setup. Why are you obsessed with WMP? It's had no better than average to below-average performance for several versions. I have an old 2.2GHz dual-core that plays AVCHD from cameras with no problem. Yeah, that slow old CPU will stutter with decoded, lossless 1920x1080, but that would be expected. HD playback depends on more than a 4-core CPU (you don't quote the CPU speed), but your graphics card, your monitor, your mobo's chipset, and the video's encoding type and fps are factors as well.

You've told us little about your AVCHD except that it's AVCHD. A look attyour camera's specs suggest your video is 1080p at 30fps interlaced (the spec says "60i", which isn't valid for AVCHD if taken literally, supposedly it's just a confusing way of saying it's 30fps at 1080i). The software you mention doesn't deinterlace well -- and you should never resize interlaced video. So-so deinterlacing and the usual bicubic or (even worse) Lanczos resizers won't give very high quality results. Add the usual camera motion and zooming, and you also have bitrate considerations.

Have you actually tried using the software you mention?
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07-12-2015, 12:03 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Something is amiss with your playback setup. Why are you obsessed with WMP? It's had no better than average to below-average performance for several versions. I have an old 2.2GHz dual-core that plays AVCHD from cameras with no problem. Yeah, that slow old CPU will stutter with decoded, lossless 1920x1080, but that would be expected. HD playback depends on more than a 4-core CPU (you don't quote the CPU speed), but your graphics card, your monitor, your mobo's chipset, and the video's encoding type and fps are factors as well.

You've told us little about your AVCHD except that it's AVCHD. A look attyour camera's specs suggest your video is 1080p at 30fps interlaced (the spec says "60i", which isn't valid for AVCHD if taken literally, supposedly it's just a confusing way of saying it's 30fps at 1080i). The software you mention doesn't deinterlace well -- and you should never resize interlaced video. So-so deinterlacing and the usual bicubic or (even worse) Lanczos resizers won't give very high quality results. Add the usual camera motion and zooming, and you also have bitrate considerations.

Have you actually tried using the software you mention?
I know/assume that most people I will be sending these videos to, are older folks, who would be using windows as a playback device, Personally,I Use VLC. and I'm still new/learning how to use the afore-mentioned software for any kind of conversion or DVD making. (easier for now if I can just put playable files directly to CD/DVD) and send them that for now...However I do want/need to learn..It's just been a very slow-go for me!..and I'm older-slow learner with a few bad-luck hiccups thrown in along the way!
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  #9  
07-12-2015, 10:00 AM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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I can't agree that most older folks use computers to play movies. I have PC customers in their 40's and 50's who have no idea that their PC can pay DVD's, despite the fact that some have new PCs and paid for DVD or even BluRay burners with no idea what they're for except to install software from discs. I encounter lots of older folks who don't use computers and won't buy one. Lady next door to me in her late 50's was given a Bluray player for Christmas by her son. It sat there for 2 years, plugged in but never turned on, not connected to the TV or to anything else, and no idea how to stick a disc in there and play a movie. Younger daughter dropped in to check it out, turned it on and inserted a disc but didn't get a tv picture -- and never even checked to see that it was not connected to the tv!-- so daughter told her the darn thing was defective. It's things like this that have incremented my retirement income and allowed me to buy 6 VCR's and other toys over the years. People with better vision who are more discriminating about visual quality know that Hollywood movies don't look as good on a PC monitor's gamma curve as they do on TV, as intended.

So, you might want to get into more detail with your workflow and software. What I can imagine you would do with VirtualDub is load an AVCHD video into it (if you have the right system codecs installed) and try to deinterlace and resize it. Anyway, Avidemux isn't a good program for that, so I figure VDub is what you're trying to use. Your best VDub deinterlacer is yadif, which will give you a soft image from HD and some edge and moire problems, and the resizer choices are far from optimum for what you want to do. In particular, their lanczos resizers cause DCT ringing (halos and double-edges) and other artifacts. VirtualDub doesn't output MPEG, which is what Womble is set up for. If you apply color correction, denoising, title overlays, etc., to encoded video you'll re-encode and lose quality.

