Peter,

Being the obsessive detail lover, I once again downloaded your first file and played it several times. None of my players exhibit any jerkiness whatsoever. Like HDV and other AVCHD material I see during horizontal pans, there is some smearing, but this is true in the original content for any HD prosumer camcorder I have used or seen, and occurs in the raw original video as well. There is some evidence of handheld camera motion also occasionally, but I believe this to be entirely due to a lack of a tripod or stable camera positioning. I

I want to repeat an offer I made to you previously:

Tell me where in the 1 minute 29 second video you see the blocking / artifacting / effects such as you described earlier (in the sky, etc.) and I will do one or more frame grabs and send you the full 1920 by 1080 frames as captured by Nero Show Time or ArcSoft Total Media Theater or TMPGE Express 4.0 to show you exactly what I see here. As I previously mentioned, I went through the video slowly with TMPGE Express 4.0 frame by frame (GOP by GOP) and did not see ANY issues. I will be glad to share any or all of this with you.

Larry

Mike, since you have a quad core, could you please take a look at the two files I produced using:
1) Power Director
RapidShare: Easy Filehosting (http://rapidshare.com/files/170350846/Testing_Power_Director_Pixelation_in_Sky.m2ts.html)

2) Nero then VSX2
RapidShare: Easy Filehosting (http://rapidshare.com/files/170358067/Nero_then_VSX2.mpg.html)

I am still struggling with why file 1 looks to me so much worse than file 2, whereas Larry claims the exact opposite. If my Pixela AVCHD looks fine on my computer, and my VSX2 AVCHD looks fine (except for the blips), and a clip straight from the flash card looks fine, then why doesn't my PD AVCHD look okay?

This weekend I will try playing the AVCHD disk I made with PD on my friend's PS3. When I play it on my computer, I still see the artifacts, so I will let you guys know if the PS3 produces artifacts. According to Larry's theory, it shouldn't.

Peter, I am working on it. Since I am doing the "free" download, it takes time. And then it seems that I have maxed out my download limit. So I have been unable so far to download the second file. From observing the first file, it looked pretty good to me. Will be able to tell you more once I am able to download the second file for observation.

May take some time; may not be able to finish answering you until some time tomorrow. Will try again later tonight though.

Mike

Well I downloaded both clips, and played them both with Nero. Both look relatively the same. They play smoothly with no jerkiness that I can see. Pixalation does not seem present; or whatever one may attribute to pixalation. There is some "wavering on the roof shingles for instance, and some fluxuation in the driveway stones as the shooter moves. I don't know if that is what one may call pixalation or not. Whatever problems exist, exist in both clips. Those problems I see are probably due to any of the following: CMOS, the efficiency (or lack thereof) of my computer monitor to accurately produce or show the clips, or shooter error (panning too fast).

I will revisit the clips later tomorrow and may burn them on a DVD to view on my Plasma.

Mike

Hey Larry, how long can you make an AVCHD presentation on a DL DVD before your AVCHD PQ begins to deteriorate? Of the two DVDs I have made (from different shoots) one turned out well with 118 minutes of video, while the other had to be edited down to 45 minutes before it looked as good. The first one was automatic best quality (something like that), while the second I picked 1440x1080 to make it as good as the first. Both were shot with the same camcorder, the SR11 on full automatic.

Thanks.
Mike

Mike,

In theory, since a dual layer disk holds about 8 Gbytes, and most AVCHD camcorders (at their highest quality setting) encode at about 17 Mbits/sec, then you should be able to fit a little over an hour on a dual layer disk while preserving 100% of the original content / IQ.

Thiis theory has been borne out by my experience, with 2 exceptions:

1. The AVCHD format (unlike HDV) encodes using a variable bit rate. Therefore simple scenes and no panning or other motion creates a lower bit rate encoding than highly detailed / faster motion scenes. Theoretically you should be able to store a lot more than an hour if the content is simple, and indeed, this has also been my experience.

2. The playback method / equipment combined with the critical inspection by the viewer makes a huge difference. One person will call something "perfect" that another person calls "pretty good". Picture quality is, in this respect, judgemental, but there are truly scientific and accurate ways to measure it, seldom applied on forums of this type, but used extensively in optical and video engineering.
Thus, I personally consider an image quality degraded at a different level than somebody else might.

Let's take the details in Peter's sample clip as an example.

