Sorry to come into this discussion so late but it took a while to get approved to post into the forums. My observations may not be that useful anymore but here's what I have found with my own experiences with Nero, Vegas, and Sony DVD Architect. Please forgive that I am very new to the AVCHD format and went there directly from DV (D8 actually) so no experience with HDV.

Background info - I now shoot with the Sony HDR-SR11 (AVCHD format). I've tried a number of things to 'transcode' the raw footage to other formats which could be edited easier.

1. Based primarily on Larry's experiences I updated my Nero to the latest version and began with Nero Vision. This was largely successful if I did very little true editing and just provided Nero with the AVCHD footage to build a menu'd AVCHD disk. This was head and shoulders better than the PMB (Picture Motion Browser) software that came with the camera as I had more options for the footage and the menus. Where Nero fell short was if I had more than a few simple cuts to make... One note here is that the PMB software was able to read and play the AVCHD disk that Nero created (as well as the Nero Showtime player, of course).

2. I also tried to transcode the AVCHD footage into AVI via a set of AVIsynth scripts and Virtual Dub. This seemed to work but at the expense of very large files and ultimately a future render required to build an AVCHD disk at the end of it all. I quickly abandoned this effort.

3. I ultimately went to Vegas to try how it worked with AVCHD on the advice of a friend that also has an AVCHD cam as well as Vegas. Vegas will input the AVCHD into the timeline and allow you to edit it natively but we've found that Vegas has NO smartrendering at all with AVCHD. Further, the render to full 1920x1080 AVCHD (at least from 1920x1080 AVCHD source) is frought with crashes and hangs running on our two separate machines. We were unable to output more than a couple of minutes (at the very most) with any siginificant edits done on the timeline. We were able to get pretty far rendering to 1440x1080 but even then it wasn't always successful. On top of this rendering to AVCHD was painfully slow (I'm afraid this is probably the case for any solution right now)

4. Still working in Vegas, we then looked at transcoding the source AVCHD footage to another format to do the editing work. Then at the end render back to AVCHD for burning to disc. We were successful with this strategy (apparently the render to AVCHD is mostly buggy when the source is AVCHD - go figure). I don't know if it is the optimum but what we've tried lately is rendering the source AVCHD to 40Mbps mpeg2 for editing in Vegas. This yields video files that are manageable to work with and Vegas seems to handle them pretty well.

5. Output - so far I've burned 'AVCHD' discs from the Vegas timeline (no menus) as well as creating a full menu disc via DVD Architect. I say 'AVCHD' since my blu-ray player (Sony BDS301) recognizes it and plays it fine but when I examine the structure on the disc it would appear to actually be BDMV. This is confirmed by trying to play the discs via Nero Showtime (it refuses to play it and tells me that I need the Blu-ray/HD plug in) as well as the PMB AVCHD player (it just says the disc is NOT AVCHD and gives up). This is independant of whether the final media is rendered to Sony AVC in Vegas or in DVD Architect (though DVD Architect can actually render to higher AVC bitrates than Vegas can).

So what does all this mean? I'm not entirely sure yet as I only have the one blu-ray player available to test on. So far all the blu-ray discs I've made (either true AVCHD or BDMV) have played. Not sure how they would do on a PS3. BTW, I also tried to output a 25 Mbps mpeg2 BDMV disc to play on my blu-ray player. It couldn't keep up with the bitrate and stuttered after only a few seconds (as others have already reported). I would like to try to output a 20 Mbps AVCHD disc from DVD Architect and see how that plays in the BDS301.

Not sure if I've added anything to the discussion but those are my random thoughts for the moment.

Bruce

Isn't your original camera acquisition format also mpeg2 to begin with? If not, where does your uncompressed video come in from?

The ACQUISITION format is really irrelevant as there are so many options. I count about 8: HDV, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX, XDCAM 422, HDCAM, DVCPRO HD, AVC-Intra, and in rare cases today, AVCHD/AVCCAM.

The only things that are relevant are:

1) The codec used to export your timeline. This INTERMEDIATE could be the same as the aquisition format, but today is less likely to be: for example, HDV, AVCHD, AVC-Intra would not be used. There are, however, six nearly lossless 422 formats: ProRes 422 HQ, ProRes 422, DNxHD, Canopus HQ, CineForm CF, and our old friends 8-bit or 10-bit uncompressed.

These are the codecs used to transfer data to other applications used in FINISHING: in particular creating a 5.1 surround sound mix.

2) If an HD optical disc is created, there is a final DISTRIBUTION encode:

a) If one is making a BD, you have 3 choices. Practically, MPEG-2 is the best option as it is the fastest to do the job. And, MainConcept seems to be the best of the CONSUMER priced codecs.

b) If one is making an AVCHD disc, there is only one choice: AVCHD. And, the only one that makes acceptable quality is Sony's. It seems to be the best of the CONSUMER priced codecs.

3) If one is going back to HD tape, then the intermediate is encoded to a tape format. Either by your computer or by the VTR.

As should be obvious -- I'm talking about a workflow that would be used by a "pro" or "prosumer." HOWEVER, there is no reason the workflow couldn't be used by a "consumer." For example, if your consumer NLE can export 4:2:2 nearly lossless video -- it can be used.

OK all you smart people. Most of the stuff I have read in this thread are somewhat over my head, although, I think I understand some of it. Holy smokes, and I bought an AVCHD camcorder thinking there would be no problems with producing quality playable discs. Now for the question that will definately expose my ignorance: Can I combine footage from an HDV camcorder (FX7) and that from an AVCHD camcorder (SR11) and use one of the cheaper editing programs to make a final product using both sets of footage and make it look good with little or no loss of PQ?

Respectfully,
Mike

PS. I know this is off topic, but I wanted to come to the best people with the most smarts.

The ACQUISITION format is really irrelevant as there are so many options. I count about 8: HDV, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX, XDCAM 422, HDCAM, DVCPRO HD, AVC-Intra, and in rare cases today, AVCHD/AVCCAM.

The only things that are relevant are:




Steve,

I am beginning to assume the defensive posture once again, since I entirely and absolutely disagree that the acquisition format is irrelevant when it comes to making red laser disks for use on BluRay players.

