Burning HDV Home Movies to Blu-ray disks

tnw2933 wrote on 4/26/2007, 3:05 PM

I was very disappointed to see that not only did Sony not release a new vesion of DVD Architect at NAB, but there is not even any mention of when this might occur. Having waited a long time for Sony to enable authoring of BD-RE and BD-R disks in DVD Architect, I finally gave up on them and explored other options.

Herin I report my results of using the Lacie d2 Blu-ray burner and Roxio's DVDit Pro HD to burn my HDV edited home productions to a blu-ray disk that would play back in my Sony BDP-S1 blu-ray player. I received the Lacie burner, one 25 GB Sony BD-RE and five 50 GB Panasonic BD-RE disks yesterday. Here is a summary of my initial results.

The HDV production that I chose was one shot using footage from the Sony FX1 and Sony HC3 HDV camcorders. The footage was orignally edited in Vegas 7.0d and rendered to a .m2t file and to tape for archival purposes a couple of months ago. To begin with, I opened Sony Vegas and placed the rendered .m2t file in Vegas 7.0d. I then selected the Bluprint template in Vegas and rendered the project to an elementary video stream file (.m2v). This step is necessary because DVDit Pro HD will not allow the direct importation of a .m2t file into that program. I took this .m2v file and its corresponding multichannel .ac3 file into DVDit Pro HD. The .m2v file was brought into DVDit Pro HD without any further transcoding but the .ac3 file was transcoded. The value of the Bluprint template in Vegas is that it produces .m2v files that can be imported by DVDit Pro HD without transcoding and DVDit Pro HD is very particular about what constitutes a Blu-ray legal mpeg2 file. I don't know why DVDit Pro HD transcoded the .ac3 file.

I then easily created chapter points in DVDit Pro HD as well as a main menu and a Scene Selection menu. DVDit Pro HD comes with a nice selection of images, buttons, menu templates, etc. and the workflow is quite intuitive if you have used any other authoring program such as DVD Architect. I hardly scratched the surface of all of the possibilities in authoring with DVDit Pro HD because I was eager to get to the burning stage, and even more eager to see what the disk looked like when played back on my Sony BDP-S1 and viewed via my Sony VPL-VW100 projector on a 96 in. diagonal screen.

All went well until I hit the burn stage. When I set up the burn parameters, inserted a 25 GB blank Sony BD-RE single layer disk in the Lacie drive, and clicked on "burn" I almost immediately got an unsettling error message: "unexpected device sense code: 0%-27240". After numerous retries, I was stumped.

I should note that I had previously checked out the Lacie Blu-ray drive by using Nero's Ultimate 7 Extended Edition to burn about 5 GB of backup data to a 50 GB Panasonic blu-ray dual layer disk followed by a verification of the data -- all of which worked perfectly. In desperation, I took the 50 GB Panasonic dual layer disk that I had previously written to with Nero, and to my surprise when this disk was inserted in the Lacie blu-ray drive, DVDit Pro HD began almost immediately burning the project. However, suddenly another program popped up on the screen and before I could shut that program down, I got the same burn error message. The Lacie blu-ray burner had come bundled with PowerDVD for watching blu-ray disks on the computer, and I had installed that program although it turned out to be useless since my video card is not compatible with Blu-ray playback. So, I just uninstalled PowerDVD, rebooted, went into DVDit Pro HD and sucessfully burned the Panasonic 50 GB dual layer disk. However, I could never get the blank Sony 25 GB disk to burn from within DVDit Pro HD.

I then had DVDit Pro HD produce a blu-ray disk image of the project on my raid array and I used this for subsequent burns. I placed the Sony 25 GB single layer BD-RE in the Lacie, opened Nero and directed it to burn a Blu-ray disk image. The burn went well with no problems. Now I had 25 GB and 50 GB single and dual layer blu-ray disks of my project to try in my Sony BDP-S1.

The 25 GB BD-RE played perfectly from start to finish in the Sony BDP-S1 and the image looked great. In fact, I could see no differences between the edited project and the original HDV footage. There were no motion artifacts or anomalies of any type. Still images were vibrant, razor sharp, and with excellent color saturation. Menus were beautiful and all the links worked as desired. I was a happy camper!

