Blu Ray video from Encore is jerky, not smooth

[Ajai Thirumalai]

I am using Adobe CS6. Editing in Premiere Pro, and authoring with Encore. I dragged the time line from PrPro to Encore, and initially, made a Blu Ray image which I then burned to a Verbatim BD-R 6x, Dual Layer BD-R. I had changed the bit rate to 30 Mbps max which my Samsung BD player can handle.

Stationary text and video is super sharp - you can see each strand of hair on a persons head. When the subject in the video moves, it is watchable but not glass smooth. I shot the video using an XF 305 at 60i and 1/60th shutter speed in manual mode in an auditorium. Even when the camera is in all-auto mode for my grab and run shots, the video is not super smooth.

While I don't have the camera with me, I recall the video was great when I played from the camera to the TV.

Any rolling / crawling text generated in PrPRo (so no camera involved!) also stutters, which makes me suspect a missed (frame rate?) setting somewhere. I let the timeline be transcoded by Encore automatically. I also tried a custom preset using H.264, but the problem persists.

I also did this with a Verbatim BD-RE at 15 and 30 Mbps, but to no avail.

Previously, my workflow would be to have PrPro export a H.264 file, that I would then bring into Encore, which worked fine. (I haven't tried it again now, though.)

(My PC is i7, hex core, 64 GB RAM, SSDs and external HDD).

While I saw similar questions on the board, the ones I found were very old, hence this post.

I will be most grateful if anyone can shed any light on the matter.

Thanks for your help!

ajai

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Ajai,

Please verify that the Premiere Sequence is in fact 1080i to match the source footage, and then Export as "H.264 Blu-ray" with a 1080i preset, bring the resulting assets into Encore and it simply ought to work, have never run into that issue before using 1080i footage for Blu-ray. Most users do not recommend letting Encore encode, always do it yourself from Premiere.

Thanks

[Ajai Thirumalai]

Thanks for the quick reply despite the holidays, Jeff!

I assumed when I drag the timeline from PrPro to Encore (per a Lynda video I watched), Dynamic Link will do its thing.

Just so I don't fat-finger this, where specifically should I be looking to verify the Premiere sequence is 1080i before exporting as H.264?

Regards,

ajai

[Ann Bens]

Originally Posted by Ajai Thirumalai

Thanks for the quick reply despite the holidays, Jeff!
Just so I don't fat-finger this, where specifically should I be looking to verify the Premiere sequence is 1080i before exporting as H.264?
ajai

Try sequence settings.
Export to H.264 Bluray.

[Ajai Thirumalai]

Sorry for the super delayed follow-up. I have now done some additional tests I can report on.

I tried exporting H.264 Blu-ray from Premiere Pro, and it did not come out any different with the Blu-ray disk.

Separately, I exported short 5 minute known-good older HD clips, also in H.264 Blu-ray, and the jerkiness still persists. This was also true when I used Dynamic Link.

Some other things I find - in Encore:

My timelines are 29.97 fps, but even after choosing under Edit Quality Presets

1920 x 1080i 29.97 Maximum Quality H.264,
when I go back and look at it, it is 23.967 fps!

I am not sure why the 29.97 fps setting doesn't stick. 23.976 fps will obviously not look smooth.

Any ideas on a bigger hammer to use? I must be missing something obvious!

Any advice is much appreciated! Thanks!!

[Jeff Pulera]

Screen shots will be most helpful in troubleshooting -

Premiere export settings
Encore Transcode Presets

Thanks

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Ajai Thirumalai

I assumed when I drag the timeline from PrPro to Encore (per a Lynda video I watched), Dynamic Link will do its thing.

It will. Most people don't like what it does. But it will certainly do it.

Much higher quality results if 1) you manually transcode to your final output, from PPro, using AME, or 2) you use the switches in Encore that force Encore to transcode using AME.

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Ajai Thirumalai

My timelines are 29.97 fps, but even after choosing under Edit Quality Presets

1920 x 1080i 29.97 Maximum Quality H.264,
when I go back and look at it, it is 23.967 fps!

Blu-ray supports exactly four frame rates at 1920x1080 resolution. These are, 29.97i, 25i, 24p, and 23.976p. That's it. That's all there is. Note the difference between frame rate and progressive/interlaced. You must be very careful about that. And that is perhaps what's causing your troubles.

That said, nearly everyone with a video camera (and yes, that would include me) way over-estimate the speed with which they can pan/tilt and still get smooth motion. Smooth motion requires very slow pans/tilts. Very slow. Say it one more time: very slow. You go too fast, you get motion artifacts. This will always be the case as long as we are saddled with these really slow frame rates from a hundred years ago (say it with me: Because we've ALWAYS done it this way!). As a result, I try to pan/tilt as little as possible. If the camera has to move, I'd always rather that be on a dolly or a slider. Just sayin'.