Best Render Settings For Blu-ray

[John Rofrano]

Your questions don’t match your subject. Blu-ray only accepts MPEG2 or AVCHD so WMV and AVI files are not Blu-ray compliant. AVI is just a container. Size is determined by what codec you use and what bitrate you encoder at.

If you want to create Blu-ray compliant files, use MainConcepot MPEG2 or Sony AVC as the render type and select the “Blu-ray …” template that closely matches your source/project.

~jr

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

[James Magda]

Thanks for the speedy reply, John. And thanks for your help.

I rendered both ways you suggested. The MainConcept MPEG2 way only gave me video; there was no sound with it. And the Sony AVC way did give me video and sound, but the picture couldn’t handle the special effects I had added in and it came out all jaggedy when my effects occurred in the clip.

Now, the part that’s going to make you mad. I know you guys on here are the experts and everything – and I don’t want to start some kind of yelling match – but over the weekend I bought a Memorex BD-RE and burned my .wmv clip to it. I know you said that won’t work, but it did. It’s the same .wmv clip that I spoke of earlier that looked so good.

I had already burned this .wmv clip to a DVD and it looked pretty awful. (Well, maybe it just looked like a DVD, and I’m spoiled with Blu-ray.) So, I wanted to burn the exact same file to a Blu-ray to see the difference. WOW! It looks just like the render on my computer! There doesn’t appear to be any generational degradation at all. I used NERO 9 to burn both the DVD and the Blu-ray. If you’d like the settings and stuff I used, I can get all that once I get home tonight.

[John Rofrano]

[James Magda] “I rendered both ways you suggested. The MainConcept MPEG2 way only gave me video; there was no sound with it. “

Sorry I left that part out. You need to render the sound separately as Dolby Digital AC-3. Give the audio file the same name as the video file and DVD Architect will know that they go together when you use them. DVD’s and Blu-ray work on streams. If you render a file with both video and audio, it will pull them apart just to put them back together in the DVD or Blu-ray format. You need less processing if you render them as two separate streams to begin with.

[James Magda] ” I used NERO 9 to burn both the DVD and the Blu-ray. If you’d like the settings and stuff I used, I can get all that once I get home tonight.”

No need. I know exactly what happened. As long as you are happy with the output, that’s all that matters.

I will tell you that Nero did not copy that WMV file to the disc… it converted it to either AVCHD or MPEG2. So you went through two conversions out of Vegas, once to WMV and second time to AVCHD or MPEG2 loosing a little quality each time. Like I said, as long as you’re happy with the output that’s fine but if you create a Blu-ray compliant file directly from Vegas, there will be less loss and less processing time.

BTW, you can do the same thing with DVD Architect as Nero. You can drop any old file type you want into DVD Archtect (including WMV, AVI, whatever) and it will happily convert it to the proper DVD or Blu-ray format for you. Your original question was how to make a compliant file to begin with which is what I answered.

~jr

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

[Dave Haynie]

If he just made a BD-ROM with the WMV file on it, it absolutely would have “just burned that WMV to disc”. He said “Nero”, but didn’t elaborate… was it Nero Vision or Nero Burning ROM? He would have had to load the WMV up into Nero Vision to create an actual Blu-Ray Video disc.

Blu-Ray actually supports MPEG-2, AVC (aka H.264, aka MPEG-4 Part 10), and VC-1. VC-1 is the officially documented form of Windows Media 9 Video, and the more recent versions of WMV9 are fully VC-1 compliant. So it wouldn’t necessarily have had to re-encode, if Nero Vision does VC-1 Blu-Rays and if the video was already Blu-Ray compliant. It probably just does MPEG-2 and/or AVC… just sayin’.

Some players will play WMV files directly. So, much like DVD players sometimes played MPEG-2 files as well as properly authored DVDs, some Blu-Ray players will play MPEG, AVC/MP4, and WMV files directly. Some will not.

To create a proper Blu-Ray Video disc that’ll play on all Blu-Ray players, you have to fully author it, using something like Vision or DVDA. And one can definitely get high quality MPEG-2 or AVC out of Vegas for Blu-Ray creation. As with all serious DVD/BD authoring programs, DVDA wants audio and video in separate files. So you render audio once (WAV, AC-3, etc) then video.

-Dave

[John Rofrano]

[Dave Haynie] “…and the more recent versions of WMV9 are fully VC-1 compliant. “

I didn’t realize that. I knew that Blu-ray supported VC1 but didn’t know anything that actually created VC1 streams. So if it is possible that the WMV is VC1 compliant, and that particular file was within the VC1 spec for Blu-ray, then you are correct it would have burned it straight to disc. Thanks Dave… I learned something new. 😉

~jr

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

[James Magda]

I did, indeed, use Windows Media Video 9 and the Nero Vision portion of Nero 9.

The only reason I didn’t use DVD Architect is that whenever I try to use it via my NLE, it hangs up my entire PC at the point of “Scanning for devices…” So, I just don’t use it. I wrote Sony about it, but they never responded.

Thanks, everyone again.

[Dave Haynie]

You need to use a fairly recent version of the Windows Media Encoder (Windows 7 will do, and some upgrades to Vista .. not sure about XP), and specify the “Advanced” profile. That’s create a VC-1 spec file. You can tell… pre-VC-1 WMV3 has the WMV9 FourCC code, VC-1 has the WVC1 FourCC code.

I kind of question whether Nero Vision is smart enough to use VC-1, now that I’ve thought about it a bit. But it would be obvious… a disc built in Nero Vision in minutes, rather than hours.

-Dave

[James Magda]

What constitutes “fairly recent”? I’m running Vista 64, Home Edition, service pack 2. My PC’s Windows Media Encoder says it’s version 9.00.00.2980, copyright 1995-2002. When I click on “Check for Windows Media Encoder updates”, it takes me to a Microsoft page about Expression Encoder 4 and how Windows Media Encoder is being retired in mid-2010.

Should I download this new Encoder 4 thing?

-James

[Dave Haynie]

I actually meant the WMV CODEC… not the stand-alone “Windows Media Encoder”. You get this when you “Render As…” to Windows Media Video V11 from Vegas. You want to use the “Custom…” option, and change the format to “Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile”. That gets you SMPTE standard VC-1, or so they tell me.

I still think of this as “Windows Media Encoder”… before Blu-Ray, I used to make WMV/HD DVDs from my HD video. This was a weird “standard” Microsoft made up, based on HTML, Javascript, and WMV9 media; I happened to have a red-laser DVD player that supported this format in HD, as long as you didn’t get to crazy with the bitrate. At the time, you could get better results using Media Encoder than rendering directly from the timeline.

I’m guessing that the new Expression Encoder 4 is the go-to replacement tool; Media Encoder was a little long-in-the-tooth when I used it, mid-2000s (last update was 2002 or 2003, though it uses the MS CODECs from the system; it’s really just a front-end to the encoders, same as Vegas).

-Dave

[Harry Welsh]

Hi james. I would be very interested to know the settings you use to burn to bluray for such good quality. I have a brand new LG external bluray rewriter. I also have a brand new bluray player. My problem is that when i burn a bluray disc, the picture quality is perfect except that it is not a smooth playback on my bluray player. The picture seems quite jerky. I am new to hd format. My camcorder is brand new as well. A panasonic hdc sd60 full 1920 1080p. I have been editing dv video for over ten years and can do all the effects and transitions easily.I moved to hd for the better quality but am disappointed in the finished product. I have both premiere pro cs3,after effects cs4 and sony vegas platinum hd 10. I would appreciate any help(before i go bald)that you could give me as to settings.