[Heath Firestone]

I’ve done a handful of Blu-Ray discs burned using a Panasonic Burner. I prefer to create the ISO in Encore, and do the burn using a burning program like Nero. The only compatibility issues I have encountered had to do with Blu-Ray Disc players that didn’t have updated firmware allowing them to read BD-R and BD-RE discs. All existing Blu-Ray disc players, now have firmware updates available to resolve this issue, from my understanding.

Hope this helps.

Heath

[Heath Firestone]

Hey guys,

Sorry about not chiming in on this a little sooner. I was writing an article about this, which I delayed on releasing, while I waited for a response from Sony regarding this. What you guys are talking about, (burning a Blu-Ray image onto a standard DVD+/-R disc), is called a BD-9. It is supposed to be supported by all Blu-Ray disc players, but last I checked, had not yet been implemented in the latest PS3 firmware release. I contacted Sony several months ago to find out when it would be implemented, but never got a response, despite sending it to the guy I was told was in charge of Blu-Ray implementation at Sony. I imagine if they get enough interest and requests from people, this would become a priority. I first tried this last July, and figured it was only a matter of time before other people realized the usefulness as well.

I’m glad to hear that some Blu-Ray disc players are supporting it. Now we just need to convince Sony to update their PS3 firmware to support it. BTW, originally PS3’s didn’t support playback of BD-R and BD-RE discs either, but they added the support pretty quickly. I think they just need a little reminder that we have a use for it.

Heath

[Heath Firestone]

If you right click on the video file, you can use the replace asset function, and browse to the transcoded file. It will take you some time to replace 50 assets, but it may be worth it.

Hope this helps,

Heath

[Heath Firestone]

Sorry it took so long to respond again, I had to install Encore on my notebook so I could figure out the workaround procedure since I don’t have access to my primary machine.

Newer versions of Encore won’t usually allow for overlapping of subtitles, which seems to be your problem. One way of fixing this, is to export your subtitle track as a text script. This simply creates a text file with the in and out points (timecodes), and the text for each subtitle. You can review this to see if you have any overlap. I like to keep at least a few frames between each subtitle, 5-10 frames. It is possible that if it is having to encode your footage, and it converts from non-drop to drop frame, that it will cause overlaps in timecode. Putting a little space between the subtitles should protect you, though. You can make changes in timecodes here if necessary. If you do, when you save, make sure you encode the .txt file to unicode or UTF-8 for compatibility. I would use Notepad, instead of Word, since it is a little easier to make sure you are saving as a .txt file with the proper encoding.

Once you have made the changes, save the project under a different name, delete the old subtitle track, create a new subtitle track and import the modified text script into the new subtitle track. Make sure when importing the text script, that you use the default font. You may have to resize your bounding box, but first try an export to see if you have gotten rid of your overlap error before spending more time fixing the subtitles. If this works,then try changing the bounding box on a few subtitles, and test export to see if that works now. You may have been inheriting problems from earlier weird settings, which this will hopefully have corrected. If all is well, fix the bounding box for the remaining titles and export.

Hopefully this will solve all of your problems.

Let us know what, if any of this helped, and in which way, so there is a procedure others can follow if they encounter the same issues.

Heath

[Heath Firestone]

I don’t have an Encore machine in front of me, so I am going on memory. The first thing I would check is what font you are using. It’s been a while since I did much sub-title work, but I ran into some issues using fonts other than the default, which I believe is Myriad Pro. Check that first. I have a couple of other work arounds I had to do on on one particularly difficult project that I can suggest, but you’ll have to give me a little time to get access to an Encore machine, so I can remember the procedures.

Hope this helps, I’ll give you more things to try shortly.

Heath

[Heath Firestone]

Eric,

I should point out that drag and drop capabilities exist with the Axio, but there is the potential for problems on long projects. I don’t know that this is a universal problem, by any means. I do know that some people have had problems on Intel machines, which haven’t had issues on Opteron machines. Without testing a large project with my machine, I can’s say whether this would be an issue or not. I just wanted you to know there may be a potential issue, though I know that Matrox is making improvements, and I expect the problem to be resolved, hopefully in their next release.

