Absolute Blu-Ray Success.......

[AJL14]

One of the delights of being on this forum, is that the info supplied here and suggestions from one filmmaker to another are particularly joyous when all are mixed and matched into what may be termed an absolute success.

With all the problems and variables attached to making Blu-Ray discs, I recently filmed a huge 12 minute musical number on a large theater stage being performd by a live orchestra of perhaps 12 or 15 and a dance troup of about 30 in front of an audience of 700.

The camera - the new Sony HDR-SR12 1920x1080 HDD camera (retail $1399.00) lent to me by Sony. I videod 3 rehearsals and the live show. 4 different angles and closeups along with the performance "master".

Edited with EDIUS in multi-cam mode. Procoder 3 the timeline to MPEG-2 . m2v and AC-3 audio. Imported into DVDitProHD, transfered to Blu-Ray at the DVDit BD standard (25,000 kb/s) on the new LG BD disc recorder, stuck the BD in an upgraded (version 3.60) Sony BDP-S1 (the FIRST Blu-Ray on the market), and projected 1080p onto my nearly 15 foot diagonal theater screen, and voila.

First rate. No artifacts, eye-popping resolution that nearly equalled the "tonight show" live broadcasts, and gorgeous color. Not a brag, guys. Really. Just a giant THANK YOU to all of you who go through the frustrating stages of trial and error, and then offer help and advice to all of us in our choices in order to complete something really new and exciting.

After at least a dozen "bloopers" trying to make BD discs - all failures - to finally have one that looks this good, is a testiment to you all. Cheers and cheers!


Alan

[Rusty]

Congratulations Alan!

So, this is (essentially) a single camera shoot? Cool!

It sounds like a considerable comparison you're making with this dinky camera!

Now I'd love to see some footage. Can you post a bit on Vimeo?

Can't wait!

[SoundFreak]

That's great to hear.

Regarding the HDR-SR12, I'm curious, how did it held up with the live shooting ? any problems with "wash out" due to bright and / or changing lighting enviorment ?

Did it has focus "hunting" problems like the HVR-A1, the supposingly mini sized pro model ?

Planning to get a new "family" cam, not sure yet what to get.

[AJL14]

Hey Rusty and Tony,

Thanks for your comeback. Tomorrow is a killer day for me, so I'll post answers and on Vimeo within 48 hours. Don't know Vimeo, so I'll have to do some educating in order to post there. Forgive me for the delay.

Cheers,
Alan

[Rusty]

How was your experience with AVCHD?

Vimeo is not the most user-friendly experience, but the most friendly-user one for sure. Be sure to see the HDR-SR12 channel, tons-o-fun!

Don't kill yourself to upload...
We're Edius users... we know how to wait! :~)
You'll need to scale to 1280x720 24p for Vimeo, I recommend Streamclip to convert to .mp3 audio to save space. :~(

[drgagx]

Thanks for that most helpful report on your success with AVCHD and BluRay. I have read that the Sony HDR-SR12 has the option of setting xvColor to `on` - the default being `off`. Can you confirm that xv was set to `on`? And did you do any tests with XV set of off for comparison? If so, how obvious was this on your 15ft screen? And did it show up on your edit suite? In fact it is possible to do so in Edius without an HDMI output from the edit suite? Maybe we need a new Edius card with HDMI output to achieve this?

I have not yet taken the plunge on AVCHD, tho I am slowly getting together the elements needed to support it, so your experience is really valuable. Thanks for sharing it.

[kwshaw1]

Procoder 3 the timeline to MPEG-2 . m2v and AC-3 audio. Imported into DVDitProHD, transfered to Blu-Ray at the DVDit BD standard (25,000 kb/s) on the new LG BD disc recorder...

When you did this did DVDit re-encode the video to conform to Blu-ray specs, or was the file you generated from Procoder 3 compatible without transcoding? If the Procoder file was compatible, what encoding settings did you use?

The biggest hiccup I have with Blu-ray is having to encode twice: once out of Edius to the HQ format and again in Adobe CS3 to make a Blu-ray compliant disc. If there's a better (faster) way to do this using Procoder Express and CS3 someone please let me know...

[Khoi Pham]

If you don't want to make a HQ avi then just encode straight from the timeline with Shueardm preset on the ProCoder page and Encore will accept it just fine.

[pjsssss]

Thanks for sharing Alan. Send it to me when you get time. How do you like the LG burner?

[AJL14]

Hi guys,

Here is a repeat of an earlier post of mine re the new AVCHD which I shot with, and an update on some more recent conclusions:

"Yes, all my evaluations and testing (I have done testing for Canon, Sony, Faroudja and others) are done on a big screen at 1080p. My theater screen is 14 1/2 ft. diagonal. My theoretical horizontal resolution in 2,500 - so I do not have a problem with 1920 (3-CRT projector - still the best as long as it lasts!). I built a "black clamp" for the signal path, thereby clamping the blacks on the screen at .02% - virtually non-existent.

