demuxing HDV files captured with FCP (for blu-ray)

[Emmanuel Presselin]

Hello,
I visited your site.
Many tools that could have save me hours sometimes.

Just a suggestion about one point that has not been addressed properly and is a reel pain.
There is no good tool for downsizing and compressing HD interlaced footage (for instance for DVD output) on Mac. There is a lot of quality loss. It’s a well-known issue on the mac, with FCP. You have to split the job. First round :downsizing to SD, second round : compression. That’s long.
A compression tool that could handle properly interlaced HD footage would be very valuable !

Anyway you’ve made my day !
If there is anything I can do, just ask.
Emmanuel

[Alfred Guzzetti]

I just came across your helpful message. I’ve been trying for a while to get HDV onto a Blu-Ray without re-encoding. As you suggested, I extracted the mpeg via DVDSP. I brought this into Toast 11 Pro and instructed it to “never reencode.” But Toast essentially rejected the file and wouldn’t burn a disk. Any ideas?

Alfred Guzzetti
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz 4GB RAM
Intensity Pro card
OS 10.6.8
FCP 6.0.5
DVDSP 4.2.1

[Emmanuel Presselin]

Hello,

If you can, use Adobe Encore to author and burn your Blu Ray. It works for me. I never tried Toast.
Ask “Bouke” if you can use his little app to demux. It works like a charm and it’s much faster than Encore.

Emmanuel

[Alfred Guzzetti]

Bouke,

Would you be willing to make this app available again? I too am trying to get HDV in its native form onto Blu-Ray.

Many thanks.

Alfred Guzzetti
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz 4GB RAM
Intensity Pro card
OS 10.6.8
FCP 6.0.5
DVDSP 4.2.1

[Bouke Vahl]

it’s here for a week or two.

Link to file:
https://rcpt.yousendit.com/1479900297/53d3a2e0deeb83e58dd103325ec53294

Bouke

https://www.videotoolshed.com/
smart tools for video pros

[Alfred Guzzetti]

Bouke,

Many thanks for this incredibly useful software. It worked very smoothly.

Emannuel,

Would you be willing to describe your workflow in detail? I didn’t have success with it, either by demuxing with Bouke’s app or from within DVDSP. Here’s what I did:

– I exported the HDV sequence as a self-contained QT file at current settings. The “get info” command in the finder shows this as 1920×1080. QT player displays the aspect ratio pretty correctly, and the Movie Inspector shows the dimensions as 1440×1080.

– After demuxing with Bouke’s app, I get an mpeg file and an aif file, as I expect. The “get info” command for the mpeg shows 1440×1080. When opened in QT, the aspect ratio looks correct, but the Movie Inspector lists the dimensions at 1440×810. “Movie Properties” for the mpeg file lists a video track and a sound track (!), which I hear when playing back in QT Player (in other words, it’s not an elementary stream).

– When I drag the mpeg into Toast 11 Pro, I see the video and sound listed. I set Toast to “never re-encode” and it gives up after a few seconds or starts re-encoding.

So, no success. I’d be interested to hear about your workflow and hear any ideas you might have about what I’m doing wrong. I know that you use Encore rather than Toast, but I suspect the problems I’m having would be the same with Encore, since Encore wants elementary streams.

Many thanks.

Alfred Guzzetti
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz 4GB RAM
Intensity Pro card
OS 10.6.8
FCP 6.0.5
DVDSP 4.2.1

[Emmanuel Presselin]

Hi Alfred,

Here is my workflow :
1 : export from FCP. Same settings as your project, self-contained.
2 : demux with bouke’s smart app. You get 2 files, ready to use in Encore.
3 : blu-ray authoring with adobe encore. Set the prefs in premiere to match your movie properties. Then Encore won’t re-encode your elementary streams. Encore tells you wether your streams need to be re-encoded or not in the project pane. Make sure you get the “don’t transcode” status in the project pane.

“- I exported the HDV sequence as a self-contained QT file at current settings. The “get info” command in the finder shows this as 1920×1080. QT player displays the aspect ratio pretty correctly, and the Movie Inspector shows the dimensions as 1440×1080.”

This is OK. HDV is anamorphic 1440 x 1080. Only 1440×1080 pixels are recorded. When displayed, your movie is scaled to the 1920×1080 size. (or sometimes 1440*810 which respects the PAR as well).
Don’t worry about this. Just make sure your file 1440×1080, whatever the display does.

“Movie Properties” for the mpeg file lists a video track and a sound track (!), which I hear when playing back in QT Player (in other words, it’s not an elementary stream).
That’s the normal behavior. When you have 2 elementary streams with the same name, they are read in sync. It means if you open the video stream, the audio is read in sync at the same time.

– When I drag the mpeg into Toast 11 Pro, I see the video and sound listed. I set Toast to “never re-encode” and it gives up after a few seconds or starts re-encoding.

I don’t use toast. No Idea.

Good luck !
Emmanuel

[Alfred Guzzetti]

Emannuel,

This is really helpful. Thank you so much. When the latest version of Adobe CS comes out next month, I’ll buy it and try your method.

Best wishes,

Alfred Guzzetti
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz 4GB RAM
Intensity Pro card
OS 10.6.8
FCP 6.0.5
DVDSP 4.2.1

[Emmanuel Presselin]

Hello,

You could try with a demo version. I think (not sure) you can download Encore trial from adobe’s site.
Bye,
Emmanuel

[Alfred Guzzetti]

I finally bought Encore and tried the workflow suggested by Emmanuel Presselin and the demuxer posted by Bouke Vahl. It all worked: a BD from HDV without transcoding!

The demuxer requires Flash Player 11, and the current version, 12.5, won’t run on OS 10.7.5. Fortunately, I keep OS 10.6.8 on another startup disk, did the demuxing there, and went back to 10.7.5 for import into Encore.

Many, many thanks!

Alfred Guzzetti
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz 4GB RAM
Intensity Pro card
OS 10.7.5
Media Composer 6.5.2
Sorenson Squeeze 8.1
Final Cut Pro 6.0.6
Compressor 4
DVDSP 4.2.1