My own experience has been that if one is interested in making red laser disks which play on BluRay devices / software players, the only 2 choices which preserve the inherent beauty and quality of the original video intact are those which take HDV or AVCHD directly to the player's codec without intervening recompression(s), conversions, and all the other multi-step processes which add degredation (to say nothing of huge processing delays) to the workflow. When I acquire using AVCHD, never recompress, and deliver AVHD to the player, or if I record HDV/mpeg2 and deliver mpeg2 to the codec of player, the results look fabulous. Once I start transforming the video through a chain of recompression, the quality drops. It is both my belief and my experience that these lossy compression schemes such as mpeg2, mpeg4, etc. are NOT intended to be cascaded, transcoded, or otherwise chained together unless you are willing to take the quality compromise. Both the lossy DCT and motion estimates used to form the original P and B frames are irreversible and lossy, and data is thrown away with each step, never to be recovered.

The simple and best solution is to acquire in the same format as you deliver / distribute if such an option exists, and thus AVCHD acquisition delivers superior video to transcoded mpeg2 if the red laser disk is inherently encoded in the same, AVCHD, format.

In all fairness to your workflows / approaches, I readily admit that professional users will fail to find adequate flexibility in the tools I prefer to use, and may indeed resort to Vegas or other NLEs. My experience with AVCHD using Vegas 8.0c on the fastest chip set that Intel offers has been quite dismal however, both in terms of stability as well as rendering speed, so I personally resist any workflow where Vegas is an integral part. The professional is regrettably left with pretty immature and complex workflow choices even now that AVCHD has been out for quite some time. I am not surprised that the latest post from Bruce Spell has similar comments, since the Vegas forum is littered with such complaints, my own included.

Larry

Bruce,

I agree that the Nero Vision solution lacks the sophistication of most of the other editors. The fact that it does allow very good and extremely fast cut editing and clip splitting, re-arrangement, and merging with no re-rendering is where I like it best.

DVD Architect 5, Sony's very recent update to their Vegas Pro suite, does not create AVCHD disks. I can only assume from your post that either you burned true BluRay disks (which it does support) or that your Sony set-top player is willing to accept a non-standard disk from DVD Architect 5. Are you recording on red or blue laser media?

Larry

Mike,

My experience has been that mixing HDV and AVCHD on the timeline is generally supported by the cheaper programs like Nero and Video Studio but the codecs these programs use are not capable of really preserving picture quality that well. There is no way to SMART render such a mixed timeline, and the recompresion hurts the picture quality in terms of detail, color, and motion artifacts.

Your best hope of doing what you want would be to use a program with MainConcept's encoders / codecs such as TMPG Express 4 or Sony Vegas 8 Pro, both of which allow for preserving detail as well as using sharpening, color correction, and other filters to offset some of the pcitrue quality losses. If you are on a budget, TMPG Express 4 will make the mixed AVCHD/HDV timeline into an HD format video file (albeit with cuts-only editing) using MainConcept encoding for about $90, well below the cost of Vegas. You can put a menu on it optionally or burn it straight to AVCHD with programs like Movie Factory 7 (just released) or Nero.

Larry

Tom,

Again thank you for your help. My need is slightly more complex, since my HDV mpeg2 content is now mostly in .evo files which can be readily demuxed to .mpv and .mpa video and audio streams respectively. The program I have used to do this is a little piece of freeware called EVOdemux.

Download EVOdemux 0.627b6 - A HD DVD Demultiplexer with an easy-to-use GUI and capable of saving streams. - Softpedia (http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Other-VIDEO-Tools/EVOdemux.shtml)

I need to see if there is an easy way to get to the formats which TSMuxer needs.

Thanks once again,

Larry

DVD Architect 5, Sony's very recent update to their Vegas Pro suite, does not create AVCHD disks. I can only assume from your post that either you burned true BluRay disks (which it does support) or that your Sony set-top player is willing to accept a non-standard disk from DVD Architect 5. Are you recording on red or blue laser media?

LarryLarry,

Sorry I didn't explicitly say in my previous post but I'm only burning red laser media (I have no blu-ray burner yet). As you've correctly surmised the Sony BDS301 appears to 'recognize' the red laser BDMV disc and play it. The funny thing is that it 'recognizes' it NOT as blu-ray (which it truly isn't) but it labels it AVCHD when it plays it.

I don't know how well these discs will play in other blu-ray set top players. I also don't know if Nero can play them since I don't have the blu-ray/HD plug in for my Nero s/w.

Like Steve and Tom have reported, I have had no success in taking Sony Vegas rendered AVC files (media) into Nero Vision and outputting a true AVCHD disc. While Nero says the file is compliant and will smart render the video it never completes the job. Nero gives no errors or indications as to what's wrong it just quits responding.

I'm still looking for alternatives...

Bruce

Bruce,

Thanks for your reply.

Sony's description of the red laser authoring from DVD Architect 5 on their web site says:

"Blu-ray specific functionality
Use DVD Architect Pro 5 software to burn a BDMV high-definition title to standard DVD media. (Requires a Blu-ray player that supports BDMV on DVD)."

These disks do indeed play on my PS3 as well as my Sony BluRay player, but are not, strictly speaking, AVCHD disks. In fact, some of them I have authored come from HDV material which is placed on the disk as mpeg2 25 Mbit/sec 1440 by 1080.

Like other disks which have been discussed in this thread, they are a non-standardized format, which, (at least speaking for myself) I would be reluctant to use. My HD DVD library here of 100s of disks is a recent reminder of how a format can quickly become unreadable / obsolete.

As regards taking rendered material from Vegas into Nero and then authoring, my experience partially disagrees with Steve and Tom. If I use the Sony AVC renderer (NOT the Mainconcept) and make 1920 by 1080p 29.97 fps NTSC video file output as a .m2TS with 192 kb/sec stereo (2 channel) Digital Dolby, Nero accepts and then neaerly instantly Smart Renders this Vegas output to a menued disk which plays and works properly in my PC player Total Media Theater (Arcsoft) but not in Nero's own Show Time player.

