Can't get smooth playback with PAL 24fps Full HD

Juha A wrote on 12/9/2011, 3:51 AM
Can' t get smooth playback on PAL progressive footage. Cams: Canon hf-s21, hf200 and hg20. Software: Vegas pro 11 build 425. Rendered in mainconcept avc
Full HD PAL and avg. 23,5 Mbit/s variable bit rate.

Tested all possible settings with DVDA Pro5.2. I tested several different video bit rate settings and results are not good for 24fps. Burned several discs and tested them with three different BD player which are average quality players.

Discs burned with Vegas and latest Imgburn.

Interlaced settings work (24 hours rendering, 6core 16GB ram, win7 64bit AMD PC), but quality is not the same and footage is progressive.

I'm pretty sure 720p settings will work with 18Mbit/s bit rate. As it did work already two years back with similar cam footages.

Don' t say I need latest, top quality BD player with golden cables etc. Any suggestions?

Edit: forgot to say nothing else except Vegas and DVDA is installed with this PC. Don't wanna mess up with corrupted codecs or dll's.

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 12/9/2011, 10:48 AM
Please describe what is not "smooth playback."
Is it a regular stutter, stalling, dropouts, what?

PAL frame rate is 25fps. You said 24. Which is it?
Juha A wrote on 12/9/2011, 12:31 PM
DVDA will not allow in PAL Full HD progressive 25fps only 24fps. And only choice for 25fps in Full HD is interlaced. I was a kind of surprised for the lack of choices.

The playback is kind of stalling. Playback stops for a fraction of second maybe in ten seconds intervals. Picture quality is anyway great. I get the same playback results using mpc on PC.

PC have been now rendering 21 hours interlaced 25 fps version and it takes still at least another hour more. I did several tests and this will work. It' s a bit shame if I have to loose some quality.

edit: of course for PAL progressive there is also 23.976 fps to choose from
Former user wrote on 12/9/2011, 1:50 PM
Wouldn't you use the 50.000 progressive in DVDA?

Dave T2
Juha A wrote on 12/9/2011, 2:44 PM
When you choose from properties: Blu Ray disc, Full HD resolution and for video format for avc you get exactly four different option for frame rate: 23.976, 24.000 for progressive and 25.000, 29.970 for interlaced frame rate. Not much options.

And nicely interlaced image turned out to be too big. Fit to disc was for bit rate 18.041 and I used exactly 18.000 settings.
Former user wrote on 12/9/2011, 3:05 PM
So you are talking about 1080P HD, not 720P?

Bluray does not support 1080p at 25fps, only 24 so this is not a limitation of DVDA, it is a Bluray limitation.

Dave T2
Juha A wrote on 12/9/2011, 3:17 PM
Yep, I' ve done 720p discs. This was more to clear situation for musicvids question above. I know it have to be 24fps or 23.976. I' m currently rendering a test for 23.976 with 17.000 bit rate.

Edit: I thought resolution was clear in a topic name Full HD not 720p.
Former user wrote on 12/9/2011, 3:33 PM
Sorry, I misunderstood.

usually skipping while playing a disk is caused by a bad burn, a bad disk or burning at too high of a speed.

Have you had successful burns with this stock of disk before?
Have you tried using another program to burn an ISO of the bluray?

Dave T2
Juha A wrote on 12/9/2011, 3:44 PM
I appreciate all the help, thanks.

I use verbatim media. Unfortunately burner is LG's model, but it is not much used. And burner has been ok as interlaced Full HD discs are ok, but lacking quality. I have test burned eight BD's and I use 2 BD-RE discs too. Burning softwares: nero, vegas and imgburn all has done succesfull results.

Burning speed has been 1x or 2x.

I was more thinking of maybe DVDA does something unusual with PAL footage 1080p rendering. I might test burn with NTSC footage only. Oh' boy, tests after tests.
musicvid10 wrote on 12/9/2011, 7:19 PM
"DVDA will not allow in PAL Full HD progressive 25fps only 24fps."

You are still confused. 24fps is not a PAL frame rate, it is IVTC (cinema). And as Dave pointed out, 25p is not supported by the BluRay spec (yet). And if you convert 25fps PAL to 24 IVTC, you will lose one out of every 25 frames, which will cause stutter. It's just plain math.

