I received the following response from SCS:

QUOTE
Thank you for submitting your .dar file. We were able to finally reproduce this issue. At this time the only work around we have is going into File > Optimize Disc and choosing to recompress. Doing this allowed us to burn a Blu-Ray disc successfully. I will update engineering with this information and let you know if/when they suggest any other fixes or workarounds. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. Hopefully this will be resolved in one of the next releases of the DVD Architect Pro software.
UNQUOTE

I answered as follows:

QUOTE
Good that you could reproduce the error. Please let engineering know that many users do consider this a serious bug. Recompressing AVC files is no satisfactory workaround as this takes a lot of time and lowers the image quality. I hope this gets fixed soon.
UNQUOTE

Lou

I dropped off my project disk in the mail this morning, so hopefully that'll give them two data points. I really *hope* this gets fixed from the DVDA side of things, as opposed to some kind of Vegas patch artificially lowering the bitrate there.

(Now I just need to find out why the re-rendered-under-Vegas-8 version of my project is spitting out "No compatible video codec was found." when rendering the menu. :( )

Erik,

It's an advantage that they have a lot of material from you, it only makes their error search easier. I have a hunch that the error is indeed in DVDA. I suppose that the AVC encoders in DVDA and in Vegas are the same code, so if the rendering in DVDA works it should also be correct in Vegas. Consequently, it must be something else and it could be something small, like a wrong parameter or a variable of the wrong size. But of course, I'm only guessing.

Besides, what about your missing video codec? Could you solve the problem by rendering again in Vegas 9?

Lou

Hi Lou,

The missing codec error was something to do with the menu -- carried over from the original vegas 9 file render and with the vegas-8-rendered files dropped over it. Once I re-created the blu-ray project from scratch (including re-doing the chapter markers for 10 hours of material. Grr.) it then built just fine, and I am now have a blu-ray disk & can happily remove the 1/4 terabyte of resources of my working drive.

Looks like they may have finally gotten my disk of material. Got this reply from SCS today:

"Hi Erik,

Thank you for contacting Sony Creative Software.

This is a known issue logged into the database to be resolved in a future update of the software.

Using the mechanism provided in DVD Architect to adjust the bit rate according to the KB article is the viable work around for the time being. DVD Architect has to re-render in any case in order to create the ISO style file that gets burned to the disc."

Well, it's not viable for me to do double encodes either, but thankfully I have my own viable workaround at the moment, which is to go back to Vegas 8.1 or 8.0c, which produces wimpier VBR that DVDA likes, for now.

Hey Lou, I found that I couldn't use the frameserver on my 64-bit OS (even with the 32-bit versions of Vegas). But it works great on 32-bit XP under Vegas 9.0. And this is what I'm using to produce all output except Blu-Ray -- MPEG2 constant quality mode with TMPEG Plus, and h.264 via MeGUI/x.264. If I could import a raw 264 stream in DVDA for a Blu-Ray disk, I'd do that too.

I received a similar sop today. As I don't want to loose more time experimenting I have reverted to MPEG-2 until SCS sorts this bug out. What I don't understand is the apparent lack of urgency with SCS. If I were responsible for a software product like this, I couldn't sleep at night.

Lou

Hi Lou,
For your information I faced the same authoring error.
I decided to author a video clip I made one year ago with my Sony HDV camcorder in 1440x1080 format.
I rendered in Vegas 9.0 a 30sec trial in AVC 1440x1080 15Mb format to check if everything is OK and it worked in DVDA. I could burn the BR.
When I tried to author the full clip (around 7 min) I had the message error.
Then after having read all exchanges on this forum, I rendred the same project in the same format in Vegas 8.
And surprisingly everything was fine in DVDA and I could burn my BR.

Conclusion, something is wrong in Vegas 9 if DVDA can accept a file rendered in Vegas 8 (same project, same files, same format) but not in Vegas 9.

BR
Philippe

Hi Philippe,

Thanks for the tip. The error might very well be in V9 then. Nevertheless, the projects I'm working on at the moment were started in V9 and Vegas doesn't allow me to open them in V8. And I don't feel like starting the edits all over again.