If you have read my earlier comments, you will know that I am NOT a big fan of re-rendering, and even more so absolutely detest transcoding from one mpeg format to another, so I don't especially like to use this workflow. I do use it however when some filtering and effects or color corrections or more complex editing force me to use something more powerful than Nero.

I have the optional HD DVD Blu Ray plug in for Nero, so perhaps this is why Steve and Tom report no luck or poor luck with their experiments. I have not tried these disks in my set top players, and my guess is that they may not be fully compliant AVCHD disks either.

Larry

P.S. My most recent PS3 firmware treats the DVDA disk as a Data Disk and refuses to play it. My Sony set top player with firmware released in the last few months, plays it without complaint. Kinda hard to figure why Sony software creates disks which 2 very current Sony models handle entirely differently. The non-standard format being created is yet another mystery........why does Sony do such bizarre things??

Larry,

I think you and I are in agreement on many aspects of the AVCHD discussion. I know that Sony doesn't advertise writing AVCHD from DVD Architect (or Vegas) but it's a bit shortsighted in my opinion since they were one of the founders of the format.

Maybe I should take a step back and state my goals (well, at least near term).

1. I want an easy method to archive my 'raw' footage directly from the source. For this I'm simply writing the PMB created M2TS files (along with other metadata) to DVD for storage. This works as long as I don't shoot a single clip longer than just over 1 hour (otherwise I'll exceed the capacity of a DL DVD). I've already violated this desire once and had to split the resulting M2TS file using PMB. At the time I only had Nero and for the life of me couldn't piece the two clips back together seamlessly without some trouble at the join point. That's what initially led me to Vegas in the first place.

2. I will need to be able to edit the footage to some degree. I'm not a power editor (I'm not into production) but I do often use multiple angles/cameras which I need to sync and cut or dissolve between. The Vegas multi-camera workflow works remarkably well for this. I would also like to do simple fades and dissolves at times. While the Nero interface was simple and easy for me to work in I wasn't able to do that kind of editing on my footage. Hence I tried out Vegas (Premiere, which I've also used in the past, doesn't yet natively support AVCHD until CS4 is available. I guess we'll all have to see how they do).

3. Once I've completed the editing I need some way to output. Most of my discs will go to people that only have SD players. Therefore I need a way to edit once and deliver output both to SD (for others) and to HD (for me and few others). I'm hoping to find a suitable workflow to realize this goal. As you've mentioned the drawbacks to Vegas/DVD Architect at this point is that first, Vegas doesn't smart render AVCHD source material (very bad in my book just like it is in yours) and second, it only outputs HD in BDMV. It does satisfy the goal, however, of one editing project to output both SD & HD with little change. BTW, I eventually plan to get a blu-ray burner and then will want to output the same project direct to blu-ray without having to re-edit. I don't think I'm asking too much.

4. Since I couldn't get DVD Architect to create a true AVCHD disc, I then thought I could do all editing in Vegas and render out a final AVCHD edit master M2TS. I would then bring this into Nero and create the final AVCHD disc with menu (though Nero's menu options aren't as vast as DVD Architect's). My horror so far has been that I've been unable to get a clean AVCHD M2TS output from Vegas (I've only tried the Sony AVC encoder, btw) that will make it through Nero's build a disc process. I'd really like to discover why I'm having difficulty here as I certainly don't want another render step (even though Nero says that it would 100% smart render the file delivered from Vegas). I believe the disc created by Nero would be the most compatible AVCHD version. Since you've had success here I'm hoping you'll be able to shed some light on this phase of the process that seems to be eluding Steve and I. Maybe it is the fact you have the blu-ray/HD plug-in instaled - I don't know.

Bottom line - this is all very new to me and I'm learning as fast as I can. I was hoping that AVCHD had become a bit more mature by now but it looks like the edit solutions for this format are still a bit leading edge.

I appreciate all the experiences and very sound advice that you, Steve, Tom, and others have provided in this thread. It's really helped me tremendously just getting this far.

Bruce

Steve,

I am beginning to assume the defensive posture once again, since I entirely and absolutely disagree that the acquisition format is irrelevant when it comes to making red laser disks for use on BluRay players.

Larry

The amount of 16Mbps AVCHD used in prosumer and pro Projects is minimal. In fact, compared to DV and HDV, it is a format with a tiny installed base.

The reason AVCHD isn't used, is obvious: 16/17Mbps AVCHD delivers no better quality than does an HDV. It delivers less quality than my JVC does at 30Mbps. Only IF 24Mbps AVCHD and AVCCAM prove themselves -- will AVCHD be better than HDV as an acquisition format.

Since, by definition, a format OTHER than AVCHD are being used by MOST shooters in the world -- it is "irrelevant." AVCHD to AVCHD is simply not going to be used by other than consumers -- and since the reliability of Smart Encoding is suspect and Nero offers limited editing -- I doubt it will be used by even the majority of consumers.

Moreover, the concept of AVCHD to AVCHD cannot apply to those that edit with OS X applications -- which are the only apps (other EDIUS and Media Composer on the PC) that I'm interested in. Frankly, I wouldn't use any PC application for VIDEO editing except these two. Nothing would make me use the consumer programs. And, I wouldn't use Vegas either -- although there are many who LOVE Vegas.

All the talk about recompression loss misses the fact that EVERY HD production starts with one codec and ends with a different codec. All the talk about loss of time and quality are irrelevant. That's HOW IT'S DONE. The key, of course, is the use of a near lossless codec as an intermediate. Anyone who's made a film knows there is a negative, an INTER-negative, and a print. And, of course, the print is of lower quality. The loss is simply part of the deal. I really think talking about doing it a "different" way is just a waste of time. The world isn't going to change HOW it produces video based upon an arguement against how its done.


HOWEVER, as a DISTRIBUTION format for those without a BD burner -- AVCHD has a real role. AS LONG AS ONE USES THE RIGHT ENCODER. In fact, if the Sony AVC codec is used at 16Mbps, there's no meaningful visual difference between an AVCHD disc and a BD disc burned with 25Mbs MPEG-2. In other words, given the zero price for a DVD burner and the $1 cost of a DVD -- the quality difference is fully acceptable given how cheap the AVCHD solution is. The BD should look a LOT better given $20 per disc!