The house in the clip has a small sign to the left of the front door with the house number. Since it is only about 26 pixels wide (out of 1920 recorded), it is very difficult to discern with the naked eye. If you played back the video on a really good system with really careful inspection, you might see the digits individually, but you would have to strain to actually read them even with a magnified cropped image. All sorts of other really fine detail is in the clip, such as grass blades, roof shingle features, tree branch details, etc.

The more processing the clip gets, the worse this detail looks (with few exceptions). I am strongly opposed to re-encoding the video since it superimposes not one but two (or more) lossy processing steps onto the original video. I thus am always seeking a Smart Render option whenever possible. Therefore, downsampling the original video clip to fit more on a disk just does not appeal to me in any way whatsoever. Quicktime movies and Microsoft wmv files have their place, but not for my 1920 by 1080 content, thank you.......

Larry

Hi Guys,
I burned some items to disk and played them on the PS3 on a 720p HDTV.

1) AVCHD from Flash Card to PD, edited and burned to AVCHD disk on DVD-R.
2) AVCHD from Flash Card, smart rendered by Nero, edited and smart rendered by VSX2 and burned to AVCHD disk on DVD-R.
3) AVCHD from Flash Card, edited with Pixela, burned to disk using Nero.

My results were:
1) disk was not recognized by PS3, so I couldn't play it.
2) Obvious stutters throughout the video (which I didn't see when viewing the file on my computer-before burning to disk). This is the video that Larry sees the pixelation in on the house numbers. But Larry did not see stutters in in it. Stutters may have been introduced by the way that VSX2 burned it to disk.
3) Looks perfect. This is now my method of choice, which is a shame since Pixela is pretty slow when editing on my computer.

There must be more variables that I am not considering, as the results are very suprising (except for 3). I think I will stick with workflow 3, since it is pretty much guaranteed to work, and because I am becoming exasperated by all the seemingly infinite workflow options and all these odd results!

Larry, thanks for your offer to analyze the pixelation I am seeing. I don't remember the timing, but it was obvious when looking at the sky at any point throughout the video. However, given that I can't get the PD file to even play in a PS3, I think I will give up that workflow and stick with Pixela-Nero workflow.

Peter,

I've been trying for the last half hour to send you a couple frame grabs but this website has a problem accepting any jpegs (or bmp's). I will send them as soon as this feature is working again, but right now the Upload attachments does not work as it did a few days ago.

I am entirely baffled by the fact that the PD disk does not play at all on the PS3 (perhaps old firmware on the PS3). My PS3 plays them beautifully. I have never tried your method 2, using first Nero to Smart Render and then once again Smart rendering it in Corel X2. These is also extremely bizzare as a workflow, and should not be required. I guess I will not comment that the disk stutters when played on a PS3 but haven't a clue what this approach could possibly offer. Since you have a working method in number 3, then I guess the obvious solution is to continue using method 3.......

Just for completeness, I have authored your PD clip onto a (Verbatim 16X) DVD-R and it plays absolutely fine on my PS3. I can only recommend that you check the version of PD to be sure you have 2.2.2.7c as mentioned earlier in this thread, and also see that the PS3 is up to date as well.

Regarding pixellation, I have never seen any pixellation in either of your video clips. The house number description / comparison was intended to demonstrate to you that the PD-rendered clip which Power Director Smart Rendered had preserved the original detail of the camcorder, showing "741" as a house number when inspected with a grabbed frame which was magnified versus the blurry and totally non-distinct, and not readable blob which comes out of using method 3.......... It was my point earlier and now that your system cannot handle full resolution 1920 by 1080, and only the significantly down-rezed and blurrier, lower resolution method 3 video plays on your computer due to its marginal speed.

Hope this has been of some value to you Peter. I will send the 2 screen captures as soon as this forum feature is working again.

Larry

The full uncropped frame is here:

http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/1256389/img/1256389.bmp

Larry

The cropped image below is an enlargement at 10X to show the detail which is preserved by Power Director (and other Smart Rendering programs as well).

