No, it does not appear that you can get Encore by itself.

Yes, you can author both SD and HD discs in the same project using Encore. It will also output the project as Flash for posting on a web server, complete with the project's menus.

Wow that sounds cool!

John, does Encore allow one to have a "resume" button in a DVD or Blu-ray menu? This is one thing that strangely doesn't seem to be possible in TMPGEnc Authoring Works (but can be done in DVDA).

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but isn't the max rate of HDV BD at 15MB or 18MB? And if you select a 25MB, wouldn't that recompress it to match the higher rate? Sorry, I may be getting this mixed up with AVCHD

Maybe you're thinking of AVCHD, which, on an AVCHD disc (on DVD media), is limited to 18 Mbit/s.

Or maybe you're thinking of the video stream of HDV 720p, which is about 18 Mbit/s.

HDV 1080i is 25 Mbit/s. HDV.

Not sure what you mean by "HDV BD". HDV 1080i isn't officially supported in the Blu-ray Disc spec, but I've sold a few home-burnt discs with it on and no complaints so far. I doubt a replication house would accept it though. Edit: This is incorrect. MPEG-2 at 1440x1080 is supported. See my post further down this thread.

> I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but isn't the max rate of HDV BD at 15MB or 18MB? And if you select a 25MB, wouldn't that recompress it to match the higher rate? Sorry, I may be getting this mixed up with AVCHD

I think that what is going on is that replicated Blu-ray discs have a higher rate than is usually allowed by BD-R burning software. This is much the same as DVD authoring where replicated DVDs typically use higher bitrate mpeg2 than home burned DVD+-Rs. I believe that the limits of 15MB or 18MB per second are imposed by the authoring software in order to avoid error problems that are likely in a worst case scenario where somebody is writing the most possible video to the lowest quality media.

I've been whinging about DVDA recompressing HDV for Blu-ray for what seems like forever. I too have found that TMPGEnc Authoring Works will do this just fine. How is it that an expensive 'pro' application can't do this, but a cheapo programme like TAW do it with ease??? The problem for me is that I never get an order just for a Blu-ray - it's always for a DVD and a BR of the same project. Easy to do in DVDA, a dog's dinner in TAW. If anyone has found a way round that, it'll be TAW all the way for me.

----

Just reportin' back:

I used the TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 trial version to successfully create and burn a BD-R BDMV Blu-ray disc with my new Pioneer BDR-205 burner sourced from raw HDV footage (that had been rendered, without re-compression, to one .m2v file and one .ac3 from Vegas). TAW didn't re-compress any of the footage.

I must say, TAW is very user friendly and suited my "archiving" needs perfectly. It generated seven menu pages showing a total of 21 chapters. BTW, Nick's script worked quite well for exporting/importing chapter points from Vegas. I had to tweak them slightly in TAW, but, as he said, the script saves a lot of time when hunting for the chapter points in TAW. One tip: TAW automatically creates a chapter point at the beginning (0:00:00) before any importing. When importing the chapter markers in to TAW, it will ask you if you want to delete the chapter point(s) already present. Click on "No", because TAW doesn't recognize the first chapter point (at 0:00:00) exported from Vegas.

I played the burned BD-R in my PS3 without a problem and also in another PC Blu-ray drive (non-burner) with the Cyberlink PowerDVD Blu-ray player software. All menus worked without a problem. On both systems. The footage looked great!

I will be purchasing this software. Thanks again to Nick for suggesting it!

Dan

I've been playing around with the TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 trial and I think I'm going to get it as well. What strikes me as incredibly cool is that after you put the video on your Blu-ray disk without recompressing, you can actually copy the video file back to your hard disk and use it again in a new Vegas project, still with no generation loss.

Yes, and in the creation of the Blu-ray file system, TMPGEnc "does something" to the video that keeps DVDA happy, and so DVDA won't recompress it either. Here's the procedure again...

1) Use TMPGenc Authoring Works to make a simple Blu-ray folder of the video (with smart-rendering)
2) Demux the biggest 0000X.m2ts file found in the BCMV/STREAM folder that has been created (use tsMuxeR etc. to do this)
3) Drop the 0000X.m2v into your DVDA project. It won't recompress.