This makes perfect sense for two reasons:

1) AVC is about 2X better than MPEG-2

2) Encoding for a distribution only requires AVCHD be encoded and played back. This is the same as when one shoots AVCHD: Encoding then playback.

PS 1: I need to remind you again that BD-5/BD-9 ARE standardized formats. All BD players that meet BD specs -- which leaves out software players who seem to need to meet no standards -- can play these discs.

The ONLY thing that prevents this THIRD path is that, unless you buy Sony DVD Arch. -- you can't dial AVC up above 16Mbps. As soon as one finds a high quality AVC codec that can be set to 35Mbps -- then BD-5/BD-9 will offer better quality than MPEG-2 BD discs. Of course -- only for very short movies. :)

PS 2: as prices drop for BD Burners -- AVCHD will be less relevant as a distribution codec. And, when Sony replaces HDV with something like XDCAM EX -- that is where the prosumer market will go because it is far easier to edit.

Can I combine footage from an HDV camcorder (FX7) and that from an AVCHD camcorder (SR11) and use one of the cheaper editing programs to make a final product using both sets of footage and make it look good with little or no loss of PQ.

It depends on your definition of cheap. :)

I mix "everything" in FCP, FCE, and iMovie 08 ($85). And, of course, you can do so in EDIUS. Then, you need to follow the correct workflow to burn a disc.

I have the optional HD DVD Blu Ray plug in for Nero, so perhaps this is why Steve and Tom report no luck or poor luck with their experiments.

I have the HD Plugin for Nero, so does Steve. But you mentioned that your success was with 192kbps stereo which I did not try. It doesn't meet my audio criteria.

Earlier I said there were 3 features, but no more than 2 can be put on a AVCHD disk at the same time.

1.) 24p
2.) AC3 5.1
3.) menus

So far no one has managed the 1st because even the native AVCHD cams that shoot 24fps add pulldown.

The TSMuxer 1.8.4b workflow is the only one that accomplishes 24p on red laser.

To appreciate that, the HDTV monitor must support a 72hz mode. This eliminates the judder frame.

But Steve is right about intermediate formats being virtually lossless. The only editing less lossy is uncompressed or native, the latter is what you or I would try to do. The intermediate formats are what Steve would use because he color corrects.

In fact, if the Sony AVC codec is used at 16Mbps, there's no visual difference between an AVCHD disc and a BD disc burned with 25Mbs MPEG-2.

Agree there is no visual difference if both are 1st generation, but Larry made the point earlier if you transcode 25mbps HDV to 16mbps AVCHD, even with a good encoder like the Sony AVC, there is a noticeable dropoff.

I would also point out that while DVD Architect 5.0 allows you to burn BD5/9, the disk only plays back as a data disk. In other words, you have to navigate the disk to the STREAMS folder containing the video file. That's just useless!

I have the HD Plugin for Nero, so does Steve. But you mentioned that your success was with 192kbps stereo which I did not try. It doesn't meet my audio criteria.

Earlier I said there were 3 features, but no more than 2 can be put on a AVCHD disk at the same time.

1.) 24p
2.) AC3 5.1
3.) menus

So far no one has managed the 1st because even the native AVCHD cams that shoot 24fps add pulldown.

The TSMuxer 1.8.4b workflow is the only one that accomplishes 24p on red laser.

To appreciate that, the HDTV monitor must support a 72hz mode. This eliminates the judder frame.

YES -- 72Hz is key and after experiencing a whole lot of PAL displayed at 100Hz I'm VERY suspicious of 120Hz. Movies in the PAL world look way too much like video. But, there are only a few 72Hz Plasmas (I think no LCD) and a few projectors.

I think we may have to consider 1080p30. That gets rid of pulldown and keeps the frame rate low.

PS: I get a newsletter from Japan. A story on a new 3D camera has this sentence -- I kid you not.

"Some of the visitors said the female product presenters in the video were appealing and impressive in particular."

It depends on your definition of cheap. :)

I mix "everything" in FCP, FCE, and iMovie 08 ($85). And, of course, you can do so in EDIUS. Then, you need to follow the correct workflow to burn a disc.

Thanks Steve. What about for PCs?

Larry,

I think you and I are in agreement on many aspects of the AVCHD discussion. I know that Sony doesn't advertise writing AVCHD from DVD Architect (or Vegas) but it's a bit shortsighted in my opinion since they were one of the founders of the format.

Maybe I should take a step back and state my goals (well, at least near term).

1. I want an easy method to archive my 'raw' footage directly from the source. For this I'm simply writing the PMB created M2TS files (along with other metadata) to DVD for storage. This works as long as I don't shoot a single clip longer than just over 1 hour (otherwise I'll exceed the capacity of a DL DVD). I've already violated this desire once and had to split the resulting M2TS file using PMB. At the time I only had Nero and for the life of me couldn't piece the two clips back together seamlessly without some trouble at the join point. That's what initially led me to Vegas in the first place.

2. I will need to be able to edit the footage to some degree. I'm not a power editor (I'm not into production) but I do often use multiple angles/cameras which I need to sync and cut or dissolve between. The Vegas multi-camera workflow works remarkably well for this. I would also like to do simple fades and dissolves at times. While the Nero interface was simple and easy for me to work in I wasn't able to do that kind of editing on my footage. Hence I tried out Vegas (Premiere, which I've also used in the past, doesn't yet natively support AVCHD until CS4 is available. I guess we'll all have to see how they do).

3. Once I've completed the editing I need some way to output. Most of my discs will go to people that only have SD players. Therefore I need a way to edit once and deliver output both to SD (for others) and to HD (for me and few others). I'm hoping to find a suitable workflow to realize this goal. As you've mentioned the drawbacks to Vegas/DVD Architect at this point is that first, Vegas doesn't smart render AVCHD source material (very bad in my book just like it is in yours) and second, it only outputs HD in BDMV. It does satisfy the goal, however, of one editing project to output both SD & HD with little change. BTW, I eventually plan to get a blu-ray burner and then will want to output the same project direct to blu-ray without having to re-edit. I don't think I'm asking too much.