Larry

http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/1256411/img/1256411.jpg

Thanks Larry. I understand all that you have said. In my first attempt to make an AVCHD DVD of my second program springtime along the Lake Michigan shoreline, I tried to put in an hour and eleven minutes of spring landscape/scenery type shots with lots of details present such as leaves, tree branches, dune grass, moving birds, moving water, etc. What I got was jitters when any motion was in the frame; or more like a moving double exposure. The jitters would show two tree branches jittering back and forth between themselves, while if there were no motion present, the image was cleaner but not what I would call HD (not the same as my previous AVCHD DVD), with blurred edges and distant object hazy.
When you do some searching within the Nero program, there is a point where you can choose which quality setting you want for your resolution. I first tried automatic exposure, and then the second try I chose 1440x1080 (which turned out much better). In so doing, I had to trim back from one hour eleven minutes to just forty five minutes. Kinda makes me wonder what the automatic chose as a resolution. As I write this, I am curious what a full resolution of 1920x1080 would allow as far as the amount of video on the disc.

It is strange that with my first AVCHD program of trains, there were a lot of moving trains across the picture, sometimes with the trains close-up. I wonder how I was able to get an hour and twenty five minutes of AVCHD content on that DVD and have such a beautiful, clear, HD picture.

So much to learn and so few neurons left to work with.

Thanks.
Mike

Mike,
I suggest you use Nero Show Time to view your finished AVCHD disks and files. If you enable the optional information display, it will show you all the particulars, such as video and audio bitrates, VBR or CBR, type of encodings used for video and audio, and a continuously updated display showing instantaneous encoding rates.

This will allow you to see how your prior and future stuff is being processed.

In general, Nero defaults to Smart Render which keeps the original file format intact, unless you add effects, titles, etc.

Picture quality and recording time are, for all compression methods, inversely related.... One goes up and the other goes down. True for mpeg, jpeg, mjpeg, AVCHD/h.264, etc. For a given method like AVCHD, you only get more recording time by decreasing PQ. Decreasing PQ is done by lowering detail / resolution, slowing the frame rate, dropping frames, and / or using longer GOPS. In most cases for AVCHD the effects are pretty obvious since very highly compressed video can't tolerate much change without it being damaging to PQ.

Not sure if this addresses your issue entirely.....

Larry

Mike,
I suggest you use Nero Show Time to view your finished AVCHD disks and files. If you enable the optional information display, it will show you all the particulars, such as video and audio bitrates, VBR or CBR, type of encodings used for video and audio, and a continuously updated display showing instantaneous encoding rates.

This will allow you to see how your prior and future stuff is being processed.

In general, Nero defaults to Smart Render which keeps the original file format intact, unless you add effects, titles, etc.

Picture quality and recording time are, for all compression methods, inversely related.... One goes up and the other goes down. True for mpeg, jpeg, mjpeg, AVCHD/h.264, etc. For a given method like AVCHD, you only get more recording time by decreasing PQ. Decreasing PQ is done by lowering detail / resolution, slowing the frame rate, dropping frames, and / or using longer GOPS. In most cases for AVCHD the effects are pretty obvious since very highly compressed video can't tolerate much change without it being damaging to PQ.

Not sure if this addresses your issue entirely.....

Larry

I understand and agree with you entirely. I am thinking that because I added more transitions to my second program, that and the longer length, contributed to the terrible PQ I got the first attempt. Only after eliminating about 25 minutes of video and a few transitions, did the PQ improve dramatically.

As for using Nero to preview my stuff before burning, I know about that and do some spot checking (sometimes), but normally I am too impatient to get my footage on disc. I guess in the long run I would be saving time by previewing the entire show first.

Another project is waiting in the wings, so I will keep you updated as to what I experience.
Thanks Larry.

Mike

Mike,

As you are most likely already aware, Nero puts a copy of the final AVCHD folder it burns on your hard disk also.

So when you are done burning the AVCHD, without any additional time being wasted, or at any future time, you can look at the hard disk folder with ShowTime and see all the specific details if you have questions about encoding.

I sometimes go back and use this after I have played the disk on my PS3 or BluRay player to see details of the encoding rates which neither my PS3 or BluRay player shows me. It is a handy way to see if, for example, the bitrate has dropped significantly during a particular portion of the clip where the quality appears soft or fuzzy.

I use this player approach most often when I am editing and authoring with programs like Sony Vegas Pro or Pinnacle, neither of which have Smart Render and neither of which provide much information about their rendering activity. When I use Nero, Corel, Arcsoft, or Power Director, which all Smart Render, then the playback data displays are not really as vital since the Smart Rendering almost always keeps my original untouched clips in their pristine, crisp condition without changing any encoding at all.

