Encore CS6 and Bluray

[Michal Goldstein]

I generally use Vegas to edit as I find it quick and easy. I can finish a wedding video in an hour with a very satisfied client. My main problem is that with using the DVD architect template to prepare for DVD, I’m getting such bad quality discs. (only when down-converting from HD to SD). I see that it’s a big problem, but there’s got to be an answer to it.
I was told that Edius is much better in that it doesn’t “render”, so the quality is much better. This person told me to edit in Edius and create my menus in Encore. I’m a graphic designer, so I’m very fluent with the Adobe interface, making Encore easy to figure out. Problem is that it doesn’t have the same features as DVD Architect. I can’t just import a large video and have Encore compress based on the media size that I want to fit it to. (unless I just didn’t figure it out yet!)

Someone told me to use a bitrate calculator to figure out the best bitrate based on the project and it’s great. Problem is that you can’t do more than 9.8bps on a DVD and I’m not getting that crisp quality that I want.

Basically, this job that I’m working on now, and trying to be done with, is a wedding that edited, is 5 hours and 15 minutes. Most of the footage was shot in HD, but for a couple parts they had a second camera crew and it was shot in SD widescreen on mini DVs. I divided the project to fit onto 2 Bluray but the file size was still too large for Encore, and since there is no “fit to disc” option, I’d need to bring it into AME. There are so many settings, and they don’t tell you what the final size will be – and the render takes so long!!

So my 2 problems are:
1. I need the best settings to get this video from Vegas to 2 BD in Encore.

2. I need the best settings for 4 DVDs – I’m using DL.

Thanks for everyone’s replies.
I can’t wait to get to the bottom of this!

[Jeff Pulera]

Wow, delivering 5+ hours of footage – Indian wedding?? Would love to know how you edit a wedding in one hour, that deserves its own thread.

The 9.8 max bitrate of DVD is not what is limiting the “crispness” of your DVDs – rather, it is most likely the fact that you’re comparing the results to the HD master, and DVD is SD. Of course, the quality of the downscale plays a part as well. If that is handled poorly by the encoding software, then all the bitrate in the world won’t help. In fact, I should mention that it’s not a good idea to “max out” the DVD bitrate, since DVD-R discs may not play as reliably as Hollywood DVDs when burned at a high rate. Most folks limit themselves to 7 or 8 when encoding. Honestly, 7 or 8 will look very good and you’d be hard-pressed to see any difference going higher, while risking playback compatibility with some players.

If using AME for any encoding tasks, be sure to check the “Max Render Quality” box when downscaling the output. If you DO use AME at all, but are editing in other apps, how are you getting the footage to AME, in other words what intermediate codec did you use?

I’d say you were misinformed about Edius “not rendering”. That might be in reference to some sort of “Smart Render” feature, in particular for exporting AVCHD direct to Blu-ray perhaps. Much better quality? No. Faster, sure. But regardless of what NLE you use, if you are editing HD footage and want to export for DVD, the video MUST get rendered! How else would you get from AVCHD 1080p down to MPEG-2 DVD for instance? Two completely different formats/codecs, has to render.

According to a bitrate calculator I tried, 165 minutes for Blu-ray would encode at 18750, but that doesn’t allow for motion menus and other overhead. Might want to go a little less for safety margin. And for best quality, use an H.264 Blu-ray encoding preset, better than MPEG-2 at low bitrates.

https://dvd-hq.info/bitrate_calculator.php

For DVD, if using DL discs, then TWO would be enough. As a customer, I would be aggravated to have to keep getting up and changing discs to see different parts of the wedding, so I’d use as few discs as possible. Whether using two DL DVDs, or four standard DVDs, an average bitrate of 6.9 should do nicely for the 5 hour 15 minute video if divided equally.

Regarding letting Encore figure the bit rate automatically, I never use that workflow – I always manually encode my assets in AME – so am not positive, but I thought that if for example you import an AVI movie into Encore, it will do the transcoding automatically for you to fit. Maybe the auto-fit was only with Dynamic Link. Dunno.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Stan Jones]

> I thought that if for example you import an AVI movie into Encore, it will do the transcoding automatically for you to fit. Maybe the auto-fit was only with Dynamic Link.

Just make sure all other motion menu etc work is done, all assets are linked, and set each timeline asset to “automatic.” Encore sets the datarate to fill the disk. You have less control over transcode settings, but the automatic is used by many.

Stan Jones

[Michal Goldstein]

Thank you. Thank you.
Finally someone is making sense.
What file type should I render from Vegas? Are you saying that I should create a hi-quality file and then encode it?
Here are my steps.
1. I edit the video in Vegas.
2. I render it to the mpeg-2 preset (either “dvd architect” or “bluray”)
3. I bring that file into Encore as an asset.
4. I create my menu and link all the buttons to the right place. It plays beautifully at this point, and the quality is nice for the bluray, but I’m seeing the fuzziness in the DVDs.
5. The output size is too large, so it automatically brings the file into AME when I click “transcode” – and I’m left with tons of presets to choose from.
6. I figured out a good bitrate and set it for render. It took time, and then it still didn’t fit…

How can I take my file from Vegas and render it customized to fit my size limit?