I then placed the Panasonic 50 GB BD-RE disk in the Sony blu-ray player. The first 15 minutes of the 24 minute project played perfectly and then every 3-9 seconds (but not with regular periodicity), the image on the screen would freeze for a fraction of a second and the audio would drop out for a fraction of a second. This continued until the end of the project. Clearly the video stream was not continuous from the Sony player. In as much as Sony only enabled BD-RE playback about a month ago with the release of the 1.55 firmware update for the BDP-S1, my belief is that the player is not yet fully enabled for smooth playback of dual layered 50 GB authored disk. I even re-burned the Panasonic 50 GB dual layer disk using Nero and verified the burn and it still showed the same freezing and audio dropouts.

Time to get some sleep. It has been a dream of mine for over a year to prepare my own blu-ray projects. Frankly, I am not surprised at the problems I had, but rather that it worked at all!

Tom

P.S. I began rendering a second .m2t project in Vegas 7.0d to the Bluprint template. I am using a computer equipped with the E6700 Core 2 Duo 2.67 GHz processor, 4X150 GB Western Digital Raptor 10K drives in a Raid array, and 2 GB of RAM. The machne has performed flawlessly for the 2 months I have had it.l However, this project, which consists of a single 33 minute .m2t file that I had previously rendered to tape and to a file with Vegas 7.0d has now totally crashed my machine twice. Both times the render ran for about 20-30 minutes and then Veas 7.0d went "poof", the screen went black, and the computer simply spontaneously rebooted. If anyone has any ideas what may be causing this, I'd like to hear them. I havenot encountered any previous render problems in Vegas 7, in Edius Pro 4.12, or in SpeedEdit when using all three NLE's (not at the same time of course!) on this machine.

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tnw2933 wrote on 5/9/2007, 5:38 AM

Larry,

1. Encoding was done in Vegas 7.0e where I edited the HDV project. Within Vegas I set up the render to an mpeg file (.m2v) using a customized Blup-print template which I named Blu-ray_RL. In this customized template, I set in my desired bit rates. I use the mpeg encoder in Vegas only because I am familiar with it, and I know it to be an excellent encoder. DVDit Pro HD has its own encoder, and I do not know that it is not just as good.

2. and 3. Red laser BD's created with DVDit Pro HD look just like Blu-ray disk created on a real Blu-ray disk. No features including menus, chapter points, etc. are missing. My red laser Blu-ray disk created last night looked just like the same project burned at a higher bit rate to a Blu-ray disk a few days ago. Menus in DVDit Pro HD can be either high definition or standard definition and this is indicated in the program so you know which you are choosing. I used an HD template and it looked beautiful in 16:9 high def.

4. The times that you have given for single and dual layer DVD's are, I believe, correct. I have not had the time yet to explore just how much high def material I can get on each disk type. I chose my bit rates (low of 13,000, avg of 15,000, and high of 18,000) somewhat arbitraily. I know that the AVCHD bit rate is 18,000 and my Sony BDP-S1 sees this red laser Blu-ray disk as an AVCHD disk (says so when I load the disk into the player), so I thought I should stay within the limits of the AVCHD bit rate. I know that going to bit rates considerably higher resulted in a red laser Blu-ray disk that periodically froze on my player.

I don't know how much lower a bit rate would be visually indistinguishable. That is something for further experimentation. I do know that my latest red laser Blu-ray disk was (1) indistingusishable from a true Blu-ray disk created at an avg bit rate of 25,000. (2) Was indistingusihable from the dual-layer red laser Blu-ray disk created at an avg bit rate of 25,000 (except the latter froze from time to time on playback).

You are more than welcome. I owe you and others for putting me on to this truly excellent way of archiving high definition media on to red laser disk.

Tom

tnw2933 wrote on 5/9/2007, 5:42 AM

Laurence,

<By the way, this is EXACTLY what DVD Architect should be doing (authoring Blu-ray and SD DVD from the same project). >

I could not agree more! Sony is loosing business to competitors by not supporting this incredible feature of burning Blu-ray to red laser disks. I am glad that you discovered, as I have, Roxio's DVDit Pro HD at an upgrade price of $199, which I think is a great bargain. Any Roxio software will qualify you for this upgrade price. If you require tech support, chekc out the DVDit Pro Forum and address your querry to Scott -- the guru of all things having to do with DVDit Pro HD. He has been great responding to me.

