@ 4eyes,

thank you for the details - unfortunately, I am starting a vacation trip tomorrow, means that I will not be able to continue testing in the next 15 days or so. But I will come back to that.

Since others are curious about burning BDMV folders to standard dvd's and playing them back this is what I've found so far:

I've made some mixed content DVD discs that are recogized as AVCHD on the PS3.
These disc contain both avc/h264 & hd-mpeg2 video @ 25MBS. The discs have menus etc.
So this can be done, it's really not that hard so why are the software guys not letting this happen?
Possibly it could be limited to the Blu-Ray players capabilities of reading dvd's at 3X speed or spinning the dvd's at a higher rate compared to playing back a standard dvd.

The mixed content avchd disks I've made play on the PS3 (which is more like a computer). The same disks played on the Sony Blu-Ray players in the store, the avc/h264 videos played correctly while the hd-mpeg2 video @25MBS studders after about 6 seconds of playing into the video.

For me the logical choice will be AVCHD on dvd's with avc/h264 & when Blu-Ray Burners are more affordable then mixed content on Blu-Ray Media. I think that hd-mpeg2@25MBS may be a problem on standard dvd's and won't be compatible across all the line of Blu-Ray Disk Players.
I didn't bother testing the avchd mixed content disk on the Panasonic or Pioneer players.
The PS3 does play them though because it's more like a computer.

Folks,

I wanted to report that I was able to successfully playback a Blu-Ray BDMV formatted DVD+R disc (booktype = DVD-ROM) encoded with AVC (H.264) high definition content on the Samsung BD-P1200 (October 2007 firmware) . I burned the DVD+R BDMV-formatted disc directly from Sony Vegas Pro 8.0a from HDV content on the timeline < Tools =>Burn Disc=>Blu Ray Disc> . I burned using a 15 Mbps H.264/AVC setting.

While simple method does not create Blu-Ray menus,it does allow the insertion of chapter markers for disc navigation

While my initial test used only a short (~12 minute) clip. it seems I should be able to get up to 60 minutes of content if I use a DVD+R DL disc (dual layer), although I have yet to test the ability of the BD-P1200 to play DVD+R DL discs in general (whether DVD/SD formated or BDMV formatted).

--Rob

For those of us who create HD content with HDV camcorders, the Vegas solution just absolutely sucks!

I can take HDV content from my Sony FX-1, bring it into my Sony Vegas 8 software suite, and create an mpeg4/h.264 mpeg4 AVCHD disk????? And play this on my Sony Playstation 3 on a Sony 42' LCD monitor?

Why in the world would I want to transcode all of my pristine HDV content into mpeg4, taking a huge amount of time in Vegas to do so, and then watch 18 Mbit/sec transcoded crap made from 25 Mbit/sec excellent HDV?

This "solution" is another Sony poke directly into the consumer's eye.

And I for one am absolutely disgusted.

and yes, I know you can play back raw mpeg2 HDV files on the Playstation. This is a very weak, totally inadequate solution.

The bottom line appears to be that if you want HDV in its original mpeg 25 Mbit/sec format and menues, then Sony, even after almost 4 years of selling HDV camcorders, still refuses to allow DVD authoring except for their $25/per disk BluRay approach.

Having also succeeded with HD DVDs to make absolutely superb menued HD DVDs for 20 cents apiece directly for 18 months now with HDV content using $69 Ulead software with no transcoding, with "Type 2 Advanced" floating motion menues as well, I can only say that Sony is beyond any complimentary words when it comes to supporting their loyal customers in this area. They just stink!


Larry

Well, to be fair the AVCHD is getting better....but I do understand your frustrations. Logically speaking, Sony Vegas SHOULD be at the forefront of AVCHD/Blu Ray work... but it's not even close. Cheap off-the-shelf programs like Pinnacle and Ulead are MILES ahead of Vegas in terms of HD authoring... so far ahead that it's actually a little embarrassing.

This however seems to be the trend that Sony is on with Blu Ray/AVCHD... It's a shame. They have lots of hardware out there... an NLE... You SHOULD be able to do it all with Sony... it SHOULD all fit together like a finely cut puzzle. But it doesn't. In fact you have to read the specs very carefully on ALL of this BD stuff before you buy to make sure it's actually going to work with the rest of the Sony stuff you have. This is my biggest frustration with Sony and their Hi def world... it's all so disorganized it's not even funny. Tab "A" should fit in slot "A"... tab "B" into slot "B"... etc. Somehow Sony has COMPLETELY missed this.