Larry

... When I use Nero, Corel, Arcsoft, or Power Director, which all Smart Render, then the playback data displays are not really as vital since the Smart Rendering almost always keeps my original untouched clips in their pristine, crisp condition without changing any encoding at all.

Hi Larry, there's an agreement of opinion (consensus) in Cyberlink forums that "smart rendering" does NOT work properly with AVCHD in PowerDirector.

I can confirm SVRT currently works with Canon HF100 until it has to render ie transition. It then renders all footage from then on (this has been brought up before) and effectively makes the SVRT pointless.
SVRT does not work at all with Panasonic SD9 clips.

I have had the same experience with my canon HF-10, moreover I personally contacted Cyberlink and this is the answer that I received regarding SVRT for AVCHD in the full paid version of PowerDirector 7 Ultra (2227c):

In response to your issue we regret to inform you that the SVRT feature does not work with the AVCHD files. The SVRT feature works only with the Mpeg1 format files.

This answer doesn't make any sense, but give you an example of their costumer service quality.

I may be wrong, but in previous posts I pointed this issue out and you may need to review you opinion about PowerDirector.

Juan

Mike and Larry. I find it baffling, that with my two files, one made with PD and one made with Nero+VSX2, we have seen dramatically different results:

Mike: You find both files pretty much identical in quality.

Larry: You find that the PD file is superior in quality to the NERO+VSX2

Peter: I find the the NERO+VSX2 file is superior in quality to the PD file, except when I burn the NERO+VSX2 file to disk, in which case it becomes very stuttery.

Thanks for your guys help. I think for now I will stick with the workflow that seems to be guaranteed to work for all hardware configurations: Pixela for editing plus Nero for burning. Although Pixela is onerous, it's worth it for the quality and the low risk of problematic output.

Mike and Larry. I find it baffling, that with my two files, one made with PD and one made with Nero+VSX2, we have seen dramatically different results:

Mike: You find both files pretty much identical in quality.

Larry: You find that the PD file is superior in quality to the NERO+VSX2

Peter: I find the the NERO+VSX2 file is superior in quality to the PD file, except when I burn the NERO+VSX2 file to disk, in which case it becomes very stuttery.

Thanks for your guys help. I think for now I will stick with the workflow that seems to be guaranteed to work for all hardware configurations: Pixela for editing plus Nero for burning. Although Pixela is onerous, it's worth it for the quality and the low risk of problematic output.

Hi Peter. Not sure how accurate my observations were, since I was unable to copy your samples to a disc to view on my plasma. I am aware that my computer monitor may not be enough to really see minute differences. But on my monitor, the two clips were very similar.
As you can probably tell from my questions to Larry, I am relearning a lot, mostly now that I am working with AVCHD. My previous cam was a small digital Sony, and I had done lots of editing with Pinnacle for several years. I have learned that those days were simple compared to today. Well, with AVCHD, it is like starting over; new programs, more powerful computer, etc., etc. I am deeply grateful to people like Larry, with his expertize and patience, for taking the time to help with all my questions.
I wish you the best of luck. I will be watching this forum and reading comments from Larry, yourself, and others, in order to increase my own knowledge base.

Mike

Mike,

As you are most likely already aware, Nero puts a copy of the final AVCHD folder it burns on your hard disk also.

So when you are done burning the AVCHD, without any additional time being wasted, or at any future time, you can look at the hard disk folder with ShowTime and see all the specific details if you have questions about encoding.

I sometimes go back and use this after I have played the disk on my PS3 or BluRay player to see details of the encoding rates which neither my PS3 or BluRay player shows me. It is a handy way to see if, for example, the bitrate has dropped significantly during a particular portion of the clip where the quality appears soft or fuzzy.

I use this player approach most often when I am editing and authoring with programs like Sony Vegas Pro or Pinnacle, neither of which have Smart Render and neither of which provide much information about their rendering activity. When I use Nero, Corel, Arcsoft, or Power Director, which all Smart Render, then the playback data displays are not really as vital since the Smart Rendering almost always keeps my original untouched clips in their pristine, crisp condition without changing any encoding at all.

Larry

Hey thanks Larry. I will take note of that. I was not aware of that capability. Might very well be an eye opener.