Something better might be AVS2DVD or even MEGUI, both of which use the excellent HCenc MPEG encoder, and you can edit/author with Womble from there. But both apps are Avisynth script-based, and many of their built-in Avisynth filters should be overridden with better/newer ones from Avisynth itself and you can override some of their built-in script statements as well. But you do have to know what you're doing.

I'd suggest that you start by getting a copy of the free MediaInfoXP (http://www.videohelp.com/software?to...y=Name&hits=50) and let us know some details about your AVCHD videos so that we'll all be on the same page. The app is freestanding, no installer. Just unzip it to your desktop or another folder and double-click it. Open a video and you'll get a "General" window that tells you a few things, but you really want to get a full report by clicking on "View" and going to "Text View". You can select and copy the text in that window in its entirety to your clipboard and post the text here. Or you can export the report to a text file.

The other thing I'll mention is that downsampling AVCHD to SD is more tricky than you think. Avisynth and QTGMC are the prime tools for that, along with some of its gaussian low-pass functions to avoid serious artifacts, and it has a better choice of resizers and re-interlacers to avoid the kind of stutter you mentioned. You also have a color matrix difference between HD and SD; Avisynth can handle that, too. VirtualDub can't do it with precision. HD downsized properly to AVCHD YV12 as lossless huffyuv or Lagarith or UT Codec will be about the same size as your 720x480 huff/lagarith captures. TMPGenc has some of the better MPEG encoders and smart-rendering MPEG/h264 editors around, and HCenc is included in several free apps (or you can use it by itself, but you need Avisynth to open it for HCenc). If you want Avidemux, I'd advise it's not so great at downsizing HD -- I don't even know that it can do it -- and it cuts encoded formats only on I-frames and GOP limits. So, let us know exactly what you want to do with those AVCHDs other than just "convert" them to another format. Obviously you want to cut and join some pieces, which many apps can do well, but downsampling is something you'll have to learn about. Not that difficult, but it's not a push-one-button operation.


....on the other hand, no one's going to force you to anything in particular. Take all this as more "info" and suggestions.

Last edited by sanlyn; 07-12-2015 at 10:11 AM.
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  #10  
07-12-2015, 05:37 PM
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Define "sucks".

You'll never make WMP act properly. In fact, you'll never make VLC or MPC act properly either. The software does what it wants.

If your friends are less tech-savvy, then you need to teach them what to do in order to watch your videos. That's one reason why I created this site so many years ago -- to teach others in my hobby how to create DVDs (because they kept making a mess). If you think a guide is needed for this, then post a new thread suggesting it.

I actually quit sharing video some years ago, because the requests got to be dumber and dumber. Non-tape/disc video has been mainstream for about a decade, so I just plain refuse to convert it now. If I give you a thumb drive full of files, and you're clueless (even AFTER being told to use VLC/MPC, a WDTV, a Blu-ray player, etc), then you're just not going to watch it. I only give DVDs if the original content was created/released as DVD.

I was watching Major Crimes last week, and the officer told the little girl to go use a pay phone. She said, and I shit you not, "I don't know how those work". And the answer was, of course, "you put in a quarter, wait for a dial tone, then dial the number". Why was the girl was clueless about phones? Why are "old people" (post-teens/20s aka my age!!) clueless about tech? It remains a mystery to me. I know both. Why can't others?

It seems mean ... but then again, it's really not.

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  #11  
07-12-2015, 05:41 PM
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Thanks, (First thing I did today was used your link and installed MediainfpXP!)...and I totally spaced up-loading one of my AVCHD samples, should have done that 1st thing! I will do that at end here!...I agree on the Old Folks thing, but I didn't mean all in general, only my few friends/brother who I know will be viewing on a windows PC or laptop..I was worried the raw AVCHD would play back jerky on their machines, like they often do on mine, even on my VLC player. But I could be assuming too much, and I do know they will be using Windows Media Player...And yes I am guilty of trying make it easy,fast by simply dragging and dropping my clips (with filenames) to a DVD that they can just pop into thier DVD ROM drive and watch. These would be clips of pets and mostly silly stuff, Completely different importance to me than my VHS capture work!..However I am slowly learning how to properly convert video to DVD...BTW is AVCHD/Mpeg4/H.264 all refering to same/similar file?..Here is my clip info, shot in "FXP" mode (17Mbps) on Canon Vixia HF-R20, Shows on my PC as .MTS file extension....And thanks for all the patience!