4. Since I couldn't get DVD Architect to create a true AVCHD disc, I then thought I could do all editing in Vegas and render out a final AVCHD edit master M2TS. I would then bring this into Nero and create the final AVCHD disc with menu (though Nero's menu options aren't as vast as DVD Architect's). My horror so far has been that I've been unable to get a clean AVCHD M2TS output from Vegas (I've only tried the Sony AVC encoder, btw) that will make it through Nero's build a disc process. I'd really like to discover why I'm having difficulty here as I certainly don't want another render step (even though Nero says that it would 100% smart render the file delivered from Vegas). I believe the disc created by Nero would be the most compatible AVCHD version. Since you've had success here I'm hoping you'll be able to shed some light on this phase of the process that seems to be eluding Steve and I. Maybe it is the fact you have the blu-ray/HD plug-in instaled - I don't know.

Bottom line - this is all very new to me and I'm learning as fast as I can. I was hoping that AVCHD had become a bit more mature by now but it looks like the edit solutions for this format are still a bit leading edge.

I appreciate all the experiences and very sound advice that you, Steve, Tom, and others have provided in this thread. It's really helped me tremendously just getting this far.

Bruce

Glad to help Bruce.

I have been using hard disk backup rather than optical disk since the cost per gigabyte, the speed, and the longevity seem to all favor it. My experience using optical media, specifically DVD media, has been quite poor. A significant percentage of DVDs I authored when this media first arrived are now unreadable much less than a decade later. I assume the dyes have improved a lot, but I still avoid using burned DVDs for anything really important.

Regarding AVCHD workflow, I like it fast and simple, so I am going to argue on the side of simple programs despite owning and using all the other ones as well. Nero is far from being my best software, and it clearly cannot do all the things some folks want to do.

You might want to take a look at Cyberlink PowerDirector 7 Ultra. Not until just a couple weeks ago did they finally fix several huge bugs and finally implement smart rendering of AVCHD. Its editor is more traditional and robust than Nero's, its user interface is also more 'standard' than Nero's, and the smart rendered output quality is indistinguishable from the original AVCHD footage. The free trial will let you make your own judgement. Its motion menus, titling, filters, other special effects are quite complete. Why not give it a shot and see what you think.

Larry

Steve,
No doubt my preferences and beliefs come from the consumer AVCHD vantage point, and yours come from the professional perspective. The resulting disagreements are, as before, mostly a matter of philosophy. And I truly think of AVCHD as being a mass market, low cost, simple, and essentially non-professional world, whereas your workflows are geared to the opposite extreme.

To me, Final Cut Pro, Canopus, Avid, and all the other heavy duty tools, in this instance, are "irrelevant" so I guess I can borrow the use of your term in this regard.

The 'gray' area where the 'prosumer' lives is, no doubt, the territory where our philosophys tend to clash. I am very hopeful that Adobe, Sony, and others will begin to fill the void properly, since the present tools barely serve this market adequately in my view. Hence we are all struggling to find ways to make disks which can combine the various features prosumers are asking for, using Nero fly swatters and Final Cut sledge hammers in a most comical way to get to a final result.

Larry

Agree there is no visual difference if both are 1st generation, but Larry made the point earlier if you transcode 25mbps HDV to 16mbps AVCHD, even with a good encoder like the Sony AVC, there is a noticeable dropoff.

I would also point out that while DVD Architect 5.0 allows you to burn BD5/9, the disk only plays back as a data disk. In other words, you have to navigate the disk to the STREAMS folder containing the video file. That's just useless!

Up until your post Tom, the thought had never entered my mind that DVD Architect 5 (and Vegas timeline) were actually producing BD5/9 disks. I had summarily rejected this format long ago since it would not play on my Playstation 3, the only hardware player I had at the time, nor would it play on most of my 4 software BluRay players.

If this is a truly "standard" format which is written into the BluRay spec, and yet even Sony does not support it in the PS3, the de-facto BluRay player now serving probably 90% of the BluRay market, then what possible reason would anybody have to use it?

I really have to wonder where Sony is coming from with this whole matter of AVCHD support. Since Vegas and DVDA professional products don't even support it, let alone their cheap home versions, they have once again left their camcorder customers with excellent acquisition tools but absolutely no easy delivery method. I understand their financial motive to keep BluRay burners and BluRay media flying off the dealer shelves. And I have lived through the nearly 5 year HDV product cycle and STILL DO NOT see a low cost delivery method. What a joke......

I would imagine that merely deleting the CERTIFICATES folder from the disk which Sony makes from Vegas/DVDA may be enough to allow my software players and possibly the PS3 to play the disk. Of course Sony choses to hide the CERTIFICATE and BDMV folder when the authoring is being done and deletes it immediately when burning is complete, so the only way to make a playable disk would be to rip, edit, and re-burn the disk without the CERTIFICATE folder. Hardly worth the effort given no menus, re-rendered video, and hours of wasted time.

I will note, with some concern, that the latest Corel Movie Factory 7 Pro no longer offers an explicit AVCHD option like the MF^+ version does for the project, although it will author red laser disks when AVCHD format is selected at burning time. I need to start using it to see if Corel has somehow watered-down the AVCHD feature set for reasons related to my comments above. This would not be the first time that Movie Factory has had features removed to satisfy the lawyers from the BluRay world. A couple years ago MovieFactory offered red laser authoring for BDMV and it was quietly removed........

Larry

I could not resist the temptation to see if removing the CERTIFICATES folder from the Sony-produced red laser disks from Vegas and DVD Architect 5 would then allow them to play on the PS3.

By first burning the Sony Vegas and DVDA disks, then ripping them, and then burning them again without the CERTIFICATES folder, I learned that they are still considered "Data Disks" just as they were originally. The only way to play them is to navigate to the STREAMS folder and then play the single .m2ts file. Obviously this is of no value whatsoever, since the original non-authored clip could be played directly on the PS3 without creating this peculiar red laser disk and going through the additional steps.

There apparently is some other file change within the BDMV folder which the Playstation uses to determine eligibility for playback.

It remains unanswered WTF Sony is thinking by doing this.........