If they got their act together they could probably bury Toshiba and HD DVD.... but then that's why I'm doing HD DVD right now.... because Sony is simply all over the map with what appears to be almost no direction

The Sony approach has quite deliberately put the HDV owner / user into an impoossible situation, namely, that the only way they allow distribution of home movies and other HDV content is to require the viewer to have another HDV camcorder as a playback device, or to have the content transformed into another format by recompression to a lower bit rate to make AVCHD disks which only then can be played on a few BluRay players. They clearly want to force the consumer into the purchase of BluRay media and BluRay burners at great expense.

If someone had told me that the FX-1 HDV Sony camcorder I purchased almost 4 years ago would not be able to make distribution disks for the next 4 years or longer, I would certainly have NEVER purchased it. Thankfully Toshiba, Ulead, Pinnacle, and others have filled in the void, and offered sensible and consumer-focused solutions.

Using AVCHD for HDV content maes absolutely no sense. Recompressing to a lower bit rate is especially outrageous since 25 Mbit/s HDV is a marginal format to begin with, using very long GOPs and high compression ratios for both audio and video.

I don't feel Sony's "solution" is disorganized. I think it reflects the very deliberate and very conscious outcome of Sony management decisions to block certain activities and attempt to foster others. They see no revenue in allowing current burners and current DVD-Rs being supported and thus prevent it. They see the dollar signs rolling from the sale of $25 blank media and $700 burners. This they support. It is greed and market manipulation, not disorganization in my view. I am quite certain there is a very legal reason why Ulead's earlier software which DID produce red laser "BluRay"-compatible disks with menus was quickly and abruptly taken off the market.

My personal hope is that $199 Toshiba HD DVD players outsell the $499 BluRay equivalents by a huge margin this Christmas season, and that Sony once again gets to eat "BetaMax Pie". In their Sony-centric world we would be using ATRAC mini-disk audio players, only watch movies from Columbia (Sony) Studios, burn $25 disks, and have Ethernet-connected HDMI ports which get another version of HDCP every week or two, leaving older plasma and LCD monitors as obsolete junk. I have had enough of this, and Vegas 8 is the worst insult so far IMHO.

Larry

"I think it reflects the very deliberate and very conscious outcome of Sony management decisions to block certain activities and attempt to foster others."
=======================================================
LOL... You said it... I didn't. I just don't like putting it that bluntly because there are people here that seem to think I have it in for Sony

I as well as a few others have said from day one that Sony has been dropping intentional road blocks down in front of the home disk burning world. BDMV capacity on both blue and red laser disk has been available for a long time. Ulead even tried to offer it back on MF5 with full menus. It was available on the trial for about 2 weeks then all of a sudden it disappeared. Can't say EXACTLY why but I do know that Ulead would not have removed it from MF5 if they weren't forced in some way.

Just my opinion, but I think it's being offered NOW because Toshiba is forcing the hand. But the bottom line is that this whole blu ray/avchd experience has been MUCH tougher than it has had to have been. If Toshiba wasn't around pushing as hard as they are, I doubt we would even be this far with the whole hi def thing.

I absolutely agree, and am so very glad that Toshiba represents a very practical alternative.

I really feel that the Ulead 'BluRay' solution is still very watered down, even if one buys the optional add-in HD pack for MF6+ and downloads the latest HD update for Ulead VS11+, both of which I have done.

I say watered down since the ***ONLY*** Ulead way to make menued BluRay disks on a red laser 4.7GB DVD is to encode / transcode HDV in mpeg4 / AVCHD at a low bit rate. To the best of my knowledge, Ulead provides no method whatsoever of making a menued HDV / mpeg2 disk on a 4.7 GB disk. And those who have attempted to use Nero or other software to copy the BDMV folder onto a red laser disk have discovered that the BluRay players CANNOT play the menus and treat the disk as either totally unplayable or, at best, allow the streams to be individually played no different than playing the direct .m2t files without using any authoring software whatsoever.