Attached Files
File Type: txt Rockovids.MTSclip.txt (2.6 KB, 9 downloads)

Last edited by rocko; 07-12-2015 at 06:22 PM. Reason: add
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07-13-2015, 06:50 AM
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The AVCHD files the Canon should play without problem on a WIN 7 system. If the playback is uneven it likely is an issue with PC configuration or source drives (e.g., trying to read off USB-connected media), or background processes robbing clock cycles. The only issue I would expect if using manual copy of the files from camcorder to computer is a potential file stitching glitch every 2 GB of file due to FAT32 limitations and the ability of some programs to properly stitch the continuation files in shot that exceeds 2 GB.

The common denominator for older folks home play today is a standard video DVD. I would use your favorite authoring program to make DVDs with simple menus. I tend to like TMPGEnc Authoring Works as a modest cost easy to use total solution that works. While other program may give a nicer coding or more control over the authoring it takes an A-B comparison up close to see the difference - not something the intended audience will ever notice.
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  #13  
07-13-2015, 09:43 AM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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Agreed. TMPGenc is fairly competent with downsampling and encoding like this. I don't need to elaborate on better methods. Interlaced 1080i must be deinterlaced before resizing, then reinterlaced for DVD. Avisynth can do a better job, but it's a learning curve and more work. Try TMPGenc Authoring Works trial and see what you can get. It has a few decent editing features as well.
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  #14  
07-13-2015, 12:55 PM
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I just makes menu-less discs with TAW. Menus are usually done bad, and just waste time to make and use. A menu-less disc acts like a VHS tape and just plays when inserted.

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07-14-2015, 03:50 AM
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Here's the stats on a typical AVCHD file from my cam,that I should have posted earlier...(Also posted at end of #11 above).

Quote:
Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
Agreed. TMPGenc is fairly competent with downsampling and encoding like this. I don't need to elaborate on better methods. Interlaced 1080i must be deinterlaced before resizing, then reinterlaced for DVD. Avisynth can do a better job, but it's a learning curve and more work. Try TMPGenc Authoring Works trial and see what you can get. It has a few decent editing features as well.
Iv'e been thinking of getting TMPGenc for a while now, just waiting for a few $$$ to come in!..also forgot about trial!

Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf View Post
I just makes menu-less discs with TAW. Menus are usually done bad, and just waste time to make and use. A menu-less disc acts like a VHS tape and just plays when inserted.
Perfect for my "Old Folks" end-user brother and friends, and me too!
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  #16  
07-14-2015, 04:19 AM
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Quote:
Avisynth can do a better job, but it's a learning curve and more work.
Or instal 31 days of demo of Edius

I know Anton Strauss from German Edius forum, as an Austrian he also writes in in German.
My luck.

http://www.videoproductions.com.au/h...dub-hd-sd.html
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  #17  
07-14-2015, 05:08 AM
dpalomaki dpalomaki is offline
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When I do no menus I usually still add chapter points every so often (e.g., at major scene changes) to provide jump points to speed navigation. It is helpful on material that is more than a few minutes long.

An advantage of DVD over tape is the ability to have (nearly) random access quickly.
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07-15-2015, 02:52 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dpalomaki View Post
When I do no menus I usually still add chapter points every so often (e.g., at major scene changes) to provide jump points to speed navigation. It is helpful on material that is more than a few minutes long.

An advantage of DVD over tape is the ability to have (nearly) random access quickly.
Good point!, some with no chapter marks only let you play them from Start, with no jumping allowed, if you do try to jump forward, it only re-sets back to start
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07-15-2015, 12:16 PM
sanlyn sanlyn is offline
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My Toshiba, OPPO, and Denon players all have a time search button on the remote to let you move to any position in the video. I don't think my Panasonics have that feature, don't recall. All of my PC media players have a progress bar that starts wherever you click the cursor on the timeline.
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