Larry

If you would only try the TSMuxer1.8.4b workflow, you'd be surprised how painless and fast a functional BD-5/9 is. You won't have seen HDV quality this good since you had them on HD DVD. All it lacks is menus.

Tom,
I can bring the demuxed .evo video over with no problems. I am still looking for a way to get my original demuxed audio (which is in .mpa file format) into digital dolby. I have Besweet and some other tools here, but going from mpa requires another conversion and I have yet to find a simple converter.

Larry

It remains unanswered WTF Sony is thinking by doing this.........

Larry
In this we are in total agreement.

I found thread on this topic -- maybe. BD discs have a bit that signal copyrighted material -- not ACCS. The PS-3 looks at this bit and if it's set and the disc isn't a BD-ROM, it refuses to play it because it thinks it is a illegal COPY. Some say this only applies to BD-RE.

The key is that the encoder shouldn't automatically set this bit. Supposedly there is a Java program that turns the bit OFF.

Other folks claim there is another bit that is set.

Tom,
I can bring the demuxed .evo video over with no problems. I am still looking for a way to get my original demuxed audio (which is in .mpa file format) into digital dolby. I have Besweet and some other tools here, but going from mpa requires another conversion and I have yet to find a simple converter.

Larry

I thought you had Vegas Pro ? Anyway...what about Womble Mpeg Video Wizard DVD, it has an AC3 5.1 encoder.

Maybe TSMuxer will accept the .mpa as is. I think it should accept a AC3 stereo .mpa. Have you tried that? It's not totally necessary to feed it elementary streams anyway. It won't accept muxed .m2t transport streams, but will accept a muxed .mpg program stream.

Besweet was a frustrating waste of time for me, but I digress. You should try feeding TSMuxer some various muxed files, .m2ts, .mpg. Some .mpg files could even have multiple audio streams embedded. TSMuxer will split them, and you put a mark in the checkbox next to the ones you want to keep. You can do more than just BD-5/9 authoring with it, it's a useful conversion utility as well.

I thought you had Vegas Pro ?


Duuuhhh!! Forgot that Vegas did exactly that. The mpa to ac3 was quick and simple, and the remuxing went very quickly also producing a totally functional BDMV and Certificate folder which do indeed play beautifully. The only difference in my workflow is that I begin with streams from the HD DVDs, stored as .evo files, and first demux them with EVODemux.

It would be really nice if somebody made a standalone app which inputs an HD DVD and outputs a BDMV and Certificate. Certainly I am not the only one with a big HD DVD colection to convert. These are all home made and thus have no DRM issues.

Thanks for the help Tom. It was / is a great suggestion / recommendation !!!!

Larry

I'm glad it worked out Larry!

I have a pretty fair HD DVD collection of home authored HDV titles as well. And I also have EVOdemux, and in most cases still have the pre-authored source files on hard drive. But that said, copying all those titles onto the BD format may not need to be an urgent priority. It isn't for me. I still have the HD DVD player hooked up next to the PS3. Those HD DVD disks in my collection aren't going away. The format is dead but the disks still play! I still have a few purchased HD DVD titles in unopened packages. I still plan to enjoy them, American Gangsters, Bourne Ultimatum. <--And actually I have not cheated, I have NOT seen them even though they've been on the dish. I'm looking forward to it.

FYI:

Ok, I have the solution. This is all down to the way most applications burn BDMV, and how the PS3 interprets the spec.

The BDMV format is currently burned by authoring programs with the 'safe' assumption that you won't want copies to be made of your disc. This isn't anything to do with AACS, something altogether simpler and frankly annoying. In the transport stream (the container format that transports your MPEG-2, AVC or VC1 data) there are various bit flags. Two of these are the CPI bits, standing for Copy Protection Indicator. HD Authoring programs, with the exception of Roxio DVDit Pro, are setting these on by default.

When a Playstation3's firmware sees these bits set on a BD-RE, the stream is assumed to contain copyright material, which according to the BDA spec shouldn't be allowed onto a BD-RE, so it refuses to play the stream. I haven't tried this with a BD-R.

The solution? Bill Foote has written a utility to parse an MPEG-2 transport stream and clear these bits. Its called cpistrip and is available from the file repository of the java.net BD-J Forum.

Excellent explanation Steve which makes sense. Would this also apply to red laser disks or strictly BD?

I could not resist the temptation to see if removing the CERTIFICATES folder from the Sony-produced red laser disks from Vegas and DVD Architect 5 would then allow them to play on the PS3.

By first burning the Sony Vegas and DVDA disks, then ripping them, and then burning them again without the CERTIFICATES folder, I learned that they are still considered "Data Disks" just as they were originally. The only way to play them is to navigate to the STREAMS folder and then play the single .m2ts file. Obviously this is of no value whatsoever, since the original non-authored clip could be played directly on the PS3 without creating this peculiar red laser disk and going through the additional steps.

There apparently is some other file change within the BDMV folder which the Playstation uses to determine eligibility for playback.

It remains unanswered WTF Sony is thinking by doing this.........

Larry

Larry,

I don't know if this will help solve the puzzle or not but I looked at two HD discs created on red laser media. The first was from Sony's Picture Motion Browser (PMB) which is identified as AVCHD. The second was a BD on DVD created by Sony Vegas (from the timeline). The disc structure varied substantially. Here's what I saw:

http://home.comcast.net/~bruce_spell/HDstructure.gif

Of course both discs were written in UDF 2.5 format.

Bruce

Excellent explanation Steve which makes sense. Would this also apply to red laser disks or strictly BD?

Since the flags are set BEFORE the encoder knows what media it is burning to -- I think it applies to BD-R, BD-RE, and red-laser. Any time BDMV is created. This message was about BD-RE, but you were creating a red-laser disc. Correct?

Did they play on other BD players?

=================

Remember my post that Warner wanted the BD-5/BD-9 included in the BD spec. Well I just read that BD-5/BD-9 was intended ONLY for BD-ROM -- which makes perfect sense! Movies distributed cheaply.