If you are at all interested in burning HD-DVD's to red laser disks, you may wish to chekc out Ulead's DVD Movie FActory 6 Plus at $79! This program has the coolest motion menu templates that I have seen yet.

Tom

ScottW wrote on 5/9/2007, 5:47 AM

All in one, coming soon: HD and SD right now:

http://www.dvd1one.net/network/content/home/default.asp

LSHorwitz wrote on 5/9/2007, 5:56 AM

Thanks Tom, and I am beginning to now feel like BluRay time is just around the corner for me. Let me see if there is some Roxio disks I can find here from my early DvDIt days to get that terrific discount....

Just one final question, and this is the *****reallllllllly big question*****.....

Is you were to be shown both the HD DVD disk(s) you have authored with MovieFactory 6+ on the Toshiba HD DVD player and compare them to the BluRay disks you have authored with Roxio on your Sony BluRay player, does either look "better" than the other????? For the sake of this comparison, I will assume that the really "honest" comparison would be mpeg2 versus mpeg2, rather than the more recent AVC disks you have just completed with Roxio. (I also have been assuming all laong that your source material is HDV rather than AVCHD, but maybe this is not true?)

Larry

Laurence wrote on 5/9/2007, 8:39 AM

Part way down the http://forums.support.roxio.com/index.php?showtopic=21049linked page[/link], you'll find the render settings that Roxio recommends from Vegas that you should use to make a Blu-ray disc without DVDit Pro HD needing to rerender.

edit: those settings are for burning on a real Blu-ray disc, so the bitrates should be lower.

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 5/9/2007, 8:59 AM

not gonna read 77 posts to see if you got your render solution or not, but it sounds to me like your machine was overheating. I could be wrong, but a spontaneous re-boot in mid render is very suspiciously a heat problem. Do you have any pets or a lot of dust in the area that you work? does your PC have good airflow where it's located? have you tried opening the case and letting it render to see if it makes it then?

Also, I'd say that if that's not the cause, then you would want to look into seeing if the render is spontaneously crashing at a specific point. hope this helps... if you still need it.

Dave

tnw2933 wrote on 5/9/2007, 10:41 AM

Larry,

My source material for both the HD-DVD and Blu-ray red laser disk work has been HDV.

Your quesiton is a good one. I cannot really compare the HD-DVD and Blu-ray red laser disks side by side because of the switching limitiations of my home theater, i.e. one component is switched off by my remote when another is called up. However, with that said, I can see no real difference between the HD-DVD and the Blu-ray red laser recordings. In fact, both appear completelyly identical to the original HDV footage which I have viewed by hooking my HDR-FX1 up through its component output for display on my Sony VPL-VW100 front projector.

Please also note the following. Roxio does not require a serial number of previous software for purchasing DVDit Pro HD for $199. They take you at your word and you do not have to have existing Roxio or Sonic software on your PC in order to install DVDit Pro HD upgrade. The upgrade is also a full install with nothing missing.

Second, my Blu-ray red laser disk IS prepared from an mpeg2 file. It is just that when the Blu-ray volume is "burned" to my hard disk and then burned to a red laser DVD, the Sony BDP-S1 blu-ray player "sees" the disk as an AVCHD disk. There is no difference here between DVD Movie Factory and DVDit Pro HD. Both require a compliant mepg2 file for use in the authoring program.

If I have confused you with all this, please keep trying. I'll do my best to be clear in my responces.

Tom

tnw2933 wrote on 5/9/2007, 10:43 AM

FrigidEditing,

My render problem was solved by uninstalling and reinstalling ALL of my Sony Media softare installed on that computer. The computer is two months old and has never beore given any problem even during several all night rendering sessions. After reinstalling all the software, I rendered throughout the night with no problem.

Tom

Laurence wrote on 5/9/2007, 10:57 AM

I'm currently rendering (very slowly) a project to the Vegas Blu-ray template. I noticed that this template doesn't have an audio stream included. I suppose you render a separate AC3 audio file just like you do with DVD Architect. Is this correct or should I have modified the format by clicking on the "include audio" tab?

