Upgrade to Edius 7 for XAVC

[David Ice]

Hi guys,
I'm currently running Edius 6.54 and have new Sony cams that record to XAVC (HD not 4K). Is the quality difference worth it to upgrade, in terms of AVCHD vs. XAVC?

Also, in doing an upgrade will I most likely have to re-install such add ons as Plural Eyes, New Blu, etc? Or will those just transfer over (as in the past) with Edius property/user preferences files? I shudder to think of digging out serial numbers, etc., again and trying to re-download expensive software.

David Ice

[GrassValley_SL]

EDIUS 7 is 64 bit. This means that none of the native 6.5 plugs will work. Some manufacturers had a free update at the introduction of EDIUS 7. There are special upgrade promotions now. (check the third-party websites)
There is no plural eyes for EDIUS 7

[Bluetongue]

Hi guys,
I'm currently running Edius 6.54 and have new Sony cams that record to XAVC (HD not 4K). Is the quality difference worth it to upgrade, in terms of AVCHD vs. XAVC?

Also, in doing an upgrade will I most likely have to re-install such add ons as Plural Eyes, New Blu, etc? Or will those just transfer over (as in the past) with Edius property/user preferences files? I shudder to think of digging out serial numbers, etc., again and trying to re-download expensive software.

David Ice

David
Sorry cannot answer the first part but the bad news is all your plugins will need to be upgraded to 64 bit
Some are free upgrades others you will need to pay, when 7 first came out the payable upgrades were cheap but now the price seems to have increased
You will need to check which need to be paid for, From memory NEAT and NB are free upgrade from 6.5

Barry

[Liverpool TV]

David.

I would take on board Barry's advice about all the cost involved in the upgrade, with respect to the plugins etc.

But for the first part of your question, YES. Are you using the CX900? And is it XAVC S you are talking about? Even if this is not the case and it's a different camera that does use XAVC, then the answer is still a BIG yes.

I have been testing some workflows with the Sony codecs and have tried a number of NLEs. In my experience Edius 7 is way the best editor for the Sony codecs. I think that maybe Vegas is the only thing at the moment that can actually render back to the same codec. But in all honesty, these codecs are not really delivery ones, so the lack of native exporting shouldn't really be a problem. Most people would be delivering some flavour of H264, which is something that Edius is well capable of.

In my testing of workflows with other NLEs I basically gave up very quickly, when it became apparent that none of them were as slick as Edius with the Sony codecs. The exception may be Vegas, but for me personally the Edius interface is the best of the lot, and the realtime capability at 4K was better.

If people dig a little deeper when looking for NLE solutions, or Beldon put more weight behind marketing Edius. Then Edius could jump in the rankings for those on the Sony codecs.

If you have a spare drive, just so you can keep your present system intact. May be trial 7, and this will give you all your answers. But be prepared to spend some money based on the outcome and to never use AVCHD again as a recording format.

Hope this helps.

Dave.

[David Ice]

Thanks for all the help guys. Yes, Dave, I have 3 of the Sony CX900s now (I shoot a lot of concerts, plays, etc. and the bulk of my work now is 3 camera, plus interviews, documentaries, etc. I'm really curious about the XAVC codec, and am currently trying a test project of side-by-side comparisons using Premiere Pro CS6. And it's taking an HOUR to render out to blu ray MPEG 2!

Dave, exactly what do you mean about a spare drive? You mean copying my operating system, and then using the spare drive to delete Edius 6.xx and install a demo of 7?

I'm resigned to losing Plural Eyes.....I do have the Izotope RX2 and apparently it isn't compatible either with Edius 7....another $27o or so....

Dave Ice

[Liverpool TV]

Thanks for all the help guys. Yes, Dave, I have 3 of the Sony CX900s now (I shoot a lot of concerts, plays, etc. and the bulk of my work now is 3 camera, plus interviews, documentaries, etc. I'm really curious about the XAVC codec, and am currently trying a test project of side-by-side comparisons using Premiere Pro CS6. And it's taking an HOUR to render out to blu ray MPEG 2!

Dave, exactly what do you mean about a spare drive? You mean copying my operating system, and then using the spare drive to delete Edius 6.xx and install a demo of 7?

I'm resigned to losing Plural Eyes.....I do have the Izotope RX2 and apparently it isn't compatible either with Edius 7....another $27o or so....

Dave Ice

Hi Dave.

The spare drive is just so you don't have to disturb your present system. If you can just take out your present system/boot drive, the one with windows and Edius on it, and use a spare/other drive to install windows and E7 trial on. It just means that if for any reason you don't like it, you can simple put your original drive back in without having disturbed anything. I personally use Ghost for such things, but if you are not used to these types of imaging programms, it really isn't worth getting into them right now and a fresh drive installation is more straight forward.

From what I understand the 900 uses upto 50Mbit for recording in XAVC S. This is a fair bit higher than the AVC options, plus the XAVC S codec is better as well. So coupled with the higher bitrate and better codec, I doubt you would want to use anything but the 900's best recording option.

I use a Haswell i7 based machine and it is great for 4K XAVC/S. I can get away with straight cuts and dissolves, the YUV filter, and other filters all in realtime. So I would imagine your system should easily do the same for 1080.

Like I said earlier, E7 and the sony codecs on the right machine are an unbelievable match. If you look through my posts for my X264 workflow, you will find the best way to deliver H264 from your XAVC S edits out of Edius. So don't worry too much about not exporting your final edits in XAVC S, as most people won't be able to play them anyway and with various options for H264/MP4 delivery, you should have all your bases covered for end playback options. I would also recommend mastering your final edits to HQ set to full, as this will produce visually perfect masters that everything else can be encoded from.

Cheers,
Dave.

[David Ice]

Thanks Dave for the info! I use Acronis True Image software to do a system backup, so I can easily back up the system to 6.5 if I need to in just a few minutes.

I've ordered Edius 7 and will try to install the demo this week.

In terms of the XAVC codec, do you recommend (NTSC) the 24p, 30p, or 60p camera settings for the best image quality?

THANKS SO MUCH for your feedback. I did some quick tests yesterday in Premiere, and I can see a difference between 24mbs AVCHD and the 50mbs XAVC. Small detail is there, and motion blur/blocking is much better too. It's almost like a thin gauze filter has been removed from the lens!

David Ice

[Liverpool TV]

Thanks Dave for the info! I use Acronis True Image software to do a system backup, so I can easily back up the system to 6.5 if I need to in just a few minutes.

I've ordered Edius 7 and will try to install the demo this week.

In terms of the XAVC codec, do you recommend (NTSC) the 24p, 30p, or 60p camera settings for the best image quality?

THANKS SO MUCH for your feedback. I did some quick tests yesterday in Premiere, and I can see a difference between 24mbs AVCHD and the 50mbs XAVC. Small detail is there, and motion blur/blocking is much better too. It's almost like a thin gauze filter has been removed from the lens!

David Ice

Hi David.

If you are cool doing disc images then that's great. I personally only use Ghost for such things, but can't imagine there is any difference between them all in practical use.

If you've already committed to E7, then real cool. Other than your old plugins, I can't imagine that you will be disappointed with 7. My personal view is that 7 is the best yet and once again gives the Edius platform an edge over any other NLE for certain workflows.

You may want to try using a new boot drive with 7, and not touch your present drive with 6.54 on it. At least this way you can swap boot drives, share media drives, and have the best of both worlds while still being able to go back and fully utilise your old plugins and projects if the occasion arises.

As for frame rate, everyone has different preferences. You obviously have NTSC versions of the 900, so you are at least covered for your territorie's minimum requirement of 29.97 My preference is either 24 or 25, because I have done film work and because England is PAL. I don't really like 50 frames or interlaced, but that is purely a taste thing and not because of any technical reasons. Although that said, if I were doing live multicam events I would seriously have to concider either double frame rates, in your case 59.94, and maybe even interlaced. This would probably be a better option for better live movements, and can always be exported at the standard rate of what ever time base you shoot in.

Just a word of warning, and please don't take this as me trying to teach you anything. A lot of manufacturers and people incorrectly use the terms 30 and 60 frames per second when talking about NTSC. This leads to a lot of people setting up projects at those frame rates, as many NLE's can do proper whole 30 and 60 projects. Just be carful to set up your projects as proper NTSC frame rates and not whole frames like 30 and 60. I have seen a lot of online video that has motion problems, which can be confused with motion blur, because of the frame blending that will occur with mismatched footage and project settings.

I have just recieved my AX100, and although XAVC S is the best shooting option, I forgot to get new SD cards and the ones I have right now can only do AVC HD. That said, I have just done a quick test and the 24Mbit AVCHD looks way better than I expected. So I can only imagine for now how good your XAVC S files look :) As the 100 and 900 are identical for HD.

Cheers,
Dave.