I will be doing some Blu-ray projects this way because a) I want more than 2 subtitle tracks, and b) I like the "resume" buttons that DVDA allows. If any of you TMPGEnc users miss these 2 features like I do then please make a feature request with them. Cheers

I tried demuxing other HDV clips with Womble's MPEG VCR and they still didn't work in DVDA. So let me get this straight: you write a Bluray folder with TMPGEnc. You take the video clip out of the streams folder. You demux it with something like MPEG VCR. Then you use those separated audio and video files in DVDA and they will now work. Is that correct?

That's correct as I remember it Laurence. It was about a year ago and I only did it once. I only remembered doing this the other day when I found that I'd written the method in that old thread. I probably used TMPGEnc's demuxer to do it but not sure if it was from Xpress or TMPGEnc Plus 2.5. If your purchase decision is based on this then better test it for yourself and not take my word for it.

No idea what TMPGEnc does to make the file conform in DVDA. Something in the file header I suppose, or perhaps a "tidying up" of the GOPs???

If anyone tests this and can confirm or otherwise, please report the result back here.

Wouldn't it be great if Vegas could "do something" to keep DVDA happy in the first place. C'mon Sony...it can't be that hard can it???

>> Not sure what you mean by "HDV BD". HDV 1080i isn't officially supported in the Blu-ray Disc spec, but I've sold a few home-burnt discs with it on and no complaints so far. I doubt a replication house would accept it though. <<

For anyone interested in this, I've just discovered that the formats in the Wikipedia Blu-ray page are based on the March 2005 BD-ROM white paper. In the final specification (page 15) the restriction on MPEG-2 at 1440x1080 has been lifted.

I will change the Wikipedia page as I am sure it is confusing many people.

This is really frustrating knowing that other products can author BR disks without recompressing HDV, but DVD Architect can't.

Definitely need to get in a feature request for this.

You just have to except the FACT that DVDA sucks. Everyday I wish I could get away from that limited lame excuse for a program. The updates to it are so pathetic. There has been no REAL work done to it in a long time. It's as if know one really cares about DVDA. Vegas seems to be heading down the same path. The adobe ship is looking better and better. I've been using tmpg because sony has failed so bad in this area.

"In the final specification (page 15) the restriction on MPEG-2 at 1440x1080 has been lifted.

I will change the Wikipedia page as I am sure it is confusing many people"

If the Blu-ray spec has been expanded to include HDV, it does not necessarily mean that old Blu-ray players in accordance with the earlier spec will accept it. So there may be a compatibility problem with old Blu-ray players. What is an acceptable life for a Blu-ray player these days?

Well, the March 2005 document clearly states: "The Blu-ray Disc Format specifications have not yet been finalized...".

The next version of the document I can find is from April 2010, and does not mention a limitation on MPEG-2 at 1440x1080. So I can't be sure that the limitation was removed before the specification was finalized. However since DVDA and TMPGEnc Authoring Works both support it with no mention of compatibility, I get the feeling it was. Besides, I would be surprised if they would have expanded the specification to include HDV, knowing that it would cause an incompatibility with older players.

Any idea how I could find out for sure?

[B]"Yes, and in the creation of the Blu-ray file system, TMPGEnc "does something" to the video that keeps DVDA happy, and so DVDA won't recompress it either. Here's the procedure again...

1) Use TMPGenc Authoring Works to make a simple Blu-ray folder of the video (with smart-rendering)
2) Demux the biggest 0000X.m2ts file found in the BCMV/STREAM folder that has been created (use MPEG tools in TMPGenc Plus or TMPGEnc Xpress or VideoRedo etc. to do this)
3) Drop the 0000X.m2v into your DVDA project. It won't recompress."[/B]

Just tried this using TMPGEnc plus 2.5 DVDA does seem happy to accept it without further compression....but the size compared to the original is much smaller. Are you sure TAW4 isn't recompressing it? Original file is 130meg. The file after TAW4 had written it to a BDMV folder is 50.4meg. I appreciate that it now has no audio attached, but would that really make such a difference?

Mediainfo will tell you the bit rates for the video and audio. What are the video bit rates before and after passing through TMPEGEnc?

It's fine after TAW4, but I'm obviously doing something wrong when I pass it through Tplus 2.5 as the bit rate is way down.

Edit: The problem seems to be that Tplus 2.5 won't accept a CBR of any higher than 8000 - my original file is 25000.