Actually, any details on the process by someone who has successfully authored a red laser Blu-ray disc would be great.

tnw2933 wrote on 5/9/2007, 1:57 PM

Lawrence,

Here is a detailed listing I posted on the VTNT Forum expaliinikng how Ihave burned a Blu-ray disk to a red laser disk. To answer you specific question, you need to render the audio in your project to a Dolby Digital .ac3 file (ether 2-channel or 5.1 channel) and import this into our Blu-ray authoring software. My post on VTNT follows with details:

In previous posts on this Forum I have given a summary of how I am
burning HD-DVD's on to red laser DVD's and obtaining excellent
results using Ulead's Movie Factory 6 Plus software to author the HD-
DVD image disk and then burning this in Nero 7 to the red laser DVD
(both single and dual-layer).

Since I have a Blu-ray player, I wanted to investigate whether it
might be possible to burn Blu-ray content to a red laser disk and
view the results in full HD on my Sony BDP-S1 Blu-ray player. After
several false starts and partial successes, I am now happy to report
a procedure that has given perfect results and allows for about 40
minutes of HD video to be recorded on a single layer red laser DVD
and about 90 minutes of HD video to be recorded on a dual-layer red
laser disk. These red laser Blu-ray disks play back in full HD and
include menus and all of the features that can be burned to a Blu-ray
disk itself. Here is the procedure.

(1) I used SpeedEdit to edit the project and save it to an .m2t
file. (In the future I shall explore using SpeedEdit to encode the
Blu-ray compatible mpg file (.m2v), but right now I am more familiar
with and comfortable with the encoding in Vegas.)

(2) I used Vegas 7.0e to convert the .m2t file to a .m2v file in full
1920 X 1080 resolution, variable bit rate, and the following bit rate
settings: minimum bit rate = 13,000; maximum bit rate 18,000, average
bit rate 15,000. Note that in my first attempt to record Blu-ray to
red laser disks I used the same bit rate as I used on the single
layer Blu-ray disk I had authored earlier (see previous posts for
details). while the resulting red laser disk would play back in my
BDP-S1, it would freeze every 15-20 seconds. I could pause the
player and it would play perfectly for another 15-20 seconds, and
freeze again. Reasoning that this bit rate (avg 25,000 and max
30,000) was just too high for playback from a red laser disk in my
player, I lowered the bit rates to those given above. I chose those
bit rates a bit arbitrarily based on the fact that AVCHD is 18,000
bit rate and that my Sony player is clearly seeing the Blu-ray red
laser disks that I have prepared as AVCHD disks (says so when I load
it into the BDP-S1).

(3) I used Roxio's DVDit Pro HD to author the Blu-ray red laser
disk. Ulead's Movie Factory 6 Plus cannot author Blu-ray disks and
Nero only prepares BDAV Blu-ray disks which will not play back in any
available stand alone Blu-ray players. DVDit Pro HD can be purchased
as a $199 upgrade if you have ANY available Roxio or Sonic software.
No serial number for your existing Roxio software is required to
purchase the program at this price! The upgrade is a full version of
the software and is about a 600 MB download. DVDit Pro HD is
excellent authoring software for both Blu-ray and standard definition
DVD's. It comes with more features than I can possibly summarize here
but suffice it to say that one can produce quite capable results in
HD with this authoring software. All menus, etc. are in full high
definition and 16:9 aspect.

(4) I import my .m2v file prepared in (2) above into DVDit Pro HD as
well as a 5.1 Dolby Digital .ac3 file also rendered in Vegas 7.0e.
After preparing my menus including scene selection menus, background
music for the menus, etc. I then tell DVDit Pro HD to "burn" a Blu-
ray Volume to my HD.

(5) I then take the Blu-ray Volume file created in (4) and note that
it has two folders called BDMV and Certificate within the Volume. I
use Nero 7 Ultimate to burn a data DVD containing only these two
folders and their contents. This DVD prepared in Nero 7 is a red
laser DVD (either single or dual-layer).

(6) Insert the resulting red laser disk in my Sony BDP-S, and it
immediately loads (as an AVCHD disk) and plays back exactly as if it
were a regular BDMV Blu-ray disk.