Take care.

Mike

Mike,

Very glad to help you Mike!

Larry

Mike and Larry. I find it baffling, that with my two files, one made with PD and one made with Nero+VSX2, we have seen dramatically different results:

Mike: You find both files pretty much identical in quality.

Larry: You find that the PD file is superior in quality to the NERO+VSX2

Peter: I find the the NERO+VSX2 file is superior in quality to the PD file, except when I burn the NERO+VSX2 file to disk, in which case it becomes very stuttery.

Thanks for your guys help. I think for now I will stick with the workflow that seems to be guaranteed to work for all hardware configurations: Pixela for editing plus Nero for burning. Although Pixela is onerous, it's worth it for the quality and the low risk of problematic output.


Peter,

Having spent a lot of time downloading, analyzing, authoring, and writing you about your specific sample files, I can only offer 1 remaining comment / suggestion:

Take a look at the two different final AVCD files you create using Nero ShowTime player, using the individual 1920 by 1080 full frame capture feature it provides. Do what I have done.......namely.........grab a specific frame in your Power Director created output and compare it to a frame captured using the lower rezed method your prefer. It is also informative to look at the original clip taken directly from your camcorder as a reference.

Take the PD frame and the down-rezed frame and enlarge them using any photo viewing and editing program. You will see IMMEDIATELY what I am referring to. The smart rendered output from Nero Vision or Power Director or Arc Soft will look crisp and clean exactly as the original footage looks. The down rezed method will look much more fuzzy and slightly less colorful (lower saturation) as well.

There is just no way that passing the video through 2 NLEs as you do will improve the quality compared to the original.

I understand that your computer has problems smoothly handling the PD file, and that your friend / neighbor's PS3 will not, for whatever reason, play it. Mike and I have both told you that a quadcore such as we both have will not exhibit the jerkiness you are encountering.

If you need help with doing the frame grabs let me know. ShowTime does not display the frame grab / capture button ordinarily so you have to open the little "drawer" on the left of the player in order to find and use it.

Larry

Juan,

Regarding my opinion of Cyberlink PD7 Ultimate:

I've owned prior releases and dumped them from my machine since they ran so poorly.

When the new release took place of PD7 Ultimate, I read the PC Magazine review and comparison of all the available low cost AVCHD NLE's written by Jan Ozer, a video journalist whose opinion I respect, and saw that he awarded it the Editor's Choice as the best low cost video editing suite, and purchased it on his recommendation.

It turned out to be a POS, and I wrote a very nasty review on the PC Magazine website:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2319845,00.asp

If you scroll down, you will see my comments. Note that my comment is the first entered in July, and all of the other following commments reflect essentially the same opinion. I have repeated my comment below to make it simple to read:


________________________________________________

LSHorwitz
Member rating:
July 19, 2008
I own and use PowerDirector 7 Ultra as well as several other low cost video editing and authoring programs, and PD7 feels very sluggish on an extremely fast Quad Core Extreme QX9650 Dell when editing AVCHD, and often (and I do mean often) crashes despite installing 3 different releases so far. It has no smart render ability for AVCHD, making rendering times painfully long. It fails to burn DVDs on either of my 2 burners despite all my other programs burning without problems. This program really needs further debugging.
_____________________________________________

I also wrote a private email to the author, Jan, whom I have corresponded with before, with the same complaint......


Several months after this disappointing experience, and after a few email, file sample, and patch exchanges with Cyberlink Customer Support and with the forum moderator at the Cyberlink Forum, Dafydd, I was sent the 2.2.2.7c release, and, much to my pleasent surprise, the rendering speed has shortened by a 9 to 1 ratio and the SVRT logo now filled the window whenever I authored AVCHD disks. Moreover, the program no longer crashed, and, most important, the video quality went from looking very weak to looking the same and running as quickly as what I was getting with all the other smart rendering programs I have here (Corel, Nero, Arcsoft).

It may indeed not smart render properly, and stop smart rendering exactly as you say. I typically do transitions, effects, filters, and other changes which always require re-rendering anyway in Sony Vegas Pro 8. I use BluffTitler for titling. By the time my clips are used for authoring in PD7, they smart render since I apparently do not hit the bug which still exists when transitions are used within PD7 directly.

