HD video on DVD or BD Blue Ray questions

Mr_Toys wrote on 5/20/2011, 8:24 AM
This is my first post, but I've been reading this forum for about a year now, mainly to understand the issues and avoid problems when I start editing HD.

Up till now, I've been a VMS 9 user and editing my Standard Def mini DV. Recently I bought my first HD camera and realized that to make HD DVDs I needed to upgrade to VMS 10.

I thought some background before my questions might be helpful, and I'll highlight my questions below.

BACKGROUND: My HD camera is a Sony CX 550V, and I installed VMS HD Platinum production Suite along with DVDA 5.0 this week. For playback of the discs, I have a PS/3 and a Sony Blue Ray player model BCP-S360.

The video I shoot is mainly family, events and travel. I want to be able to distribute these to friends and family. Since I"m now entering the HD world, If I edit a long video, I want to burn it to a Blue Ray disc for my use and also to send to others that have a BD player. For those that don't have a BD player, I want to burn it to an SD DVD. And for shorter videos, I would like to burn by HD to a regular DVD. I would like to do all this without having to re-edit my timeline, but knowing I have to render in these different formats.

ACTIONS TO DATE:
I like to do things one step at a time. My first action was to use the PMB software that came with the camera. It allows one to select AVCHD clips from the camera and burn them to a regular DVD, as either HD or SD. I did both as a test and they work fine on both players. The main downside, is as far as I can tell, that software doesn't allow any editing of the clips.

My next step, knowing that I could add AVCHD clips to PMB, was to use VMS 10 to edit a short video of 3 minutes, using clips from teh camera and add a few titles, and a few dissolves. This remains as my main test video for now. I first rendered it as AVCHD, which took 18 minutes for a 3 minute clip, and then used PMB to select that render and burn it to a DVD. That too worked fine, a way to edit and burn using PMB, which is very easy and works, but way too long to render.

Next, taking advice I've read on this forum, I decided to not select Make Movie, as some folks indicated problems with slow and jerky video and audio, so I took the advice to render the video and audio separately. I rendered the video using MainConcepts MPEG-2 at 1920 x1080- 60i and 25mbs and then rendered the audio using Sony Wav64 and specifying 48K PCM. Then I started DVD achitect but I was not able to correctly add the video and audio. I used INSERT in DVDA to first select my video file, and then tried that again to select the audio file. It created two separate buttons and each would only play video or audio respectively. I should haven mentioned that I started the DVDA project by stating it was a Blue Ray disc project.

QUESTION 1: If in fact this is the preferred way to make a HD disc, how do you create these separate files and bring them into DVDA so it knows that are related as a video and audio pair. I can't seem to figure that one out.

(not knowing how long a post can be, I will now start a separate entry to continue my questions.)

Comments

Mr_Toys wrote on 5/20/2011, 8:39 AM
to continue what I've done, after not succeeding with the above, I used advice from another post that suggested you just select Make Movie, state its for a Blue Ray disc and it will take care of rendering and coordinating the files with DVDA. That is what I did and it seemed to be working just fine. It rendered the files and when I then selected for VMS to start DVDA, all went well and burned the DVD. Rendering for this and the above took about 4 minutes for the 3 minute video, which is far better than rendering the time line to AVCHD.

I then tried playing the video on my Blue Ray player, and found it started with a menu, then played but was jerky, with both video and audio. Basically it seemed like it would stop to "catch" up and got real bad towards the end. Then I played the same disc on my PS3 and it played fine, with no stopping or jerky action. But, on the PS3, the disc showed up as a data disc and I had to select the folder that said "stream" to get it started, upon which it displayed the menu briefly and then played the video, with no selection of the menu.

QUESTION 2: Although this worked on the PS3, it doesn't work on my BD player and it didn't seem to be a Blue Ray format disc. I thought from posts that even though you burn to a regular DVD, it will be burned with the files to make it look like a Blue Ray disc. This is a main concern because when I do install a BD burner on my computer, I don't want to ruin a whole lot of expensive Blue Ray discs trying to learn how to burn them correctly. That is why I thought I could first start with experimenting with regular DVDs burned as HD. Would a real Blue Ray disc run correctly on my BD player if I did the "make Movie approch, or do I have to render to MainConcepts and Sony Wav for separate video and audio files to get proper results? I would hope that sharing a Blue Ray disc with others would work ok if they had a Blue Ray player, as I think I understand that HD on a DVD might not work on other BD players.

QUESTION3: Finally, since I can use my USB port on my PS3 to attach a portable hard drive and I have found it can play AVCHD files just fine, is there a rendered video format other than AVCHD, that I could use to put my finished HD video on the drive for playback on my PS3. It seems that rendering to MainConcepts Blue Ray Mpeg-2 would only have the video on it and no audio, thus my question, what can I render my HD video that would play in HD with sound off a portable hard drive on the PS3.

I thank you all in advance for any help and suggestions you can offer, plus I thank you for all the help you have given me over the past year, by reading all this valuable information you have posted. I picked the handle Mr_Toys, because that is a good description of me liking toys like this, and my wife would be the first to agree.

knockatoone wrote on 6/7/2011, 6:04 AM
Mt Toys - You need to work on that brevity thing -most read quickly thru a post and reply if they have a thought but long runs as you are doing will get passsed over .K

I have never had a lot of luck using the send to DVDAch at the end of a render in VMS - what it is supposed to do is IF both the rendered video and audio files are in EXACTLY the same location then they sould be brought into DVDArch together. What I do is decline the offer at the end of VMS and just open DVDArch-do a "File/New Project" and simply drag both the files to the time line in DVD Arch ... there are other ways to "Open" these file in DVDArch but dragging them yourself gives confidence they are the right files in the right place.... = CONTROL = :-)
knockatoone wrote on 6/7/2011, 6:23 AM
Question #2. To burn a BD video on to a DVD you have only one concern -and that is size fo the project vs size of the disc... The lower right corner of the time line window in DVDArch shows the size of the project as it sits on the time line - whcih needs to be less the 4.7 GB of your regular DVD . In DVD Arch - look into Files/Optimize Disc to display what you have everything set to and is a good place to ensure your project settings are straight and it is not too big for the disc size.....It gives you a place to set the disc size. Other wise your System could care less whether you stick in a DVD or BD ...
One last thought - You can squeeze "more" project on to a disc but will loose some quality (bit rate will be reduced) - by useing the "fit to disc" feature
Side note - Steve Grisetti - one of the major guru's on this site has done a couple of excellent Guide books - one on DVD Arch 5 and one oh VMS10 that you may want to get -available on Amazon or from "Muvipix.com". He also does guides for a lot of the Adobe software.( I have no piece of that action but find them a great help in getting things doine)
knockatoone wrote on 6/7/2011, 6:38 AM
Question 3 - sorry I do not have a PS3. I am surprised your bluyray player will not play these discs - almost all built in the last few year play AVCHD - all by Sony will (it is there format). While I do not know what you PS3 will play (it's user manual should tell you) - but in setting up your project properties in VMS 10 you have a large selection of formats too choose from for rendering and also have a selction in DVDArch if you do not take the shake and bake route of letting the software choos all for yoiu . Some of these work well together thru out the process from source to Disc but others just do not play well togehter - lot of possable combinations and opportunities for probelms -there is a lot of info in ths forum and in the DVDArch forum on which formats work best . Good luck, K
Remember "I do not undersand all I know about this subject !!