Isn't it revealing that Ulead no longer allows a true menued mpeg2 BluRay compatible disk to be authored on a 4.7 GB DVD, but does allow an AVCHD disk in mpeg4 to be created exactly like Vegas / Sony does? Ulead removed their older, way more useful HDV-compatible mpeg2 version after a few weeks, and now exactly imitates Sony's crippled method in Vegas.............!! I can only assume that Ulead doesn't suddenly remove features / functions by accident.

Can you smell legal rather than technical explanations......?!?!?!

I take an HDV file, author an HD DVD, and minutes later, the result looks superb, absolutely identical to the camcorder output, with the same bitrate and no transcoding whatsoever. Smooth and super sharp video. I then take the identical HDV file and author using either Vegas 8 or Ulead to make the only available BluRay DVD choice, AVCHD. After (literally) hours of re-rendering / transcoding, I play the disk on my BluRay PS3 and the picture looks like crap, with far less detail, weaker colors, and some stuttering as well. If I tried to play it on most other BluRay players, it would not play at all...........

So this is how Sony allows HDV camcorder owners to distribute their work??

Sony makes the only option which works properly a highly costly option, so that HDV owners absolutely must go to $25 blank disks if they want a menu and still have any picture quality whatsoever.

Shame on them. This is truly a disgrace!

Larry

I play the disk on my BluRay PS3 and the picture looks like crap, with far less detail, weaker colors, and some stuttering as well. If I tried to play it on most other BluRay players, it would not play at all...........My avchd disks play great on the PS3, the Sony/Panasonic/Pioneer Blu-Ray Disk Players.

If your getting a bad picture, studdering then there's something wrong. I would suspect a bad burn from Vegas. I had this happen. So I use MF6+ to burn the avc/h264 videos created from Vegas or the ulead encoder. For best video I use the Vegas encoder. Lately though I have so many of them I can manually compile a directory & burn using Nero. This is what's nice about the BDMV format, either avchd or mpeg2. The videos in the streams folder are the video, unlike hd-dvd with EVO folders how do you get your original videos back from the HD-DVD? With BDMV you simply copy them back to the harddisk, they are already compliant and when creating a new disk are re-multiplexed again into a new disk/compilation, no re-encoding.

I've found with AVC/H264 just because the bit-rate is lower doesn't mean that avchd cannot have the same quality as another codec with less compression & a higher bit-rate.
I've been encoding my HDV using Vegas Pro 8 encoding at approx 15MBS CBR.
I've also been using the MF6+ avc encoder (main concepts H264 encoder) encoding at 18MBS Max VBR. The ulead encodes end up averaging about 11MBS with very good quality. So I can put more video on a dvd encoded VBR with really nice video.
My choice on the quality side is still the Vegas Encoder. Great Video.

When the H264 encoding process works the video should be very close to and identical to the source. I've asked people to compare them and saying which codec I'm playing, some say the H264 is the original & looks better. The H264 codec uses more compression and can use a lower bit rate.

I've been encoding to H264 with Vegas Pro 8 and very pleased with the 8.0a update. Vegas Pro 8a performs an outstanding HighDef Mpeg2 conversion to AVC/H264 @ 15MBS CBR. I can step frame/advance through my test videos and every spoke of custom wheels on passing vehicles is visible. Lettering on commercial trucks is visible, fielding is perfect.

I think it's also the nature of the beast. HDV requires a very high bit-rate, isn't really suited for dvd's.
AVCHD is 18MBS Max, so that's about 2X speed. Who knows, maybe engineers don't want a blu-ray reader in a consumer player spinning at 3X dvd speed. Maybe problems, returns etc.

I think they have a pretty good solution so far.
My original file from a Sony HC3 Cam is HDV@25MBS = 1.733Gig (7 Minutes approx)
AVCHD/H264@ VBR – 1440x1080@18MBS (max) 11MBS (avg) Dolby 5.1@448kbs = 622 Megs
Standard Defintion 720x480 / 9.5MBS VBR Dolby 5.1@384kbs = 422 Megs

The middle file is HighDef and looks Great, it's only a little bigger than the Standard Def video.
So the SD is 422 & the HD is 1.733Gig, DVD's don't cut it. Matter of fact if they put part of the movie "Royal Casino" on DVD it won't play, because the AVC/H264 video is about 25MBS and peaks at 35MBS, DVD's don't cut this for highdefintion.