Given the impact that this remaining bug still has, and given the recent patch from Corel to fix the "blip" which some people have encountered with Video Studio X2 Pro, I certainly would shift my "allegiance" more to Video Studio X2 Pro.

I want to apologize if my earlier "endorsement" may have been too favorable. I use all of these dozen or so AVCHD tools and don't have extreme expertise in any of them. As I have stated a number of times before, I am mostly a jack of all trades and not a master of one when it comes to AVCHD tools. Moreover, with this many programs undergoing frequent patches and updates, it is extremely difficult to really have a totally unchanging opinion of any of them.

Sony, for example, recently released a new version of their DVD authoring program, DVD Architect (part of the Vegas Pro suite) which FINALLY does a truly superb job of making menued AVCHDs. Up until a few weeks ago, I just could not consider using it since the AVCHD disks were so crummy. Now the situation has changed dramatically with this new update.

Also, the reference to mpeg1 SVRT only you cite is incorrect, and was once true but only for the demo version.

Larry

Sony, for example, recently released a new version of their DVD authoring program, DVD Architect (part of the Vegas Pro suite) which FINALLY does a truly superb job of making menued AVCHDs. Up until a few weeks ago, I just could not consider using it since the AVCHD disks were so crummy. Now the situation has changed dramatically with this new update.
Larry

Hi Larry, as you remember my workflow begins with mpeg-2 as native from the Sony PMW-EX1 camcorder. I struggled trying to find a 24p with AC3 5.1 surround Vegas Pro 8.0(c) AVC template that would be accepted by DVD Architect without re-encoding it.

I hate re-encoding but one pass is unavoidable with this cam as the native bit rate is too high for consistent Blu-ray playback across all players, (at least for red laser DVD5/9 media types). Until now what I would do, is use Vegas to code a 25 mbps mpeg-2, which was still too high for most players outside of the PS3. If I dropped the bit rate further, more players could support it but at a loss of quality. But the Vegas encoded mpeg-2 output would thereafter pass through DVD Architect without further re-encoding.

Then it dawned on me, the native EX1 mpeg2 is inside a MXF container (material exchange format). There is a template for MXF inside Vegas, and it smart renders !!! Whoa!!! I feed that straight to DVD Architect 5.0 and it does a fantastic render to AVC, and lets me choose a separate AC3 elementary stream for the audio.

So if you understand what I'm saying, it was always necessary to have one render of the native MXF, it's just that I have swapped which of the two applications is doing it. Before it was Vegas, now it's DVDA.

The DVDA render to AVC was slow, but gorgeous. I don't remember there being many user settable parameters, but I think it is multi-pass. The bit rate as observed on the PS3 will hover at 18 mbps, but peaks between 4.2 - 32.4 at the extremes, and more generally from 12.5 - 25.2 mbps.

There is a separate hack now, I detailed it in the Vegas forums. The index.bdmv and movieobj.bdmv files gets patched, allowing the following features:

- BDMV format on red laser DVD5/9 media.
- Full menu functionality with introductory video, button controls, animations, backgrounds etc.
- AVC encoding
- True 24p playback output without pulldown or 60i container.
- AC3 5.1 surround audio

Basically, the package is complete. I tested it on several players, flawless playback on the PS3, the Sony BDPS350, the Panasonic BD35.

For someone like me using the Sony PMW-EX1, Sony Vegas Pro and DVDA, the solution is now end to end...(finally).

This is great news Tom, and long overdue. DVD Architect, not unlike DVD Studio Pro on the Mac, is an extremely competent program in its own right. Both can transcode and handle more formats than they publicize. Sony has been way too slow to make their products work well together when it comes to authoring high quality / high definition disks. Even now, the fact that hacked .bdmv files need to be created / manually patched is entirely horrendous. It would be so easy for Sony to make a truly automatic authoring process.

Does your new method improve upon the results with making BD5/9 disks with TSMuxer previously discussed? No doubt the menu / navigation choices have to be infinitely better. I am asking mostly about retaining mpeg2 versus transcoding to AVCHD. i assume 35Mbit/sec HDV is not an option for directly authoring BD5/9 disks except for the PS3 based on your comment above.

Larry

You raise an interesting possibility Larry. I don't remember trying to use TSmuxeR with AVC. It may work though, albeit no menus. I'll give that a whirl. The main reason for doing so would be to get the bitrate low enough for playback on the majority of standalone players without losing too much quality.