(7) Even at the lower bit rate of avg 15,000, I can see NO difference
between the image quality on my screen and the original HDV footage
shot with my Sony HDR-FX1. Results are excellent and are a
significant quality jump above standard definition DVD's.

Using the procedures that I have described in this and previous
posts, one can now prepare on red laser DVD's high definition
programs lasting up to 90 minutes (and perhaps more, but I shall have
to experiment to see how far bit rate can be dropped without
compromising image quality) of exceptional quality and with good
playback on Blu-ray and HD-DVD stand alone players.

Tom

LSHorwitz wrote on 5/9/2007, 5:43 PM

Tom,
My thanks for your very competently written instructions and answers to my questions. I understand your reply fully, and you have indeed clarified the AVC / mpeg2 issue, the Roxio upgrade policy, the proper workflow, and several other key points.

I am assuming that these disks should play properly in some other BluRay players as well, in particular the Playstation 3, and perhaps somebody else here (or perhaps you, Tom) may have some info on this point.

We certainly are a bunch of pioneers with this new stuff. Ironically, I got my FX-1 when it was announced ***years ago*** and have been struggling to make distribution media for HDV for all of this ensuing period, using the Mac and FCP / DVD Studio Pro, and then an earlier version of Video Studio from Ulead released a little over a year ago. I had literally "given up" on BluRay since the players were a lot more money (at that time) and the authoring software was esentially beyond the means for mere amateur mortals like myself. Thankfully the situation has now improved, although the blue laser media and burners (as well as players) are still way too expensive for mass market consumption IMHO.

Now if we could just figure out how to do the h.264 HD DVDs on red laser............
(-;

Larry

Laurence wrote on 5/9/2007, 6:57 PM

Has anyone played back a red laser Blu-ray disc successfully on a Playstation 3? I can't seem to make it work and I wonder if maybe the PS3 is maybe less compatible with this format. I downloaded and installed a PS3 patch from the Roxio site, but it doesn't say anything about red laser HD format discs.

Malcolm D wrote on 5/26/2007, 12:21 PM

For those interested InterVideo & Memory-tech have Ulead DVD MovieFactory Studio Pro HD Edition soon to be released for HD-DVD authoring. I picked up a sample disc of its work at Media-Tech expo.
It's not on their website yet. No mention of it's Blue Ray capability.

LSHorwitz wrote on 5/26/2007, 12:49 PM

Malcolm,

Nearly a month ago, on April 28th, I posted to this very thread above the recommendation for users to try the Ulead software you are referring to, Indeed others have found as I suggested that this software does a superb job of producing HD DVDs from both HDV video and still camera material.

There seems to be some confusion in your message above regarding the software name and the release date.

Ulead (owned by Interviedo and then acquired by Corel) actually released this HD DVD / BluRay authoring software a couple months ago under the title: Ulead Movie Factory 6 Plus. A press release from last October 2006 called the software by the name you mentioned ("Ulead DVD MovieFactory Studio Pro HD Edition") but I believe that the actual release has already taken place in the version 6 software I state above.

It can be downloaded as a free trial from the Ulead web site or purchased there as well.

Ulead has previously offered HD DVD authoring and some BD authoring as well, going back over a year now.

Larry

Malcolm D wrote on 5/26/2007, 3:52 PM

Hello Larry
I am not sure this is the same product. I picked up the sample disc from the Memory-tech booth at Media-Tech ( the replication industry show in Long Beach) on May 16th just passed and typed the name from the sample disc.
It was titled :-
HDDVD-Video Advanced Contents
-Popup Menu-
SAMPLE DISC
Talking to the people on the booth they said they were developing and discussing the proposed features and user interface for this version.

bsuratt wrote on 5/27/2007, 7:46 AM

I have been trying to render HD-DVD in Vegas7.0e and use Ulead MF6+ to create a standard DVD with HD content. Can someone direct me to morte info as to exactly what steps it takes to do this.

Render as to what template specs?

Use MF6+ "Burn.Now" as a data file?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

LSHorwitz wrote on 5/27/2007, 9:28 AM

Malcolm,

I'm not totally sure, but I did want to point out that the name you previously mentioned was the Ulead name used in their October 2006 press release when they called it:

"Ulead DVD MovieFactory Studio Pro HD Edition" but then released MovieFactory 6 Plus with the HD features for authoring and burning both HD DVD and BluRay disks.

