Advice on Blu-Ray rendering

[John Rofrano]

[Mike Nesbit] ” I guess I would feel better if we could use Sony AVC with a Blu-Ray template at higher rates than 20. Is there absolutely no way to accomplish this at this time? “

There is no way. It is what it is. Use Sony AVC with the Blu-ray templates provided and that’s as good as it gets.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ken Mitchell]

If you feel that you need to use a higher bitrate for AVC you can
render the file in dvd architect up to 40 Mbps.. But unless you have
extreme motion or you are shooting water etc.. I don’t think that you would be able to see the difference.

[Mike Nesbit]

Thanks John,

That’s a shame, but hopefully they will allow more adjustment sometime down the road. At least it does look good at 20.

[Mike Nesbit]

Hey Ken,

I do have a lot of fast motion (a lot of hand held cam work at events). I did another burn using avc stream and then doing the audio. It does look pretty good, I can’t be too negative about it. I just think I’d be more content at 25Mbit, but that’s the obsessive part of me trying to be perfect.

When you say Architect will do them up to 40 (I’d stick to 25 probably), that would mean you would have to create your whole timeline and everything within Architect?

[John Rofrano]

[Mike Nesbit] “When you say Architect will do them up to 40 (I’d stick to 25 probably), that would mean you would have to create your whole timeline and everything within Architect?”

No, it means you have to render some higher quality file from Vegas like a Sony YUV AVI file and feed that to DVD Architect and have it convert the file to Blu-ray compliant AVC/H.264.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Mike Nesbit]

John, thank you again.

Probably a lot of unnecessary work just for a bump to 25, eh? I’ll go out on a limb and say the jump from 20 to 25 probably won’t be an extreme difference besides some better fast motion looks. AVC bit rates on official Blu-Rays vary quite a bit but I tend to see a lot of them around 24-ish. Shame that Sony doesn’t offer just a tad bit more in Vegas just yet.

[Dave Haynie]

AVC properly rendered at 20Mb/s (which, one hopes, can be done on a modern PC using the Sony CODEC) should look about as good as MPEG-2 at 40Mb/s. Most camcorders offer higher rates, largely because (a) they can, and (b) they’re trying to pack that AVC encoder into a chip that can stay cool and run on 3W power, not the multi-core 1000W monstrosity you might have in your PC case at home.

With that said, I do agree it’s shame that Sony won’t offer higher bitrates in AVC.. it’s been now three or four generations of Vegas without this being bumped up. Neither does the Sony CODEC offer variable bitrate, which is also what you get on your camcorder formats. VBR doesn’t deliver better quality, but it delivers better quality for a given average bitrate. Couple this with smart rendering, and it would at least be possible to make your BDs from the original camcorder video… doesn’t get better than that.

In reality, given my likelihood of using multiple cameras and/or DSLRs, with color matching, possibly shake or noise processing, etc. it’s probably no big deal at the end of the day. But still, nice to know you could… I’m sure some day I’ll have a vacation video that fits the bill, just one camera, perfect sunlit images, etc.

-Dave

[Mike Nesbit]

Hey Dave,

It does seem a bit whimsical for them to never bump it up after that long. Maybe understandable a few years ago, but now with everything HD and people using it more and more, they should at least allow a max of 30Mbit.

I did run three tests with burning Blu-Rays. One was burnt with me rendering it as an MP4 (under Sony AVC), but I was still figuring the settings out and didn’t use a Blu template which made Architect render the entire thing over again. Then I did one with Mpeg2 quality at 25Mbit, then just an AVC stream at 20Mbit with the separate audio. I have to say that the 20Mbit avc stream definitely beats Mpeg2. I find the best results it to watch them being played via Blu on a TV, and it was pretty good looking. I would feel comfortable at 25, but as you say, if a 20Mbit AVC looks as good as a 40Mbit Mpeg2 then I guess we should be pretty content.

I do find it annoying that the big editor (Vegas) is limited to 20Mbit while Architect could take the videos and make them up to 40Mbit. Very strange way of doing things.

[Dave Haynie]

Yeah, really.. I didn’t even realize that DVDA itself could render higher bitrate AVC — I have never actually allowed it to do that for me. That’s really just a hangover from the SD days, I guess… DVDA didn’t do VBR rendering, which was critical for good DVD quality. But there doesn’t really seem to be a downside here, letting DVDA do the rendering… other than perhaps time.

-Dave

[Whit Prophet]

Hi
I have been following this thread and the other about rendering. I have a real issue (lack of knowledge) about the correct / best procedure for producing a Blu Ray DVD.

I have 3 projects (periods of a hockey game) in Sony Vegas Pro 9. Video was shot on my Sony NX5U as 1080i. I then rendered them and they came out as .m2v files with no audio. I was a little depressed.

Can someone be so kind as to steer me in the right direction to getting the 3 projects (as videos of course) onto a Blu Ray disk. I am now thinking render each one as avc and then combine the files. Then burn this one composite file to a BluRay DVD.

Am I on the right track?

Thanks

Whit