That said, creating menus is an enjoyable activity. It took a little investment in time to learn the ways of DVD Architect. If I don't continue to practice, I could lose speed. I plan to continue incorporating AVC to pursue maximum compatibility within the pool of existing Blu-ray players including the PS3 but not limited to it.

As for the hack(s) required with BDMV DVD5/9 hybrids, I'm afraid it is no accident. The obstacles have been deliberately placed in our way so that we are guided along the far more profitable path to the purchases of Blu-ray burners and media.

Also, even 35 mbps mpeg-2 will not play reliably on the PS3 from red laser media. It will stutter and skip after 30 seconds of play. Transcoding to AVC allows reading compressed data from the disk at a lower bitrate while decompressing to near the same level of quality as the native mpeg-2. Being able to read from the disk at lower bitrates as Steve Mullen correctly noted, is key to compatibility with the standalone Blu-ray players. I believe the PS3 is an exception because it can spin a DVD5/9 at 2x, the standalones cannot. They have the processing power, but the bottle neck is the read rate.

Thanks Tom for the reply. Guess I am not surprised that the player has been deliberately limited to slow playback speed. Those of us who have ripped DVDs have, no doubt, seen read speeds of 4X, 6X, and in some cases as high as 12X on zones of the disk where maximum transfer occurs. The optics and servo and detector can, do doubt, do much better on the BluRay players, if the Consortium had elected not to constrain this specific transfer rate.

Given this bottleneck, it entirely makes sense to use a higher density compression algorithm such as AVC/h.264 to get the 35Mbit/sec video through the chain.

I would doubt that TSMuxer will offer you much in the AVCHD domain. I played with it once and came up entirely dry.

The menu creation is interesting and each authoring program has its own unique set of tricks. I never made any effort to learn DVD Architect up until just a few weeks ago when the new release took place. It reminds me of DVD Studio Pro on the Mac and thus it is easier for me to learn. I am very impressed with it so far.

Larry

I liken DVD Architect 5.0 to the cockpit of a jetliner, where all the swtiches are laid out in front of you with full manual control for beacons, flaps, landing gear, radio but with no established flow for when or what buttons to press.

MovieFactory and Nero Vision are organized more like a check list for takeoff.

So once you get used to having full time access to the switches, DVDA starts getting fun because of the manual control over features, like the individual buttons of the remote control for the DVD player. It also does a superb job of encoding high quality AVC, although slow.

That's a great analogy Tom. The learning curve for Vegas was also a bit more daunting for the same reason, but ultimately worth the time investment.

Larry

Larry,

First, thanks for all the great tips in this thread. I’ve read them avidly and bought Nero Vision 9, which (for the most part) has worked great to create hi-def DVDs from my Vixia HF-100. Three (hopefully quick) questions, if you don’t mind.

1. Why do you use the .mts files straight from your STREAMS folder rather than using the m2ts files created by the Cannon software? Does Nero handle the MTS files better than the M2TS files? In my experience (I’ve been importing M2TS files into Nero), the M2TS files work fine, and from what I’ve read there isn’t a difference (other than the extra “2” in the file extension) between the two files anyway. The only reason I prefer the M2TS files is because they come with a date stamp that helps me keep track of my clips.

2. The only problem I’ve been having is adding subtitles (i.e. text effects) to my videos. For some reason Nero doesn’t process the text effects correctly when I try to burn them to a DVD. When I play back the effect in Nero everything looks great, but when I burn the content to a DVD the playback does not include the text effect, but instead “freezes” for the length of the text effect (i.e. if I had a five second subtitle, the playback freezes for five seconds and then resumes playback after the text effect was to conclude). Any insights? I’ve also noticed that if I add any text effects, the rendering time goes up dramatically. The “smart encoding” icon disappears from the burning process, and the rendering time goes from a few minutes to several hours. In this case, is NERO really recreating a true MTS or M2TS file, or converting it to some other format? Am I losing quality by adding these text effects?

3. Somewhat unrelated, but is there a way to read the M2TS (or MTS) files off of a DVD you’ve created using Nero Vision? I’d like to also use the DVDs as a long term storage medium for my M2TS files, but my computer won’t read the DVD even though it plays back smoothly in a Blu-Ray player.

Many thanks for your help!