The biggest source of confusion to me is that Ulead has changed ownership ***TWICE***, once to Intervideo, then to Corel. Further confusing the issue is that Intervideo has already been offering similar software. It's hard to know whether they intend to merge 2 products and then call it a new name, continue to sell only one product, sell both products, etc.....

It would be extremely interesting to download the free trial Ulead MovieFactory 6 Plus from Ulead's webs site and then see if there are any noticeable differences you can find between it and the demo disk you picked up last week in Long Beach.

Larry

LSHorwitz wrote on 5/27/2007, 9:56 AM

bsuratt,

You can render it in Vegas 7.0e using the file type MainConcept MPEG2 .mpg with an HDV 1080i template (either NYSC or PAL depending upon where you live) and thus create an m2t file which ***almost*** can be imported and authored into MovieFactory 6 as an HD DVD on a red laser disk. I say "almost" since the .m2t file, a transport stream, must then be converted into a program stream / mpg file before Movie Factory 6 can import it. There are free programs like MPEG Streamclip which will make the .m2t into an .mpg for you.

The quality will suffer a bit since you have edited and rendered (in Vegas) versus directly importing the unedited file into MF6+. For this reason, I tend to use Ulead VideoStudio 11 Plus to do the whole process, edit, author, burn, without the qualitry loss, when going to HD DVD.

Maybe someday Sony will support HD DVD authoring in Vegas, DVD Architect, but somehow I doubt it........

Larry

bsuratt wrote on 6/4/2007, 8:35 PM

I just successfully finished my first HDV to HD-DVD on standard DVD disc per your method. I used Ulead VideoStudio11+ since MovieFactory 6+ will not accept m2t files... placed the m2t files on the timeline and chose to share/create disc. The HD-DVD played fine in the Toshiba HD-XA2 but I experienced a slight to moderate blurring (small jumps in the picture) during movement of the subjects or even on slow pans. This blurring was not apparent in playback of the original tape. Is there a setting I can change to correct this.

Have you experienced the same? Any suggestions?

Thanks

LSHorwitz wrote on 6/4/2007, 9:31 PM

The problem you describe will NOT occur if you chose the HD-DVD settings to avoid / prevent rendering to a different bitrate / format. The critical issue is to preserve ***ALL*** of the original HDV settings so that the HD-DVD contains the original content without change, using its' "SmartRender".

Spcifically, when you are in the step where you have already selected HD-DVD 15G format, click on the "Gear" icon to the right to modify mpeg2 settings. Create a custom disk template with the following attributes:

MPEG files

24 bits, 1440 x 1080, 29.97 fps
Upper Field First
(HDDVD-NTSC), 16:9
Video data rate: 25000 kbps
Audio data rate: 384 kbps
MPEG audio layer 2, 48 KHz, Stereo

Check the box which says something like "Do not re-render compliant mpeg files".

This will give you a disk which is identical to what your camcorder output looks like.

Hope this helps,

Larry

(All of this assumes BTW that you are using an NTSC format for American / Canadian / Japanese HDTV versus PAL found in Europe and elsewhere......)

LSHorwitz wrote on 6/4/2007, 9:33 PM

This also assumes, BTW, that your HDV content came directly from the camcorder capture into Ulead without going through Vegas first. If you have done some editing in Vegas, we should discuss this as a separate issue.

Laurence wrote on 6/10/2007, 6:18 PM

I bought one of the Toshiba HD DVD players today at Sams. I couldn't resist at $243.87 including 5 HD DVD movies! Anyway, I thought I could import a regular m2t file into an Ulead HD DVD project, but I get an error message each time I try. Cineform won't import either. Am I missing something or do I need to render a video to a specific format or variation of the m2t format?

LSHorwitz wrote on 6/10/2007, 7:34 PM

read the prior posts above to see how to handle .m2t files

Laurence wrote on 6/10/2007, 9:02 PM

OK, I got it. I converted the m2t mpeg transport file to a regular mpeg using my Womble MPEG VCR program. That worked.

I must say, having gone through a bunch of attempts at doing red laser Bluray discs and not getting any of them to play properly on my Playstation 3, this is a whole lot easier.

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