Trying to author my first BRD's...?'s

[pjsssss]

Although the Edius upside down files are surely on topic and it would be nice to have a solution.

[shueardm]

Although the Edius upside down files are surely on topic and it would be nice to have a solution.

Yes, I'd really like to talk about what is the go there but no-one is commenting.

[planetweckesser]

That's cool to know. One thought that did hit me as I started playing here. If I take a m2t file that is compressed via mpg to about 8gb per hour of video and convert it to a bluray compatible file with a bitrate betweent 20000 and 30000 aren't we monkeying around with another layer of compression? Does Sorenson uncompress it like the HQ codec and then recompress it to a bigger file. The numbers are just funky to me going from an 8gb hour file to one that is even bigger.

With the min 20, target 24 and max 30 bitrates how much time will fit on a single layer blu ray disc. My short form productions are generally under one hour but then the full versions of the edit are usually 1.5 to over 2 hours. It would be nice to put all of it on one BluRay. I was thinking of encoding the full versions of edits at a lower bit rate so I could put everything on one disc. Is this a bad idea?

If you ever get tired of responding via email would be possible to just call you sometime and get all the answers handled quickly? Otherwise this is a good way to document all this information for others in the future.

Phillip

I am getting about an hour per 11-12 GB - on one single layer blu-ray disc I have been able to squeeze two hours. I have always been using the same bitrate as the raw .m2t files coming out of the Sony HDV camera. My philosophy is that if one is going to the trouble of going HD then we should try to tweak the format for the best quality - watching commercial movies on the PS3 I will check the bitrate and it averages around 25,000 and goes higher during action sequences. Maybe I am wrong and someone else please correct me - but using a bitrate that translates out to 8 GB/hour is on the low side and quality could be compromised depending on the type of material you are shooting.

[GrassValley_KH]

We're pushing the limits aren't we? Talking about how to do things in Sorenson?

Well spotted.

People, please keep this discussion GV-related. As for the "Canopus HQ upside down in Sorenson" issue - there's a thread for that already.

For Sorenson-Blu-ray workflow, take it offline please.

[planetweckesser]

Well spotted.

People, please keep this discussion GV-related. As for the "Canopus HQ upside down in Sorenson" issue - there's a thread for that already.

For Sorenson-Blu-ray workflow, take it offline please.

I have not mentioned the "S" word since shueardm's admonition that you guoted in your post. My last post just concerned bitrates - nothing specific to any compression software.

Henceforth will be following guidelines.

[Jerry]

Well spotted.

People, please keep this discussion GV-related. As for the "Canopus HQ upside down in Sorenson" issue - there's a thread for that already.

For Sorenson-Blu-ray workflow, take it offline please.

Might I suggest a move to the DVDITPROHD forum, as that is the program with which you have discussed authoring.

By the way, the encoding information contained in the Procoder Express settings download is 1 1/2 years old.( Where were you guys then?)
Those settings have been improved upon and are no longer used, therefore I have removed them from my website. Consequently, the links on the DVDITPROHD forum no longer work.

[planetweckesser]

Might I suggest a move to the DVDITPROHD forum, as that is the program with which you have discussed authoring.

By the way, the encoding information contained in the Procoder Express settings download is 1 1/2 years old.( Where were you guys then?)
Those settings have been improved upon and are no longer used, therefore I have removed them from my website. Consequently, the links on the DVDITPROHD forum no longer work.

I fully understand not mentioning another company's products that may compete with a similar Grass Valley product on this website and certainly will comply with that.

But then to refer people to another website and then say "by the way" those settings are old, have been improved upon and no longer used and I have removed the links from that website (without saying what the settings are or where you can find them) - well I won't make a comment on that further.

I thought the idea of these forums is to exchange information - all of the people here are Edius Pro or Broadcast users and many want to author on blu-ray - the proper settings for blu-ray compliant files should be no big secret held be an elite few - by the way, the blu-ray presets in Procoder 3.05 do not produce files that will go through DVDit Pro HD without being re-encoded - I had to tweak them a bit by trial and error. Perhaps they work in Encore, Blu-print, Scenarist etc.

[Jerry]

But then to refer people to another website and then say "by the way" those settings are old, have been improved upon and no longer used and I have removed the links from that website (without saying what the settings are or where you can find them) - well I won't make a comment on that further.

The settings and website link was mentioned earlier in this thread.
Since the settings are no longer current and are still being downloaded
by way of the posted link, I felt it better to remove them for accuracy sake!
The settings that are stickied on this forum are current and useable.