What do you think is the best program to edit in that gives the best encoding? I’m willing to figure out another program if I hear good about it. I have Premiere CS6, Edius7, and Vegas 12, but work best and quickest in Vegas… I also, genarally use DVD architect to build my DVDs, but just started trying out Encore as I appreciate it’s ability to work together with Photoshop.

Any ideas?
Thanks so much!

[Michal Goldstein]

Let me just make sure I understand…
I create a menu and bring in my asset. I like my menu to have all the links on the home page, and there is one link that plays the whole video.

Where would I set it to automatic?

[Jeff Pulera]

Michal,

If you know the duration of all your assets and use the correct bitrate to start with, then things ought to fit the DVD. Calculators are nice, but for DVD I just use 560/minutes = bitrate, and usually round down the result a little for safety. For example 560/120 = 4.66 so I encode at 4.5 and everyone is happy. Formula is for 4.7GB DVD media only.

You mentioned encoding to MPEG-2 for Blu-ray. While MPEG-2 can look just as good as H.264 at high bitrates, for longer programs at lower rates, then H.264 has the definite advantage and should be the codec of choice.

I do have a workflow for great HD to DVD quality, but it is not for the faint of heart. Involves installing several pieces of free software, and some extra time and labor during the conversion process, but I love the results. Just search for “HD2SD” workflow. Beyond the scope of this forum to cover the whole process unfortunately.

Basically, I’m exporting an HD .avi file from Premiere using the lossless Lagarith codec. That HD file then gets converted to SD using the “HD2SD” script in VirtualDub, and the resulting SD avi file is then encoded to MPEG-2 using HC Encoder. Then Encore for authoring. I get spectacular results with 2.5 hour dance recitals on one 4.7GB DVD.

PM me for specifics

If you can post any screen grabs of your encoding settings, that will be most helpful to analyze the situation.

For a workflow where you’d bring a clip over to AME or Encore from another NLE for final encoding, export to a lossless codec like the free Lagarith, or I think Grass Valley has a decent 4:2:2 codec with EDIUS you could use. You don’t want to use a lossy intermediate such as H.264 though.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Stan Jones]

[Michal Goldstein] “Where would I set it to automatic?”

Sorry; just saw this. The automatic has nothing to do with links, only with the transcode setting.

Bottom line for you, do what Jeff is describing. Automatic requires a lossless intermediate or dynamic link.

But for the information, you right click the asset for the timeline, pick “transcode settings,” and pick automatic (for DVD and/or Bluray).

Stan Jones

[Michal Goldstein]

Ok. Will give it a try.

[Nanda Pilaka]

hi Jeff,

I ran into a very similar or nearly identical issue and found this thread. I hope you will be able to comment on it as reading through the thread did not give me any clues.

I exported a 1hr17min HD clip (Matrox AVI 1080i 29.97) from CS6 to a MAtrox H.264 1080p 23.98fps, with
– using 40Mbps bitrate for video,
– 16bit audio
and the resulting
– H.264 video file was 22.xGB
– and the audio was ~800MB

I
– imported these into Encore CS6 as a timeline
– right clicked on each file, then Locate Transcoded File, selected the same files from the file system.
– left Blu-ray Transcode settings as Automatic (which means use Project Defaults)
– verified Check Project successfully (no errors)

When I go to build a disc image, it shows 15.6GB image size!

My project settings have default transcode settings for bluray set to use 40Mbps for video (H.264).

So I did Revert to Original action on the .264 video file, went into Transcode Settings, changed the Quality Preset Settings for Matrox H.264 1080 23.98fps to use 40Mbps bitrate, saved the changes and when I re-locate transcoded file and do a build image, the image size is 3.86GB!!

I normally don’t change the bitrate during export from AME or from CS6, when exporting to H.264 – but this time I did as I wanted to use as much of the bluray disc as possible.

Is Encore CS6 limiting the size of the image??

Nanda Pilaka

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Nanda,

A couple of things catch my attention:

1) Why did you encode a 1080i 29.97 source as 1080p 23.98 for Blu-ray – was that intentional?

2) 40Mbps is the theoretical upper limit for Blu-ray, could be that the audio put it over the limit and therefore Encore is transcoding to the lower default rate.

Please note that H.264 for Blu-ray can look excellent at 25 or 30Mbps or less, there is no real need to “max out” the data rate to get great quality.

As with DVD, just “looking for trouble” when encoding at very high rates. Some players that might be ok with high data rates on store-bought movies will not work well with home-burned media at high rates. Play it safe and use a lower bitrate, no one will ever see the difference.

Thank you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers