Trimmed H.264 file not recognized in Sony Vegas Pro 9.0c

[PeterDuke]

I trimmed some AVCHD files produced by my Sony Camcorder using SmartCutter 1.2.8f, but they are not recognized as video files when I drag them from the explorer to the timeline of Sony Vegas Pro 9.0c. All I see is a circle with a diagonal line through it (presumably the sign for prohibited operation). However they do seem to be recognized in Vegas Pro 9.0e, although I have not tried to do any serious editing with them.

I particularly want to use version 9.0c because that is the last version of Vegas that does not render untouched compliant AVCHD clips. (Apparently Sony Creative Software never officially supported smart rendering of AVCHD, and found it easier to remove the feature completely rather than fix some problems.) If I trim the clips in version 9.0c, then the clips ARE rerendered, hence my desire to use SmartCutter

I compared the source and trimmed files with MediaInfo and noticed a few differences, but don't know if they are relevant or not.

Any help on solving this problem?

[admin]

Dear PeterDuke:
Glad to hear from you again.

trimmed ... not recognized ... Vegas Pro 9.0c ... recognized in Vegas Pro 9.0e

Please try this:
Open Smart Cutter, In the Options Dialog, select the 'TME Mode'.
Now trim a movie(it will be about 8 times slower than normal mode), then try the trimmed movie in Vegas Pro 9.0c.

Looking forward to your feedback.
Thank you.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team

[PeterDuke]

Whew!

That certainly took a long time!

I tried three clips and they all opened in Vegas Pro 9c.

[PeterDuke]

On my computer, SmartClipper takes about 7 secs to trim 13 frames off the start of a clip 28.56 secs long, in normal mode. In TME mode, it takes 2 min 55 secs, or 25 times as long.

What does TME mode do? Does it re-encode the whole clip, thereby turning SmartCutter into "DumbCutter"?

The two main advantages of smart cutting over dumb methods are speed and preservation of quality. Using TME certainly defeats the speed advantage, and I was wondering about the quality as well.

Could you please expand on the use of TME mode?

One difference I see is that normal mode seems to be multithreaded, but TME is single thread.

[admin]

Dear PeterDuke:
Thanks for your posting.

What does TME mode do? Does it re-encode the whole clip?

This mode is constructed specially for any application which does not fully conform to the H.264 video standard, such as Vegas.

Although the normal mode of Smart Cutter generates legal and valid H.264 video, Vegas does not recognize that. We do not know the reason, since we are not Sony.
It left us with no choice, we can only disable all the optimization in the process, to generate a special H.264 video, which Vegas will accept. That is the TME mode.
TME mode does not re-encode the whole clip, it only encodes the gop on the cut point, like normal mode does. But it is slow. We sure will keep on optimizing its speed.

Please feel free to send us your further advice and suggestion.
Thank you.

Best Regards,
FameRing Support Team