I think I'll stay with MPEG-2 until this is sorted out. But I find it astonishing that SCS is so flegmatic about it. If you do a search on the Internet, everybody seems to be discussing this irritating bug. Anyone but Sony.

Lou

P.S.
As an experiment I tried to transfer my edited material from V9 to V8 using Satish's frameserver software. However, starting the frameserver often made V9 crash, and when it didn't the input in V8 was scrambled, couldn't been used.

I then exported a problematic sequence from V9 using Sony's MXF (Material eXchange file Format - Default bitrate 35 Mbps VBR - HQ) which could be imported into Vegas V8.0c without a problem. And -as you already mentioned- the AVC rendered by V8 was accepted by DVDA without a problem.

The final image quality is impeccable so I might use this procedure as a workaround until SCS comes up with a final solution.

Philippe,

I discovered the same behavior w.r.t rendering in Vegas 8.0 vs. 9.0 as well. However, I did a bunch of bitrate analysis on the clips, and came to the conclusion that Vegas Pro 9 is merely better at rendering variable bitrate than 8.0 was. The 9.0 renders show transient areas that rise briefly above 16 mbps (though not much), and corresponding lower bitrate valleys when there is low movement. Contrast that to VP 8.0, which has a smoother bitrate graph -- not as nice, because it's not giving you a consistent QUALITY render.

Also, SCS has acknowledged this to be a bug in DVDA, not Vegas.

As Lou notes, this doesn't help any of us who started a project in Vegas 9, but until the fix is out, I'm doing all my editing on 8.0, and only using 9 to render DVDs or Frameserve to MeGUI.

PS: Hey Lou, I've found the Frameserver crashes when running on my 64-bit OS, but it works great with 9.0 under 32-bit XP. Perhaps it's a problem when both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries are installed?

QUOTE
PS: Hey Lou, I've found the Frameserver crashes when running on my 64-bit OS, but it works great with 9.0 under 32-bit XP. Perhaps it's a problem when both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries are installed?
UNQUOTE

I only work under 32-bit Vista Home Premium and there the Frameserver doesn't function well. Nevertheless, I do have use for the Frameserver:

I have an editing program with a very nice map route tracer (EditStudio 6 by PureMotion) and I use it to frameserve route animations to Vegas.

Lou

Is this issue related only to trying to burn a blu-ray disk on a dvd (ie, DVD-R Media), or onto a blue ray disk (BD-R)?

If DVDA is forcing DVD bitrate limits on Blu-Ray disks, that's pretty pitiful.

Yes, the problem occurs when rendering a Blu-Ray image / burning on a BD-R.

And yes, it is sad.

When in a Blu-ray project I burn a BD-R(E) with an MPEG2 file with a bitrate higher than 28 Mbps I get a warning message saying the bitrate is too high for a *DVD*. It nevertheless works but it does look as if they have mixed up BD and DVD parameters.

Lou

Received from SCS yesterday:

QUOTE
I apologize for any inconvenience this issue has caused. Our engineers are aware of the issue and are currently working to resolve it. There is no word yet as to when an update will be made available. Please check back with us periodically at www.sonycreativesoftware.com in order to made aware of any news or update releases.
UNQUOTE

And so we wait.

Lou

Hi: I'm not sure that this will help anyone, but by following John Rofrano's advice and switching from the various flavours of AVCHD to MPEG2 - still working in 1920 x 1080 - I was able to compile a menu-based BluRay disk without the buffer underflow error.

Yes, that is a workaround, but it's not very useful if you're trying to burn Blu-Ray onto DVD media, or if you prefer to work with AVC.

BINGO!!! This bug has been fixed in Vegas Pro 9.0c. Download and enjoy!

Lou

Sigh, then they didn't really fix the bug, just rigged Vegas to be more constrained in its VBR as in 8.0. Oh well. At least it works "together" again.

Whatever they did, I'm happy with it. My HDV footage looks better at 15 Mbps AVC than at 25 Mbps MPEG-2.

Lou

Definitely NOT fixed as of Vegas 9.0c :(

Sorry to hear that. I never had it happen again under 9.0c, even with footage that caused a buffer underflow when rendered to Sony AVC under 9.0a (never installed 9.0b).

Lou