Hi Erick and welcome to this forum and group. I am glad to try and help and can answer some but not all of your questions. I'll use your numbering to reply:

1. I use the .MTS files direct from the camcorder for 2 reasons. The first and most important reason is that I want the file content to have as little unnecesary processing as required before it gets to be played. The other reason is that it is a shorter and faster route, since the SD card content can be transferred to my hard disk very quickly leaving me with both a hard disk backup of the original, unmodified content, as well as a file directly importable into the NLE software. This hard disk copy is then, each evening, backed up by my scheduled disk imaging software. The bottom line is that I get a perfect backup in case things go bad with the card as well as an unmodified .mts file exactly like the camcorder recorded for editing. In my case, I almost always use a collection of files taken at the same date over an hour or two, so the timestamping does not gain me much, and I would rather label my clips with names of what they show rather than a date / time (both of which already show up in the file Properties anyway).

2. I can't offer any solution for the subtitles problem. It would seem to be simply a bug in the software based on what you are experiencing. I do not use subtitles on any of my creations, but I presume others who have tried have the same issue as you do. You could try the official Nero support forum at:

Official Nero Forum -> Nero User Forum - English (http://forum.my.nero.com/index.php?showforum=2)

There are also other communities discussing Nero on the web, and you can find them with Google.

As to the adverse effect on image quality when you add titles or other changes, the answer is generally yes. I use the word "generally" since re-rendering of the video demands uncompressing it, adding the effect, and then recompressing it. Since the recompression steps are lossy, and some detail in the original will no longer be in the recompressed output, and the addition of new, undesired artifacts also is likely, I personally strive to avoid recompression if possible. There are also some exceptions, where the change in the video is beneficial to a greater extent than the compromise from recompression. If a scene is very dark, for example, and you can bring up the brightness, contrast, or both and make the scene look better, or change the color to more faithful balance, then the trade-off is well worth it. In all fairness, the better software re-renders very nicely and you have to be looking for the "before" versus "after" comparison to notice the difference easily.

3. Absolutely!! The newly created AVCHD disk will have the exact same directory and file structure as your SD card, and you can go to the very same STREAM folder on your authored disk and grab .MTS files containing content as well as menus. These can be brought back into Nero directly as if they were coming from your original camcorder.

Your computer SHOULD play these finished disks including all the menu navigation just the same as your BluRay player. Have you tried opening them with Nero Show Time?? It is an excellent AVCHD player.

Larry

Larry,

Many thanks for the feedback! Looks like I need to visit the Nero forums for my second question, but regarding my first and third questions, I had a few thoughts based on your input:

1. Are you sure the MTS to M2TS conversion involves any processing? Based on my admittedly rudimentary research, I'm not sure any processing at all occurs. My primary reason for thinking this is that the MTS file in the STREAM folder is EXACTLY the same size (down to the byte) as the M2TS file created after downloading through the Canon software. I would think that any rendering/processing would be highly likely to change the amount of data in the file at least to some degree.

3. I must be doing something wrong, because I can't play my AVCHD discs with Nero Showtime, nor can I "see" the MTS/M2TS on the DVD through Windows Explorer (I have Windows XP). I have made "hidden" folders visible, but the disc still reads as blank, even though it has AVCHD content on the disc and the disc plays beautifully in my Blu-Ray player. So, just to clarify, you're able to view a STREAM folder with your MTS/M2TS files on the DVDs you create with Nero Vision?

Thanks for all your help.

Erick,

I do not know the detailed file differences between .mts as it comes directly from my camcorder and .m2ts as it is converted by Pixella. It is most likely that they differ only in their container / packet structure, and thus no re-compression is needed to go from one to the other.

However........I still see no reason whatsoever to add another processing step to convert my camera's .m2t files. The NLEs accept the .m2t file format directlty, and adding another step and another program serves no beneficial purpose and can only add time, complexity, and possibly corruption. I thus reject the use of an intermediary program to do "a capture".

I am guessing that your AVCHD disk access and playback problem is due to Windows XP not supporting the newer UDF formats / partitions on AVCHD and (BluRay and HD DVD) disks. For Windows XP and older users, you will find that by installing the optional program from your Nero installer called "InCD" and then re-booting that you will be able to open, read, and play AVCHD disks.

Vista has built-in support and thus these disks play without issues in Vista with Nero ShowTime as well as open for all normal Windows Explorer use.

Larry