I believe you need to render to 50i in Vegas FIRST, then all should be good. Plenty of discussion on these forums if you search.
DVD Architect is not a primary transcoding engine, but an authoring tool for already-compliant streams. HTH
https://www.custcenter.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/84/
Juha A wrote on 12/10/2011, 4:13 AM
Yep, and I' m STILL trying to make progressive not INTERLACED 1080p FULL HD Blu Ray disc. You are suggesting to convert original progressive footage to interlaced to get best possible results making progressivescan AVC 1080p Full HD Blu Ray Disc with DVDA?

Well I have tested several Vegas settings for progressive and not so good results with DVDA.

I will make a small test for rendering interlaced in vegas and trying to make both progressive and interlaced BDs.

My point here is: I' m NOT interested in dropping down quality and make interlaced disc. I'm interested in getting smooth playback with 24fps progressive scan 1080p footage.

A couple of years back Vegas had some serious bugs with PAL progressive 1080p Full HD footage. Sony creative team was not willing to do anything about it. That's why I keep in mind my footage is PAL progressive 1080p Full HD.

Edit: I read your answer again. Wow, I never thought it would be just 25fps > 24fps causing it. One of my camera shoots 24fps 1080p. Gotta make some tests with that. Basically it looks like I have to make an interlaced disc. Two other cameras will only shoot 25fps progressive. I know what are the limitations now. I' m just surprised why I did not find similar issues with anybody else when searching forums. Thanks for your help musicvid.
musicvid10 wrote on 12/10/2011, 7:22 AM
"Yep, and I' m STILL trying to make progressive not INTERLACED 1080p FULL HD Blu Ray disc. You are suggesting to convert original progressive footage to interlaced to get best possible results making progressivescan AVC 1080p Full HD Blu Ray Disc with DVDA? My point here is: I' m NOT interested in dropping down quality and make interlaced disc.".

You've made your point, but again you seem to have missed mine completely. So rather than engage in a CAPS LOCK contest with you, I'll defer to someone who has more experience and let it go at that:[quote laurence]
[/quote]Note that laurence does not suggest lowering the frame rate to 24p. Oh, also you should probably be using the BluRay compliant templates in Sony AVC, rather than trying to roll your own in MainConcept. "Might" a good idea to disable resampling too.

Best of luck.
;?)

Juha A wrote on 12/10/2011, 7:20 PM
Sorry, it's been frustrating doing days of rendering tests when 720p 50i Blu Ray disc was rather easy to make even couple years back.

I did render ( in vegas) 24fps 10 minutes clips and then copied back video files from DVDA made and burned disc. Then I moved 25fps, 24fps and this DVDA videofiles on vegas time line for comparisons.

One cam footage was exactly the same. The other cams were not that good. But thats good enough for me. Now I have to do all rendering again and I' m probably going to buy a fast GPU compatible graphic card.

When I did 720p 50i discs earlier 2009, I had some playback problems with more than 18Mbit/s bit rate and 25fps interlaced was not good enough.

Now that things are clear, I feel a bit stupid for not going for this option right away. Guess I was lazy and hoping a bit more from DVDA. I' m gonna do it in 50i 1080p too just for sure.

Thanks for all the help. Juha

Edit: I haven' t got earlier that good results with sony avc 1080p. That's why I have used main concept. Gotta test Sony avc again with new footage.
musicvid10 wrote on 12/10/2011, 8:22 PM
"when 720p 50i Blu Ray disc was rather easy to make" ?
"When I did 720p 50i discs earlier 2009, I had some playback problems with more than 18Mbit/s bit rate and 25fps interlaced was not good enough." ?
"I'm gonna do it in 50i 1080p too just for sure." ?

OK, I get it now. Welcome to the forums.
;?)
Juha A wrote on 12/11/2011, 5:12 AM
quote: "Note that laurence does not suggest lowering the frame rate to 24p. Oh, also you should probably be using the BluRay compliant templates in Sony AVC, rather than trying to roll your own in MainConcept. "Might" a good idea to disable resampling too."

The interlaced 25fps 1080p BD which I made earlier was ok and I' m now rendering files for 24fps 1080p BD.

Sony AVC did not work. No audio and looks like many other users share that same problem with the latest build Vegas Pro 11. I' m not gonna render separate audio and video file.

Smart resample makes much better results for me.

So I' m using MainConcept for now. I' m satisfied with this settings.

Just for information.