If it is a RAM issue working with Long GOP, you would suspect that there would be similar problems with HDV, since the Axio works with the native Long GOP files, not transcodes as Premiere and other programs do. It can do this because of the hardware acceleration. I can attest to my machine’s ability to handle large long format DV projects, as I just finished on with over 65 hours of HDV footage, cut down to an hour and a half final video.

Just as a point of reference, HDV is 25Mbps MPEG2 Long GOP, while XDCAM HD is 35Mbps MPEG2 Long GOP.

I wish I could tell you it could handle it with ease, but since I haven’t tried it, and don’t know what configuration the people who have encountered errors, have, I can’t say for sure. I do, however suspect that with the right configuration, an Axio LE could handle long format XDCAM HD projects. If not now, then soon.

Hope this helps. For my application, which can be very demanding, the realtime performance I get, along with the ability to mix HD formats (and SD for that matter) in the same timeline without rendering, has made it invaluable.

Heath

[Heath Firestone]

Tim,

I think you’re probably right about the RAM limitations of Windows XP. These problems should go away with Vista, since it doesn’t have the same memory issues, but not everything supports Vista yet, including the Axios.

Heath

[Heath Firestone]

It’s very stable with Axios. I have two Axio LE machines, and one AXIO HD.

Some people have experienced instability on long format HD projects, or too many layers with HDV footage, which goes away when they add Matrox hardware acceleration, either RT.X2 or Axio.

I work primarily on my Axios, so I haven’t encountered problems, regardless of complexity or length.

The Axio becomes invaluable if you are mixing formats and resolutions, as it keeps everything realtime. I have done five camera multicam shoots mixing HDCAM, DVCProHD, and HDV, doing multicam edits in PPro with my Axios, and it works great. I can’t imagine doing those edits without the Axio. Or on any other system, for that matter.

Heath

[Heath Firestone]

Eric,

My experience with the Axio is primarily on HD projects using their proprietary MPEG2 I frame codec (supports 50-300Mbps) at 150Mbps for HDCAM captures, and DVCProHD, and HDV in the same timeline. I like the fact that with the Axio, there is no confroming of HDV files, and they only take up their 25Mbps as apposed to larger data rates used when files have to be conformed to an I-frame structure.

With XDCAM HD, the Axios support it, but on longer format programs, people have had issues with memory usage causing problems. It always takes more memory and processing power to process Long GOP footage. I know Matrox is improving this, and it will get better, but there are some caveats with regard to doing long format XDCAM projects with the Axio at this point. That is not to say that it isn’t an option. Apparently for shorter format stuff it works great. There are some very usable workarounds in the meantime. If you want to stay PC, and you want the realtime advantages of an Axio, and are willing to use a reasonable workaround until Matrox gets things optimized so that there aren’t memory issues with long format XDCAM HD projects, then, I would still highly recommend
the Axio. I don’t know if you would have memory issues with your projects, but I know that it can be a problem. The workaround which I know some studios are using, is that they capture their XDCAM footage from HDSDI (I know this kind of misses the point of captureless editing, but you’d have to copy the files onto your system anyway, which would take some time). You can capture to MPEG2 I frame at 100Mbps, which should give you visually lossless capture quality, or you could capture to DVCProHD, or any of the other codecs the Axio supports. It will take up more disk space that XDCAM, but less space than an Avid or Final Cut machine, which I believe have to convert to either DNxHD or ProRes, at a minimum of 145Mbps.

By the way, the Axio supports playback and editing of XDCAM EX at 1920X1080 now, although export to XDCAM EX is not yet supported.

From my perspective, even if I was working entirely in XDCAM HD, I’d still use Axio LE systems. But, I’d probably use the workaround I described for longer projects until Matrox releases a version of their drivers which handles XDCAM HD flawlessly.

I hope this helps,

Heath

[Heath Firestone]

3GB of RAM is plenty. I don’t believe that is your problem.

I don’t know what to suggest other than uninstalling and reinstalling.

Sorry.