Blu Ray Disk-which produces a better result?

[Harro]

Over the last few days I have been attempting to produce a Blu Ray disk. My clips are all HDV (1440x1080i PAL) and HD (1920x1080i PAL). I only have Edius, Movie Factory and Nero 8 to basically work with. First results were less than satisfactory using the Burn to Disk option in EDius, the maximum allowed bit rate was far too low. I finally used the Edius Exporter to produce an Mpeg file with an average bit rate of 35M and a maximum of 50M (probably a bit high) file. This was then used in Nero 8 Vision to Author and to produce a disk with NO artifacts that looked good.

My question: I used the Exporter to also make a Lossless AVI file (huge) and the above mentioned MPEG file. Using Nero, is there any advantage in loading the very large AVI file to Author or do I stick with the very much smaller MPEG file to produce the best quality final Blu Ray disk?

[antonsvideo]

Disk burner uses H264, so 20mbits/sec would be plenty good

[shueardm]

Have to disagree with you a little Anton. H264 maxes out in EDIUS or FireCoder at 23Mb/s or somewhere around that mark, which is pretty good for most videos- but it is not enough for every situation or to satisfy my desires. Why is it that Grass Valley can't give us proper H264 with profile 4.1 and bit rates up to 40Mb/s for Blu-ray?

I note that I have seen some hollywood movies on Blu-ray use h264 with bitrates up to 35Mb/s. Is that a waste or are they getting better results with those bitrates? Who's to know, we aren't privy enough to use specs like that with EDIUS/FireCoder Blu.

Harro. I wouldn't bother with making the big AVi and using Nero to encode- If H264 from EDIUS isn't enough then try high bitrate Mpeg2 from EDIUS, will be better.
also, note that your 50Mb/s video that you did is over the specs allowed- it's 40Mb/s max for video.

Cheers

[antonsvideo]

I note that I have seen some hollywood movies on Blu-ray use h264 with bitrates up to 35Mb/s.
Cheers

hollywood Blu-ray are pressed

in our case, we are talking about burning, so lower bitrates will play back on more players than too high bitrate, the same applies to DVD, I never go above 7.7 but technically I could go to 9.8

[shueardm]

Agreed- but there's so much head room on BD available- we are still being offered inferior encoding with H264 in GV products.

[antonsvideo]

I wonder why the limit then? Let me ask

[Harro]

Thanks Anton and Shueardm for your replys. The video that I made was of Bluegrass bands performing, not very much rapid movement there. Using the Edius burn to disk at its maximum for Blu Ray produced many artifacts and even stopped play at times when (I guess) it choked. The playback was through a brand new Panasonic Blu Ray player into a Panasonic 106 cm Plasma. The 2 pass VBR made from the exported Mpeg mentioned earlier played perfectly with NO artifacts or hic-ups at any time.
I will use the Exporter again to produce another Mpeg, this time limiting the maximum bit rate to 40Mbps as Shueardm suggested and get rid of the huge AVI file!.
Thanks once again for your replys.

[pjsssss]

Thanks Anton and Shueardm for your replys. The video that I made was of Bluegrass bands performing, not very much rapid movement there. Using the Edius burn to disk at its maximum for Blu Ray produced many artifacts and even stopped play at times when (I guess) it choked. The playback was through a brand new Panasonic Blu Ray player into a Panasonic 106 cm Plasma. The 2 pass VBR made from the exported Mpeg mentioned earlier played perfectly with NO artifacts or hic-ups at any time.
I will use the Exporter again to produce another Mpeg, this time limiting the maximum bit rate to 40Mbps as Shueardm suggested and get rid of the huge AVI file!.
Thanks once again for your replys.

They have Bluegrass in Australia? As a Kentucky boy that shocks me and makes me smile at the same time. :-)

[STORMDAVE]

Have to disagree with you a little Anton. H264 maxes out in EDIUS or FireCoder at 23Mb/s or somewhere around that mark, which is pretty good for most videos- but it is not enough for every situation or to satisfy my desires. Why is it that Grass Valley can't give us proper H264 with profile 4.1 and bit rates up to 40Mb/s for Blu-ray?

I note that I have seen some hollywood movies on Blu-ray use h264 with bitrates up to 35Mb/s. Is that a waste or are they getting better results with those bitrates? Who's to know, we aren't privy enough to use specs like that with EDIUS/FireCoder Blu.

Harro. I wouldn't bother with making the big AVi and using Nero to encode- If H264 from EDIUS isn't enough then try high bitrate Mpeg2 from EDIUS, will be better.
also, note that your 50Mb/s video that you did is over the specs allowed- it's 40Mb/s max for video.

Cheers

I am pretty sure that more than 23mbps will be allowed in the future in EDIUS.

Also we can't compare our encodes with what Hollywood studios are producing. They're not using the same tools as us and their sources are higher than ours (Uncompressed 2k film and up).

[shueardm]

I was just questioning why they needed to use more bits than we do. With better encoders and cleaner source material they should only need to use 15Mb/s with the GV philosophy.

[Khoi Pham]

Have to disagree with you a little Anton. H264 maxes out in EDIUS or FireCoder at 23Mb/s or somewhere around that mark, which is pretty good for most videos- but it is not enough for every situation or to satisfy my desires. Why is it that Grass Valley can't give us proper H264 with profile 4.1 and bit rates up to 40Mb/s for Blu-ray?

I note that I have seen some hollywood movies on Blu-ray use h264 with bitrates up to 35Mb/s. Is that a waste or are they getting better results with those bitrates? Who's to know, we aren't privy enough to use specs like that with EDIUS/FireCoder Blu.

Harro. I wouldn't bother with making the big AVi and using Nero to encode- If H264 from EDIUS isn't enough then try high bitrate Mpeg2 from EDIUS, will be better.
also, note that your 50Mb/s video that you did is over the specs allowed- it's 40Mb/s max for video.

Cheers

Sometime I see them peak to 40Mb/s, I don't know if it is wasted or not but heck why not use it if you have space for it.? (-:

[Harro]

Where can I find the meaning and hence appropriate settings to be used in sections such as Extended Settings, GOP/VUI Settings, Prediction Settings, GOP Structure, Picture Count etc. in the Edius Exporter section (in the H264/AVC and Mpeg sections). I particularly would like to know the GOP Structure setting as well as the one for Picture Count at this time.

[Jerry]

I was just questioning why they needed to use more bits than we do. With better encoders and cleaner source material they should only need to use 15Mb/s with the GV philosophy.

Mark,
Because they can. If I had those toys...so would I.

[antonsvideo]

here is the offical answer

Edius DVD Creator Blu-ray encoding is done with AVCHD H.264 encoding which has a limit of 24mbps total

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

up to 24 Mbit/s (AVCHD conforming to H264 High-Profile, Level 4.1)

up to 17 Mbit/s (AVCHD conforming to H264 Main-Profile, Level 4.0)

[shueardm]

Yes but that is the problem. They use AVCHD levels which is not the same as H.264/AVC profiles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

The high Profile 4.1 is different in those specs because they are different formats and GV use the wrong bloomin' one in EDIUS and FireCoder Blu.

When you say "official answer" , who said this?