By the way, I do have the MovieFactory 5 original release that made Blu-Ray Disks, it doesn't play either and never could burn to a standard dvd, it doesn't burn to a dvd, you must burn to a Blu-Ray disk OR create BDMV folders & burn with Nero. But they don't playback (data disk). So if you use MF6+ it's the same thing to create a BDMV disk on DVD, create folders & burn with Nero.
Mine do play on the PS3, with menus, at full 25MBS. They DO NOT play on the other Blu-Ray Consumer players, only the PS3. I specially compile them.

This they support. It is greed and market manipulation, not disorganization in my view.

Don't blame greed, malice and evil for what can simply be attributed to incompetence. If you were right, Sony would have had a strong offering in Blu-Ray authoring for Blu-Ray burners, and they don't. Quite frankly, Sony Creative Software is so far behind the ball on this one that it is really, really hard to attribute it to anything but management incompetence. Once you have the H.264 encoding down, it isn't actually hard to create a menu-based disk.

Vegas is the second family of prosumer video editing software I invest in, the last was Ulead Media Studio Pro and Ulead DVD Workshop. If the guys in Madison are unwilling or unable to get their act together, and Vegas 8 is a sad indication in that regard, I will probably move to Adobe the next time, in fact, I am to a degree already lamenting not doing that when I dropped Ulead, but I just don't like Premiere that much. At least Adobe has a reasonable cohesive strategy behind what they are doing, at the moment it seems that the left five thumbs in Madison have no clue what the right five thumbs are doing.

and some stuttering as well. If I tried to play it on most other BluRay players, it would not play at all

OK, this is not true at all. Yes, on some disks, Ridata for example, I definitely see stuttering, but when I burn to TY disks, no stuttering. This isn't unexpected, bad disks are harder to read, and even more so when you have to spin the disk at three times the speed it was designed for. In other words, you can't really blame Sony for the bad quality of the media you are burning to.

I also took my AVCHD disk to Circuit City last weekend, and it played in all the Blu-Ray players they had, and yes, I tried all of them.

I agree that Sony has dropped the ball on this one, and quite frankly, given the development in the rest of the world, DVD Architect is falling seriously behind competing products even as regular DVD authoring software. Sorry Sony, a cosmetic change and adding five more crap looking themes to DVDA doesn't warrant a .5 version upgrade.

Now, I have not spent any time testing the output of the AVC encoder in Vegas as compared to the original HDV footage, but AVC at 18M/s should have no problem whatsoever creating the same level of color and detail as 25M/s MPEG-2 which is what your HDV is. Now, re-encoding HDV isn't the perfect way to start a day, but I am really surprised that you see a significant quality difference.

Now, re-encoding HDV isn't the perfect way to start a day, but I am really surprised that you see a significant quality difference.Time for a new computerVegas Pro 8a rocks on my XP & Vista systems (same machine). Great videos & encodings for my SD & HDV mpeg videos. Great h264 encodings, every time I read posts here ( tips from the pros / experienced users ) and use Vegas I learn something new, another method, more features.

I could care less about the small stuff, video quality is what works. I do see a difference in Vegas encodes compared to others. Sometimes on other encoders the picture is the same but dropped fielding information, but Vegas always reproduces or converts the fielding correctly with fine detail.
Great product

"Vegas is the second family of prosumer video editing software I invest in, the last was Ulead Media Studio Pro and Ulead DVD Workshop. If the guys in Madison are unwilling or unable to get their act together, and Vegas 8 is a sad indication in that regard,"

Well, I don't think I would take it that far. While I think it's agreed that Sony has dropped the ball on the BD/avchd end of the parade, I can't say they have done the same with Vegas itself. I have MSP8 as well... don't use it any more mind you, but Vegas is MILES ahead of MSP (and I'm sure that you are aware that MSP and workshop are being discontinued), both in terms of quality and performance. Vegas from my perspective is an outstanding NLE, and it just gets NOTHING but better with each new version. And that to me is the most important thing... Sony is NOT dressing the same NLE up in a different box with a few other applications on each new release, like some others are doing. There are staggering improvements with every version that comes. I for one can't wait to see Vegas 64... Vegas 9.... etc.

Vegas from my perspective is an outstanding NLE, and it just gets NOTHING but better with each new version.

