3D BR mastering software?

[Xavier Plagaro]

Hi! I have a Sony TD10 and would like to create a Bluray that can be read in 3D in all the world. As I understand the only 3D universal format would be 24p, but my PALish TD10 produces 3D only at 50i. Can someone tell me how to go from 50i to 24p in 3D?? Can Encore masterize a 3D BR?? Is there a software that I can use that doesn't cost more than a house?? Thanks!

[Paul Newman]

Pick up a copy of Power Director 10 - it reads your 3D MVC files directly and can make a 24P 3D BDR - remember that you will see motion artefacts from the conversion, this cannot be avoided.

On the up side PD10 is real cheap, if not a little simple and unstable at times, have fun!

Paul :-)

[Wolfgang Schmid]

Well, the conversion artefacts can be avoided if you come from 1080 50i. Either you can convert the footage to 720 50p, what is fine for 3D-BD. Or you take the footage, deinterlace it, drop every second frame and stretch the 25p to 24p (what can be done with PAL footage but not with NTSC footage). There are different tools where you can do that - for example Vegas Moviestudio HD Platinum. The PD10 is not able to do that, as far as I have seen.

[Paul Newman]

Will Vegas 11 do the same job Wolfgang? I don't use Vegas too much but I have 11 - hows the workflow for this?

Paul:-)

[Wolfgang Schmid]

Yes, both with Vegas Pro 10, 11 but also Moviestudio 11, 12 that could be done.

The base of the workflow is

- take a 1080 50i file (a large one renderd from a project)
- projects settings must be 1080 50i
- measure the length of the clip in absolute frames - e.g. 20.000 or whatever
- change the project settings to 1080 24p (=23,976 fps), the number of frames is reduced to something
- use ctrl+mouse to stretch the clip again to 20.000 or whatever. So you get exactly the same number of frames - but slowed down in the correct way

Also, the footage must be deinterlaced - best to 50p and then we drop every second frame. And it is a good idea to disable resampling when we do that. But you can end up with correct 1080 24p without any conversion errors. For the audio part one can use pitch shifting if desired.

[Giroud Francois]

you need to deinterlace (very bad in 3D) and slowdown of 4% to get 50i to 24p
Better would be to resize 50i to 720p50 ( less artifacts)
even better is to trash the TD10 (resale almost impossible, nobody wants that camera and since there is the newer TD20), and purchase the JVC (now at less than $1000) to shoot directly 24p
the NX3D1 is just a joke at the current price ($2600) and the TD10 is also a joke since it is not able to shoot in a format that is bluray compatible. (remember, Sony invented the bluray, so there is no excuse here).
it is too bad since the TD10/NX3D1 produce amazing picture quality when light is ok.

[Trevor Harris]

Beware PD10 produces AVCHD 3D discs with menus and the Sony products produce profile 5 discs with no menus.

[Wolfgang Schmid]

I would really like to know from where you take that information that the PD10 generates 3D-discs that are not profile 5. Any reasoning for that? As far as I know, both PD10 but also Vegas generates BDMV-structures with an dipendend and independend stream in an MVC-structure. So why generates the PD10 not profile 5, but Vegas is profile 5?

[Paul Newman]

The 3D Specification for Blu-ray Disc is designated as “Profile 5″ (the previous Blu-ray disc profiles are Profile 1.0, Profile 1.1 “Bonus-View” and Profile 2.0 “BD-Live”). Profile 5 allows a maximum data rate of 72Mbs (up from 48Mbs for BD-Live players), requires HDMI 1.4 (a higher-speed version of HDMI), and supports 3D video, 3D menus and 3D subtitles.

For example:
DoStudio uses the base view and depend view files ( made from your MVC encoder) and does not use the interleaved file. The 2-file input allows for higher bit rates during muxing.

AVCHD discs made in PD10 have a max data rate around 20Mbs and are interleaved. - if I remember correctly, and has no SSIF file structure either. (SSIF format > Secure Searchable Image Format)

Paul :-)

[Pavel Houda]

Originally Posted by Trevor Harris

Beware PD10 produces AVCHD 3D discs with menus and the Sony products produce profile 5 discs with no menus.

