VC-1 *.m2ts conversion

[TM2-Megatron]

I'm wondering if anyone could recommend a good program to convert from VC-1 encoded m2ts files into other formats; preferably one that allows you to convert only sections of the video. Uncompressed AVI output would be ideal. I've found that 1 or 2 re-encodes of HD-quality AVC doesn't seem to impact quality; but I don't want to push my luck, which is why I'd like to work with uncompressed material until the final render.

Sometimes I like to play around with ripped video in my editors for some fun (generally use Sony Vegas Pro 8 ), and while Vegas will accept AVC encoded m2ts files on the timeline, it doesn't seem to care for VC-1 (although it supports WMV, so I'm not sure why... though Windows Media Player won't accept a VC-1 m2ts, either *go M$, lol*).

 

[Adbear]

Wouldn't tmpeg do it? It does open m2ts files direct

 

[TM2-Megatron]

I'm not sure, but I can't see reference to VC-1 anywhere on its site. And I'd think it would mention that, since it explicitly says H.264. It does say WMV, but that doesn't seem to be any guarantee of being able to play all VC-1 content. As I've said, Windows Media Player won't even playback this file, and neither will Vegas despite the fact it can import and render WMV9 Advanced Profile (which, I'd always thought, was essentially the same thing as VC-1). Could it be the transport stream wrapper that's throwing these programs off?

 

[Adbear]

Well the only extra codec I've installed is Corecodec, and I can load up the VC-1 from the matrix and it's exporting out a small chunk as uncompressed from that. BTW you do realise you'll need a decent raid system to be able to edit 1920x1080p fully uncompressed

 

[TM2-Megatron]

Well the only extra codec I've installed is Corecodec, and I can load up the VC-1 from the matrix and it's exporting out a small chunk as uncompressed from that. BTW you do realise you'll need a decent raid system to be able to edit 1920x1080p fully uncompressed

Thanks for that; I guess I"ll have to give that software a try. Which tmpeg product are you using, specifically?

As for the editing, I've never had trouble with it before. Although I've never tried editing untold hours all uncompressed, lol. When I'm doing something long, it usually comes from HDV or AVCHD (preferably the former, as the latter seems to have mostly failed as an editable format), or I use a intermediary codec from Cineform.

The only instances where I really work with uncompressed 1080p is when I'm editing something from a commerical disc, or a movie trailer... basically, usually just when I'm having some fun or wanting to make a music video from footage of something/etc. So I've never had to deal with a whole whack of footage. Usually no more than half an hour, or 45 minutes total on my drive. Generally, though, I've found Vegas handles it quite well. And much less of a pain than editing compressed formats. I'll be glad when stuff like AVC-Intra becomes more affordable, though.

 

[Adbear]

Well fully uncompressed 1080p is around 150mbytes per second so that's why I wondered if you had a good raid system, although unless your able to get it as fully uncompressed originally then there's not that much point using uncompressed.
I'm using Tmpeg Xpress 4

 

[TM2-Megatron]

I'm mostly just trying to minimize the amount of times I have to re-encode. If I go from H.264 to uncompressed, do everything I want to, and then back to H.264 or BD-quality MPEG-2 I've found I get no noticeable reduction in quality. I'm not sure how many re-encodes it would take for the reduction to start becoming noticeable... though with regular DVD MPEG-2, it only takes 1.

I haven't tried much editing of an AVC m2ts on the timeline, but from what I've read on the Vegas forums it doesn't always work properly. And from my miniDV editing days, I guess I just got into the habit of preferring straightforward editing formats. And uncompressed AVI is more straightforward than an interframe compressed one like most AVC, or HDV/MPEG-2.

The first time I used uncompressed, though, was mostly because I had to; after that I just got into the habit of using it. I'd downloaded the 1080p AVC version of the teaser trailer for the upcoming Star Trek movie in *.mov, and I wanted to edit it. Every attempt I made to put it on a timeline in an NLE and render it to something else resulted in image corruption (which I assumed was some kind of protection for the file). Eventually, I was forced to open the video in Photoshop, and use its exporting feature to save each frame into a sequentially-numbered BMP. Then I just selected them en masse and dragged it all onto the Vegas timeline in a project with the appropriate framerate and resolution settings; and from there, exported to an uncompressed AVI... which finally bypassed whatever weird protection the file had.

Well fully uncompressed 1080p is around 150mbytes per second so that's why I wondered if you had a good raid system

Yeah, the uncompressed videos definately won't play off my regular drives fullscreen at the proper speed. I don't have a RAID setup at the moment, but when I did that did manage to play them. Despite that, though, Vegas has no problem actually editing them. The preview window isn't fullscreen, and Vegas actually seems to process the uncompressed footage more quickly; probably because it isn't having to use a CPU-intensive codec.