Blu-ray render settings for a beginner

[John Rofrano]

[Bob Moyer] “Do I have to worry about the DV clip on the timeline?”

No worries other than the quality will be noticeably less than HD. Vegas will up-scale it the best it can. You might want to add a bit of sharpening or use a plug-in like Boris Continuum Complete (BCC) UpRez to make it look better.

[Bob Moyer] “Now in the “Render as” dialog, I choose MainConcept(mpg,m2v,m2t,etc) as the file type. In the template selection, I choose Blu-ray 1920×1080-60i, 25 Mbps video stream. The only changes I made were frame rate to 59.940 and the video quality slider to #31. “

You can’t do that and have a Blu-ray compliant file. Changing the quality to 31 is fine. You can’t change the frame rate.

[Bob Moyer] “Now in DVD Architect 5.2, I set the project properties to Blu-ray Disc/25GB/MPEG-2. But the frame rate can only be set to 29.970 interlaced. Does this sound correct?”

Yea, you shouldn’t be using 59.940fps in either your project or your rendering template because Blu-ray doesn’t support 1080 at 59.940fps.

What you need to do is not change the templates that Vegas Pro provides and just use the defaults and you’ll get a Blu-ray compliant video. If you keep changing the templates you will get a non-compliant video and DVD Architect will re-render everything to make it compliant and you will loose quality in the process.

[Bob Moyer] “SD DV was so much simpler.”

HD is easy too if you just use the built-in templates like you did for DV. 😉

~jr

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

[Bob Moyer]

John,
Thank you for your response (I was hoping that you hadn’t had enough of my questions yet!).

I understand ‘now’ not to fool with the templates. If you will just bear with me for two more questions I won’t bother you any more (on this!!).

When would you adjust the default ’25 Mbs’ video stream to a higher number? I thought I had read in the manual (yes, I have read it…I just don’t understand most of it) that Blu-ray could go up to 40 Mbs.

Finally, when would you need the 59.940 fps option?

Thanks,

Bob

[John Rofrano]

[Bob Moyer] ” If you will just bear with me for two more questions I won’t bother you any more (on this!!).”

You can ask as many questions as it takes to understand. That’s how we learn.

[Bob Moyer] “When would you adjust the default ’25 Mbs’ video stream to a higher number? I thought I had read in the manual (yes, I have read it…I just don’t understand most of it) that Blu-ray could go up to 40 Mbs.”

The bit rate is one of the only things that you can change and still be compliant. You would only raise it if you were seeing compression artifacts in your render that were not in your source. Usually 25Mbps is plenty but the spec allows you to go up to 40Mps as you have seen. The only people who would use 40Mbps are thouse who have cameras that can shoot at that rate and want to maintain the same picture quality.

I’m still shooting with my Sony HVR-Z1U HDV camera that shoots 25Mpbs so I would never raise it on my footage; that would only waste space with no improvement in quality.

[Bob Moyer] “Finally, when would you need the 59.940 fps option?”

On Blu-ray, 59.940 fps is only allowed for 720p footage (e.g., 1280×720-60p). It’s not allowed for 1080p.

~jr

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

[Bob Moyer]

John,
Thanks for the advice and taking the time to answer my questions. I had burned this test project several times previously(after ‘adjusting’ the template) and this time I followed your suggestions and am extremely pleased with the results. I noticed a big improvement in the SD clip after I added the Sony sharpen plugin.

Bob

[John Rofrano]

Glad to hear that it’s all working for you now. A bit of sharpening goes a long a long way when working with SD footage in an HD project.

~jr

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

[Don Cobble]

Sir John,
You said stay in frame rate you shoot in, Thats 1920×1080 30P . That is not an option for me, so???? 24P or 60I
Need to make BR dvds available for people to play in home? Is there a generally standard setting to make that will play, that is most common?
Meaning an average home blu-ray player? Like a safe setting that will play almost on any machine, but still look good? 🙂
M2V?
AVC?
24P?
29.97I?
1920?
1440?
720?
Thank You

PC 1
I7 2.8 Ghz 8GB Ram
Win 7 Pro 64bit OS
PNY Quadro K2000
PC 2
I7 3930K 3.2Ghz
32 GB Ram
Win 7 Pro 64bit OS
PNY Quadro 4000

3-4 TB HD
Vegas 10 64bit & Vegas 11 64Bit & Vegas 12 & Adobe Production Premium CS5.5.2 & Avid Media Composer 5.5

Camera
Sony EX1 shoot in 1920×1080 30P

[John Rofrano]

[Don Cobble] “Is there a generally standard setting to make that will play, that is most common?”

If you shot 1920×1080 30P then I would deliver 1920×1080 60i using the Sony AVC Blu-ray template. Since the two interlaced fields will contain exactly the same information it should look just as good as the original 30p.

~jr

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