As far as Procoder 3 settings, they work fine for Encore. DVDITPROHD has too many quirks for consisitent product quality. I own it, but do not use it.
Procoder 2 settings allowed for BD burning within DVDITPROHD without re-encoding. Nothing has changed with that program (DVDITPROHD). I believe the last update was the PS3 update over a year ago.

When I can create 3 different versions of the same program, Blu-ray, Standard DVD, and Blu-ray on DVD, and one time... I don't see taking a step back.
All three of those discs are created with Procoder 3 with a perfect playback record of BDMV and AVCHD machines with firmware enabled.

[shueardm]

I thought the idea of these forums is to exchange information - all of the people here are Edius Pro or Broadcast users and many want to author on blu-ray - the proper settings for blu-ray compliant files should be no big secret held be an elite few - by the way, the blu-ray presets in Procoder 3.05 do not produce files that will go through DVDit Pro HD without being re-encoded - I had to tweak them a bit by trial and error. Perhaps they work in Encore, Blu-print, Scenarist etc.

It is no big secret- the sticky thread has the presets, the new version has a copy of them (all you do is change the frame rate to suit). You are the first and only person that can't get the Mpeg2 HD preset to work.

[planetweckesser]

It is no big secret- the sticky thread has the presets, the new version has a copy of them (all you do is change the frame rate to suit). You are the first and only person that can't get the Mpeg2 HD preset to work.

When I downloaded and installed Procoder 3.05 update and tried using the included presets - there were several items left unchecked - "Use Closed GOP", "put sequence header on each GOP", "enable scene detection", "use strict GOP bitrate control". I am not so sure why they were unchecked unless I had done it by mistake in 3.0 and it carried over to 3.05 - anyway I checked them all and compliant files were produced.

I apologize about my comment on the availability of presets - I usually don't go into the Procoder section of the forum and had overlooked it. I have installed them in the Procoder update and plan on using them. Thanks for your effort in producing them.

[kwshaw1]

What you need to know, and also express in your article, is that it is not as simple as getting a bluray burner and software and making a blu-ray disc.
Yes, it is much easier these days than it was 2 years ago when I started. However, just making one mistake can create a non-compliant blu-ray file.

The easiest solution I've found so far is to render a finished project to an Edius HQ file, and then import that into Adobe CS3 for authoring and burning. This way you let CS3 make the compliant MPEG2 output according to its own specifications, which is fine except it takes a while and doesn't look as good as MPEG2 from PCE. Sounds like buying the full version of Procoder is worth considering for optimal results, using confirmed compliant encoding settings.

[planetweckesser]

The easiest solution I've found so far is to render a finished project to an Edius HQ file, and then import that into Adobe CS3 for authoring and burning. This way you let CS3 make the compliant MPEG2 output according to its own specifications, which is fine except it takes a while and doesn't look as good as MPEG2 from PCE. Sounds like buying the full version of Procoder is worth considering for optimal results, using confirmed compliant encoding settings.

You can't go wrong with PC3 - albeit it is slower but there has never been a question about high quality.

Rendering directly from the timeline to a blu-ray compliant file with PC3 seems like it would probably make the most sense as rendering to .m2t and then to the blu-ray compliant file adds one more step with theoretical (at least) quality decrease. I still will make .m2t files of finished projects for archiving.

[Khoi Pham]

The preset shuedardm puts out is great, I think it looks better than Encore MPEG2 HD, I would just use PC3 for HD MPEG2.

[Jerry]

The preset shuedardm puts out is great, I think it looks better than Encore MPEG2 HD, I would just use PC3 for HD MPEG2.

The only encoding I do through Encore CS3 is for H.264 product. It looks good
and as far as H.264 goes, is the only game in town as far as I know.

You can't go wrong with PC3 - albeit it is slower but there has never been a question about high quality.

It is only slower if you encode one thing. For example, if you encode from 1 file to 1 transcoded file, yes it is slower. However, if you encode from 1 file to more than one transcode at a time, it will surprise you how fast it is.
I did a 20 minute Corporate promo with PC3 from an 8bit uncompressed 1920x1080 master going to MPEG2HD. This process took 2 hours.
When I did the MPEG2HD, SD DVD, and bluray for DVD files, it took the same time. This is on the same machine(quad 2.4 running at 3.1) .

[Crespel]

The only encoding I do through Encore CS3 is for H.264 product. It looks good
and as far as H.264 goes, is the only game in town as far as I know.

I do the H264 encoding in PC3 as well (with Mark's presets) and it works well in Encore CS3 without re-encoding.