So, I was correct they ARE valid formats and Larry was correct that they seemed not to work on red-laser disks. And, BD-5/BD-9 doesn't work with BD-R and BD-RE either. If all this is correct, then tricking players to play BD-5/BD-9 is NOT a good idea. The PS-3 is correct to reject a red-laser disc that isn't AVCHD.

The second was a BD on DVD created by Sony Vegas (from the timeline). The disc structure varied substantially.
Actually, if you move the BD's BDMV folder to the root, the structures are the same AS FAR AS THE A/V STUFF. The BD has extra stuff to support extra BD-only features, e.g., JAR for BD-JAVA.

The difference seems to be in the TS Headers.

Actually, if you move the BD's BDMV folder to the root, the structures are the same AS FAR AS THE A/V STUFF. The BD has extra stuff to support extra BD-only features, e.g., JAR for BD-JAVA.
Steve,

Sorry if my diagram wasn't clear enough. Actually the [BDMV] folder IS in the root on both discs. Just that the BD on DVD also had the [CERTIFICATE] folder in the root and all the additional BD stuff in the [BDMV] folder.

I have not explored/examined the header info on the discs to compare. You are probably right about that (although my Sony BDS301 blu-ray set top player identifies both of these discs as 'AVCHD' media). I do know that the Sony PMB s/w will play the true AVCHD disc but will not play the BD on DVD disc. Nero Showtime also plays the AVCHD disc but tells me I'm missing the HD plug-in when I attempt to play the BD on DVD disc.

I have not tried to rip the BD on DVD disc back to hard drive and modify the structure to match the AVCHD disc and re-burn. Not sure if I have the right tools to do that...

Bruce

Bruce,
You should be able to open and see the red laser DVD and drag the BDMV and Certificate folder from the DVD back to your desktop where you can alter them. Programs like ImgBurn and Nero will allow you then to burn a new UDF 2.5 disk if you own either of these programs.

Larry

Larry,

You are, of course, correct. I hadn't even thought of doing such a simple 'rip', lol. I do have Nero and know it will burn a UDF 2.5 disc so no worries there. Tonight I'll try your suggestion and see what happens. I can't test the PS3 side of things since I don't have one (sob, sob).

Bruce

What is a BD9 disc?

A BD9 is a prerecorded DVD-ROM disc designed for playback in BD players that contains audio and video authored in the same format employed in commercial BD-ROM movies (BD-ROM AV). BD9 is part of the official BD family and defined in the BD-ROM basic format (part 1), file system (part 2) and AV (part 3) specifications.

Physically, a BD9 is simply a 12 cm DVD-ROM disc with standard 4.7 GB (single-layer) or 8.5 GB (dual-layer) capacities but is fabricated to somewhat tighter specification for dynamic imbalance. It is also spun at three times the normal speed of a DVD resulting in a proportionally higher data transfer rate (33.24 Mbps vs. 11.08 Mbps).

In terms of its logical and application formats, BD9 employs the same file system (UDF 2.5), content protection (AACS, BD+, ROM Mark) and structure (BD-ROM AV HDMV/BD-J) used by commercial BD-ROM movies. As such BD9 offers identical features to BD-ROM although there are some restrictions arising from its somewhat lower performance (33.24 Mbps vs. 53.948 Mbps).

BD9 is intended to leverage existing DVD manufacturing infrastructure in order to potentially provide a lower cost vehicle for publishing budget and lesser quality high definition titles, short studio and independent movies and presentations, television shows, music albums as well as bonus content. However, given its lower capacity and the expectation of rapidly declining BD-ROM production costs, BD9 (like its HD DVD 3x-speed DVD-ROM counterpart) is not widely promoted and may remain a seldom-used curiosity. As of Mar. 2007, no BD9 titles have yet been announced.


Note the requirement for different media to support a higher spin rate needed to get high data rates.

I think this thread is "over" because clearly we can't produce BD-ROM's ourselves. Sad as this is -- and yet another reminder of how much better HD DVD was than is BD -- we have learned a lot.

I'm glad it worked out Larry!

I have a pretty fair HD DVD collection of home authored HDV titles as well. And I also have EVOdemux, and in most cases still have the pre-authored source files on hard drive. But that said, copying all those titles onto the BD format may not need to be an urgent priority. It isn't for me. I still have the HD DVD player hooked up next to the PS3. Those HD DVD disks in my collection aren't going away. The format is dead but the disks still play! I still have a few purchased HD DVD titles in unopened packages. I still plan to enjoy them, American Gangsters, Bourne Ultimatum. <--And actually I have not cheated, I have NOT seen them even though they've been on the dish. I'm looking forward to it.


Thanks again Tom. Even though I have (3) HD DVD players here as well, I feel compelled to migrate my collection over to the prevailing "new" format. I have a vast library of home video and photo materials which I started in the 1960s, at first using a 1/2" open-reel Sony EIAJ video recorder and black and white video camera, and as I moved on to Beta, VHS, BETACAM, 8 mm, Hi-8, DV, HDV, AVCHD, and all the associated still photographs with film and digital cameras, I have always kept my collection in the latest format. Now that I have pictures of grandchildren, children, and several prior generations of my family, I want to make a set which can be veiwed in the future with as little obsolte format as possible. My methods have survived the last 40+ years of my videography very well, although some of the earlier material has suffered from "generation loss" for sure. I loved HD DVD and was very sad to see it disappear, and also have a stack of a dozen or more unopened HD DVD disks which came with these players as they were being discontinued.

Only 1, my all-time favorite, The Big Lebowski, gets played over and over and over..........

So I really did need / want to find a compatible and high quality red laser solution, so this is where my interest springs from.

Again, many thanks,

Larry

FYI:

Ok, I have the solution. This is all down to the way most applications burn BDMV, and how the PS3 interprets the spec.

The BDMV format is currently burned by authoring programs with the 'safe' assumption that you won't want copies to be made of your disc. This isn't anything to do with AACS, something altogether simpler and frankly annoying. In the transport stream (the container format that transports your MPEG-2, AVC or VC1 data) there are various bit flags. Two of these are the CPI bits, standing for Copy Protection Indicator. HD Authoring programs, with the exception of Roxio DVDit Pro, are setting these on by default.