I totally agree that Vegas is an outstanding NLE, but the last part of this statement simply isn't in accordance with reality. Vegas started having some problems with HDV in 7e, and these have partly carried over to 8.

As of version 8 there are a number of quality issues with Vegas, which should not be there. Examples include excessive memory usage in particular, reproducible, situations, a complete failure to work in 32 bits with HDV video, again reproducible, and the new titler is beta quality at best.

Now, none of this detracts from the fact that, in my opinion, Vegas is the product with the best work-flop on the market today, or at least among the ones I have had the opportunity to try. It does however, in my opinion, point to a problem in SCS where it seems quality control has been going downhill for the past while. Many people would argue that this has been the case since Vegas 6 or so.

That is a worrying trend, and coupled with the fact that it seems that they are not considering the market, their position in it as a company, the overall strategy or what their competitors are doing at all, makes me worry they will end up like Ulead. I know Adobe is not, at least not for a long time.

"As of version 8 there are a number of quality issues with Vegas, which should not be there. Examples include excessive memory usage in particular, reproducible, situations, a complete failure to work in 32 bits with HDV video, again reproducible, and the new titler is beta quality at best."
=======================================================
Growing pains.... we all have them (or at least had them). As the complication level of Vegas deepens, so won't the bugs. But I am completely satisfied with Madison's abilities in correcting these issues.

I have read this thread several times and I'm still confused as to if we have a red laser HDV solution or not. What are we searching for in the AVCHD format that is not in plain .m2t? Is it quality related to possible data rates and/or the lack of menus or is there more?

I like the results I have from my PS3 with the basic Vegas 7e HDV 1080i render so what more should I be looking for? And do I need Vegas8 to experiment with AVCHD burns in Nero8 or EncoreCS3?Mike

>What are we searching for in the AVCHD format that is not in plain .m2t?

For me it was a question of better compression efficiency over MPEG-2 and hence maximizing the amount of video per DVD (in my case DVD+R or DVD +R DL). I have never tried an MPEG-2 encoded, BDMV formatted, disc using Vegas 8 Pro (Tools=>Burn Disc=>Blu-Ray Disc), only the AVC.H.264 video format option.

And just to be technically correct, I do not believe you have the option to place M2T (transport streams) on a BDMV-formatted disc using Vegas 8 feature. The two "Video Format" options are Sony AVC and MainConcept MPEG-2, both of whuch results in elementary steams (the MPEG2 TS is a wrapper [as is AVI] that can carry encoded audio and video of various formats that can even included AVC video).

I understand question was regarding placing the natively encoded HDV content (at 25 Mbps) on a standard DVD media in BDMV-format, but wanted to point out the terminology issue. Note the because of greater compression efficiency the AVC/H.264 content produced by Vegas is at a lower bit rate (15 Mbps) than the MPEG-2 encoded BDMV disc, hence the more AVC minutes per DVD+R/-R. The downside is the source HDV content needs to be transcoded from MPEG-2 to AVC, but it is worth it to me to be able to have an affordable HD playback solution with ~75 minutes of high-quality HD content per DVD+R DL disc.

--Rob
(my playback device is a Samsung BD-P1200)

"And do I need Vegas8 to experiment with AVCHD burns in Nero8 or EncoreCS3?"

If you wish to generate a BDMV structure with Vegas, you need Vegas 8. However, even with Vegas 7 you are able to render to 1080 50i, and use that as input for Nero 8 or Encore. The encoding to AVC will take place in Nero 8 or CS3, whatever you use.

Beside that, if you wish to use Nero or CS3, as far as I know there is no way to avoid that a new rendering takes place, even if you render the AVC-material from Vegas 8. That works for Uleads Moviefactory 6+ with the HD power package, but not for CS3 and not for Nero 7 (and I assume also not for Nero 8).

In addition, be aware of 2 points:
- the BDMV-DVD, generated with Vegas 8, will not playback fine from a PS3. The PS3 is able to play that as data disc, but not as Blu Ray disk.

- to produce a BDMV-DVD with mpeg2-HD and a data rate of 25 mbps makes no sense - because most Blu Ray standalones are not able to playback the high data rate from a DVD, but only from a true Blu Ray disc. But if you reduce the datarate for mpeg2-HD to avoid that, you will see a significant quality drop. It is better to use AVC for that reason too.