I am confused by your comment, please explain this to me. According to PD10 to spec, ( PowerDirector 10 - the world?s fastest video editing software ), it can output .mvc (frame packed) stream, and is playable on players capable of emitting HDMI 1.4 stream (which means Profile 5 players). The biggest problem with licensing from lower cost S/W has always been the menu system, since the BD consortia always demanded very high licensing fees for the "real thing", one of the reasons Apple didn't want to support it. Small batch creators also hated that, because $3k license fee for a small run (say 100) BD's made the cost too prohibitive. My knowledge on this is outdated.

There is a reference on the formats here: Blu-ray Disc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . It specifically addresses the player profiles. The nice thing with MVC was that because the left channel embeds the i-frames and the stream is designed to be backward compatible with AVC, one can always play 3D discs as left video channels with the older players.

I don't understand how AVCHD can contain MVC streams, so please explain. I am genuinely interested.

[Trevor Harris]

AVCHD mutiplexes the main and dependent streams into one m2ts file on the disc. Profile 5 discs are recorded in ssif files. Both formats use MVC encoding.

Profile 5 is limited to 1280x720p50, 1280x720p60 and 1920x1080p24. AVCHD has 2 more formats such as 1920x1080i50 used by the TD10.

The Profile 5 spec is given here

http://www.blu-raydisc.com/assets/Do...per_110712.pdf

Some AVCHD 3D info here

AVCHD INFORMATION WEB SITE

Many Blu-ray 3D players support both types of discs but not all. Profile 5 also supports up to 60 Mb/sec bit rate so is capable of much better quality.

[Pavel Houda]

Thanks Trevor. I cannot find any reasonably priced 3D authoring S/W that will support anywhere near the maximum bit rate. Do you know of any?

[Wolfgang Schmid]

I think we have to be carefull here. The good old White Paper from the beloved Blu-ray consortia is first of all from July 2011, so a little bit outdated. And it is a standard - fine - but for BD-ROMs and not for self burned BD-R/Es. I think the White Paper is important because it specifies for Blu-ray players what kind of playback they MUST be able to perform. But that is it. Also the PD10 generates his "3D-BDs" with 720 50p, 720 60p and 1080 24p only (and it was a fight with Cyberlink to get the 720 50p in the software, believe me), similar to what Vegas or Vegas Moviestudio will do.

It may be right that the dependend and independend stream is muxed - I have not checked that really - in the PD10, while it is not muxed in Vegas for example. And if there is an ssif file - I do not know if we really have to care for self-burned BD-R/Es about that. Is there a reason why we should/have to care for our self-generated discs?

There seems to be a more significant difference between BDMV-structures generated by tools like Vegas or the PD10, compared to the BDAV-structure generated by tools like the PMB. BDAV structures that can contain also 1080 50i/60i what would be great for a lot of comsuners for their TD10, TD20 or TD1 content, since it would allow them to avoid the conversion to the 3D-BD formats. But beside the PMB no tool seems to be able to generate such BDAV structures with 1080 50i/60i footage.

So I understand the differences that you mention, but still do not see why they are important for the uses of the PD10 or Vegas or Magix?

[Pavel Houda]

Originally Posted by Trevor Harris

Many Blu-ray 3D players support both types of discs but not all. Profile 5 also supports up to 60 Mb/sec bit rate so is capable of much better quality.

I see what you are saying. This was the case even before 3DBD. Some BD authoring S/W would use AVCHD and "non-conforming" menu system, so not all BD players would play the content. The Vegas Output has no menus and is bitrate limited, but it should play on all legitimate BD players, either 2D or 3D, depending on the profile. Thanks for the information.

[Paul Newman]

I think the whole point is: Do you care about the final quality? A restricted low data rate for AVCHD derived files is OK, but say you shoot with two RED cameras or even two DSLR's, you will want better data rates, ie. profile 5.

No there is no cheap MVC coder, try Scenarist and Cinevision, a snip at $25000 - but will give you full 60Mbs data streams on your 3D BDR.

Paul :-)