When a Playstation3's firmware sees these bits set on a BD-RE, the stream is assumed to contain copyright material, which according to the BDA spec shouldn't be allowed onto a BD-RE, so it refuses to play the stream. I haven't tried this with a BD-R.

The solution? Bill Foote has written a utility to parse an MPEG-2 transport stream and clear these bits. Its called cpistrip and is available from the file repository of the java.net BD-J Forum.

Actually a lame protection method if that's really the intention because the video stream itself will still play if you navigate to the folder. At best, it's a not so robust protection for the far more important menuing content ;)

(cpistrip is impossible to find)

Well, last night I tried a short experiment to see what would happen if I took a BDMV on red laser media created by Sony Vegas/DVD Architect and modified the directory structure to match that created by Sony's Picture Motion Browser software which came with my AVCHD camera.

After updating the directory structure (removing the [CERTIFICATE] folder from the root and the BD specific folders from [BDMV]) I burned the modified structure to another DVD using Nero burning ROM as UDF 2.5. I then tried to see if the AVCHD player that came with PMB would recognize the 'hybrid' disc. No luck. It still errored with a message that the disc was not the correct type. The Sony BDP-S301 set top player now identified this disc as 'BD-ROM' and played it exactly the same as the original Vegas/DVD Architect disc which it identified as 'AVCHD'.

Maybe a not so useful experiment but I just had to know....

Bruce

If only it were so simple....... (-8

Some other research on the subject:

BD structure edit [Archive] - Doom9's Forum (http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-125903.html)

Actually a lame protection method if that's really the intention because the video stream itself will still play if you navigate to the folder. At best, it's a not so robust protection for the far more important menuing content ;)

(cpistrip is impossible to find)

It's available as Java source code that you need to compile.

These bits are part of the MPEG-2 Transport Stream -- you can see them in Apple's Compressor. BDMV uses MPEG-2 Transport Stream to carry any of the BD three codecs. The real copy protection is done by ACCS. So, these bits are automatically set to match the purpose of the disc as seen by Warner which is Hollywood movies.

This thread was started on my miss-assumption that WE could burn BD-5/BD-9 on DVD-R and DVD-RW. This was never intended to happen. And, the failures are to be expected. They should be happening. Were ACCS on the disc -- as it should be on a BD-ROM -- you couldn't play those streams.

Bottom-line -- Larry was correct.

YES, if we use a workaround that passes EACH stream through an application before burning we can make BD-5/BD-9 on DVD-R and DVD-RW. But, unless we can buy special red-laser discs which are NOT available, these discs MAY not play well as they are spun to 3X speed to support 25-35Mbps MPEG-2.

PS: Sony makes a cheap DVD burner that hardware transcodes HDV to AVCHD. This is probably the best way to move HDV to AVCHD.

I'd like to toss in a few words about x264. Simply put, it's by far the best H.264 codec out there, and it's free!

Wrapped in a nice GUI like MeGUI or RipBot264, it can create very nice looking AVCHD streams from any source, be it HDV, AVCHD, BluRay, or whatever you have.

Of course, passing through untouched video to the AVCHD disc is always preferable, but if you must re-encode, use the best possible codec! That, folks, is x264!

-Derek

Derek,
Why is x264 the best in your opinion? You've used the others?

I've followed most of the earlier discussion, which informed me and also dampened my expectations for using AVCHD as a low-cost way of putting my HDV onto disks as HD.
However, the mention of using m2t as an AVCHD-DVD source interests me. There's a new Nero 9 program out now that is promoted as having expanded AVCHD capabilities. If I capture my HDV with the Sony PMB program as m2t files, would Nero 9 accept them and pass them through onto an AVCHD-DVD?

I have been able to effectively use the PMB file-clipping feature as a means to do simple editing and then stack up and splice together the separate m2t clips onto a standard-definition DVD using Windows DVD Maker. The video comes out in a 16:9 aspect and looks very good from the DVDs. It's much better than when using other sources for an SD-DVD. However, when I edit the m2t files on Windows Movie Maker and publish them as wmv-HD, even when using custom settings with as high as 12 Mbps, the resulting SD-DVDs, when using that as a source, have lesser picture quality. Possibly, if I used the top level of 20 Mbps for wmv-HD, it might improve. I was able to determine the bit-rate for these DVDs at almost 11 Mbps. I had thought that 9.2 Mbps was the top rate for an SD-DVD, but a disk had 254 seconds of video and used 342 MB, which figures out to about 10.85 Mbps. These DVDs will play on a standard player to a TV.

So, I'm wondering if Nero 9 would put together these same m2t clips from PMB and write them onto a DVD as AVCHD? Unfortunately, the trial version of Nero 9 leaves out the AVCHD capabilities, so I can't test this before buying. Of course, the viewers of these disks would be limited to those with BD players and PS3 (maybe) and also those with similar DVD software programs like Nero 9 and Cyberlink's new #7 version. I personally know four people who are equipped like this, but I'd still like to do it, as it's painful to see the way Vimeo and Exposure Room abuse my HD with their brutal compression. Thanks for any comments or suggestions. I'd appreciate just being told that this isn't possible, if that's the case.

I've followed most of the earlier discussion, which informed me and also dampened my expectations for using AVCHD as a low-cost way of putting my HDV onto disks as HD. If I capture my HDV with the Sony PMB program as m2t files, would Nero 9 accept them and pass them through onto an AVCHD-DVD?


Since HDV is MPEG-2 and AVCHD is MPEG-4, doing this will involve a conversion that takes time and might cause a quality loss. Only you can decide if the time and quality are acceptable. For me they are, but I use Sony's AVCHD encoder that offers very good quality.

Thankfully, both HDV and AVCHD are 1440x1080 formats so they match.

Remember, AVCHD discs can only be played on BD players.

Derek,
Why is x264 the best in your opinion? You've used the others?

I've used Mainconcept Reference and Quicktime, and yes, x264 is measurably superior.

Has anyone had any luck with this in this last 7 months? Maybe something with the new Vegas 9, or any change in the way PS3 handles the disks with new system updates.

BD standalone results/tests on DVDR of AVCHD, BD, FULLBD, CROPPED, HDAUDIO - Doom9's Forum (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146339)