[Wayne Chan]

Jeff,

Thanks for responding and trying to help me.

I think there is a fundamental difference between the “H264” and “H264 Blu-ray” encoding on my system even though both report using the Main Concept engine.

If I use just the regular H264 to make a file, I can’t get good quality whether I specify an interlaced or progressive file. I have tried several settings. I even wrote down the settings from the H264 Blu-ray preset and put the same values in the regular H264 encode and I still have problems with my rendered files.

My solution is to use the H264 Blu-ray default preset, which makes a separate video and audio file. The video is an MP4 file and the audio is just a Wave file. I can’t even view this MP4 video file with Windows Media Player, but I can view it by opening up Premiere and importing it.

The next step I take is to start an Encore project and import the MP4 and wave file. Then I go and build my project as a Blu-ray folder – not a Blu-ray disc. After finishing the build, get a bunch of Blu-ray files in the exported folder. Inside the Blu-ray folder, I can find my project video file in AVCHD format which plays beautifully on my computer using Windows Media Player. The quality as far as I can tell is perfect. My clips that were originally shot in 1080-60P look the same on initial inspection even though I had to convert to 1080i.
I’m finally happy to have found a solution. I sent several projects from Encore to my PS3 and the finished video looks even more impressive than I thought it would be possible on my TV.

My next question on my mind is whether I should even bother with making my source clips 1080-60P? I just bought a new camcorder and according to Camcorderinfo, I get 200 more lines of vertical resolution with 1080-60P over 1080-60i. I get more resolution but I have to convert my 1080-60P clips and render them to 1080-60i for TV watching — so which is more important? Obviously I would like to have the extra 200 lines of resolution but is there a loss in the conversion to 1080-60i?

[Wayne Chan]

My monitor is 1920 x 1080 native. 23″ Samsung C-PVA.

On my system I think there is something wrong with the way AME handles H264 versus the H264 Blu-ray encoding.

But I think I have found my solution. It takes more steps than I originally thought would be required. I will post when I make sure of my findings.

[Wayne Chan]

Just found out something. If I render my project out to “H.264 Blu-ray”, I get a perfect quality conversion on my 1080 60i material. I can also get a good render from 1080 60P to 1080 60i.

The problem with this is that I don’t want to burn a Blu-ray disc. I get a separate video and audio file that I can’t play on my computer. The only way I can play these are to load them up in Premiere and importing the video file to a video track and then importing the audio file and placing that on an audio track for viewing.
This is not an option as I would just like to play these rendered projects for TV viewing via PS3 as well as just a file format for computer viewing.

The strange thing is, if I take a look at all of the preset settings for the H.264 Blu-ray option and copy these settings to the regular H.264 render option in Adobe Media Encoder, I still have the weird bad quality renders.

I also notice their is no default H.264 1080i 29.97 option or any interlaced options for that matter, but it is certainly there in the “H.264 Blu-ray” presets.