When I say "no loss", I am speaking of a comparison between the original AVCHD output direct from the camera, and the resulting HQ file out of the AVCHD2HQ program. On my very large screen, there is SOME loss of detail in the very fine detail areas, but on my 70" screen I can barely - if at all - detect any qulaity difference at all. And colors are "spot-on".

However, Dave does bring up a really good point. AVCHD cameras are primarily single-chip CMOS cameras, and will not deliver as good a pix as a 3-chip camera - SIDE-BY-SIDE! And even many have preferred the clean codec of HDV especially 3-chip HDV) over AVCHD - even at the 1440 horiz. resolution compared to the 1920. HOWEVER - MOST OF THE GUYS PROBABLY HAVE NOT HAD THE OPPORTUNITY YET TO TEST OUT THE NEW 17Mbps AVCHD CAMERAS (Sony and Canon so far)- which are (to quote a show I directed ) a QUANTUM-LEAP better than the 1st version, which was 7Mbps. At 7Mbps there is false contouring, lousy compression and artifacts all over the place - especially on my big screen. At 17Mbps - I see hardly any blocking or false contouring at all - if any. The next generation is going to be 25Mbps (the practical limit to non-professional AVCHD according to Sony) - which should be even more surprising and successful. However - even more difficult for our editing computers to stay up with, thereby necessitating even more, the AVCHD2HQ advancements, which have been met pretty successfully by GV so far."

Now, as far as the c olor setting on the SR-12, DRG, I received the camera the night before I shot, so there was little time to do any experimentation and view the results. So I left the special camera color in the "off" mode, so as not to mess with the already saturated on-stage lighting. I hope to get to do some testing later this week, and will post as soon as I get any tangible results.

And Kevin, as far as the re-encoding of the DVDitProHD program, I must admit I know much less about this than many of the guys on the forum. I JUST began using it as a result of advice I received from guys like Jerry and Mark and Khoi - so I must hand this part of the discussion over to there experience. All I know is, is that what I saw on the big screen, was an incredibly artifact-free rendition of what I saw on the large EDIUS editing screen. If it was re-encoded, it was a pretty **** good job of it.

Will update as things progress. Thanks, all.
Cheers,
Alan

[shueardm]

I must admit, none of my Blu-ray discs have ever looked in need of more bits like making DVD can look. The headroom fo Blu-ray id much welcomed.

[drgagx]

Thanks for the update. I look forward to the results of your tests with great interest.

As a side note, Panasonic have announced the HMC-150 which pushes AVCHD to c22Mbps average/24Mbps peak for release in the fall. I hpoe that their HS1000 (?), a consumer cam in a similar price range to your Sony, will also support this improved codec.

[AJL14]

Tony....

Tony - sorry I didn't answer your two questions. On the "washout" - yes there was a slight bit of washout on the "overbright" portions of the pix. There were some "internally lighted" cloth stars hung above the stage that blew out. But 2 factors - one, I think they were perhaps 5 stops hotter than the stage and dancers (where the camera auto-irised to get proper exposure), and two, on the EDIUS timeline I applied the "curves" correction effect, and with the luminance curve brought down the "top" (or overexposed) portion of the pix to about 110 IRE, and the stars were perfect, with all textures showing. Therefore, I can only surmise that the camera properly recorded all the information, and the "peak crush" clipped on the EDIUS. So bringing it down about 8 or 9 points brought it into perfect registration.
As far as the focus "hunting", I saw VERY little of that. Far better than previous models. I did a little filmin in some VERY dark places - perhaps 3 or 4lumens, and then there was - as in all cameras - a slight amount of hunting. The one experience I did have that I question, was even though the 'Super Steadi Shot' anti-shake/vibration worked quite well - 2nd only to Canon's SUPERB optical version - at some times when I'd turn the camera on, it would take 20 to 25 seconds for the SteadiShot to kick in. I have not asked for another camera to test yet, however that is one item which I will check out for sure. Most folks cannot wait for that long to start taking a shot after turn-on.
Hope I've relayed some info that helps. Will continue to play and report!
Cheers,
A

[AJL14]

Rusty.....

Rusty - I'm trying to post a 4 minute HD on Vimeo as you suggested - but since I've never done this, I'm having trouble getting an HD file down to 500megs, which is their limit to post. ALso, I'm not sure of the file "form" they will accept. If you can enlighten me as to how to take my timeline and get it onto Vimeo (without buying any new software ! ! !), I'd be most grateful, and will post ASAP.
Many thanks,
Cheers,
Alan

[Rusty]

Hang in there... it's way do-able!

Unfortunately, I've not found a single-stroke solution to Vimeo.

I use PCE to output to 1280x720 H.264 Quicktime w/little Endian audio, then I use Streamclip to get what Vimeo likes best. (I can't figure out how to get .mp3 audio from PCE, someone will say it's not available :~/)

In Streamclip...
1280x720 H.264 Quicktime
.mp3 audio
Limit bitrate to 5000kbps
A spiffy file size indicator is available while you while you play with settings.
Save a preset for next time and you're good to go!

Vimeo is very forgiving about replacing video footage should you need to make changes. Can't wait!