I hear what your'e saying... the only problem is that most of my files are raw, unedited footage. My hard drive will be full in no time. I'd like to just render my edited projects into the highest possible quality and discard the original footage for the sake of space.

> "I'd like to just render my edited projects into the highest possible quality and discard the original footage for the sake of space."

This is a really bad idea that you will come to regret later. Do yourself a favor, save up $89, buy a 1TB external USB drive, and start saving all of your original footage to that external drive so that you can go back and edit it later or repurpose it in another project or whatever. You never know when something that wasn't important today becomes important tomorrow. Hard drives are cheap. Reducing video quality to save hard drive space is a bad compromise.

If you still only want to save your final project, save it in the same format as the source. So if your source is 1920x1080 AVCHD, save your final project to the same format. Then you can make as many copies from this master as you need (i.e., for DVD, Blu-ray, YouTube, etc.)

~jr

I tend to leave the family video camera running on a tripod at times and lots of that footage is just not something I am going to want to look at in 5 years. I'd really just like to edit 4 hours worth of footage down to the 40 minutes I want to keep. That 40 minutes worth of footage is something I'd like to keep forever as a single, clean, high quality file that I can watch on my computer or possibly burn at a later date.

I understand that I could save it as an ISO file which is just the BluRay disc image, right? But, I can't really watch that later on as an ISO file, can I ?

Now, back to the original question.... when I choose what I think is the highest quality output for the movie footage I have, I don't get any sound. The output that I am choosing is "Blu-Ray 1920x1080-24p, 16 Mbps video stream". When I go into that selection and look at the audio tab, it's greyed-out and I cannot choose to turn it on.

What are my other options?

The Blu-ray templates are created without audio. Look at the tab System where the Save as separate elementary streams is selected.
You can, however, un-select it, and then add the audio as you wish.

16 Mbps is a very low bit rate giving you a quality for storing your media that you will not want to watch as soon as your flat screen is larger than 32".

You can tweak one of the Blu-ray to go much higher - for the time being I use some 32 Mbps average which gives burst speeds up to some 36 Mbps - which is the limit for my Dune network player - but that quality is quite enjoyable.

16 Mbps just seemed to have come up as the one most suited to my project settings. I am at work now so will look at my project settings when I get home. I'll also look at the tab you've suggested.

So I should be shooting for 32 to 36 Mbps as my bare minumum then?

Yes and no... In a few years when we all have our walls covered with 200++" oled "screens" then we will regret not having our dearest video-memories in as good a quality as possible.

I am willing to render my output to the largest, highest quality file possible. I don't care about space in that regard. I just want to be able to toss out the old raw footage that's really starting to pile up. If I should be trying to get 60Mbps as a final file, I will try to see if Movie Studio will let me do that.

I am just new at this and want to make sure that the projects I save now aren't in some terribly degraded form and that I am not making bad choices right from the start. Thanks a ton for your input.

Use a trimmer, like VideoRedo h264 or TS-Doctor.

Then you can save your trimmed files in their original quality and bitrate and kick yourself later, as JR pointed out.

There are some visually lossless intermediates, but the files will be huger than your untrimmed source.

You seem to be vacillating a bit between re-compressed bitrate and preserving original quality. You can't have both.

I too would like to know where you can change one of the Blu Ray templates to be 32-36 Mbps. The highest I can get from the dropdown for 1920x1080 24p is 21,999,616.

I just checked and my Panasonic HDC-TM700 creates its video files with the following characteristics :

Type of file : AVCHD Video (.m2ts)
1920x1080
Data Rate : 24438 kbps
Total Bit Rate : 24694 kbps
Frame Rate : 59 frames/second

The Movie Studio software still seems to want to restrict me to "Blu-Ray 1920x1080-24p, 16 Mbps video stream" as the highest possible output setting?

@Boogersa: Select the Blu-ray standard template and then click the Customize Template button....

Three posts or so above - is the answer to OP's original inquiry. Musicvid is right on with his answer, concerns, etc. The additional suggestions and posts in this thread about saving or modifying Blu-ray video streams ARE NOT the answer.

The additional suggestions and posts in this thread ... ... ARE NOT the answer."

Does that include your post too?

What I do is when I edited the video I rinder the file to match the settings that came of the camera. Then if I going to upload to youtube or vimeo I re-render the project with a lower bit rate for them. Then I delete the raw footage and move my edited files over to a 2 TB USB drive. Thats what I do.

Thanks Indy, I was kind of leaning that way to I'm just pretty new at this. I totally understand the wanting to archive everything in its most pristine format but the reality is that I will not be going back to the video that's been trimmed out of my final projects. It's going to be a bit of a chore to edit everything I have saved from the past two years as it is. I am not going to want to go back to the raw footage later, I am just going to want to view the final product.

So to reiterate, the majority of my videos were taken with my Panasonic HDC-TM700 which creates its video files with the following characteristics :

Type of file : AVCHD Video (.m2ts)
1920x1080
Data Rate : 24438 kbps
Total Bit Rate : 24694 kbps
Frame Rate : 59 frames/second

I was just able to go in and customize an AVC template. I've adjusted it to :

Video Format : AVCHD
Frame Size : High definition (1920x1080)
Frame Rate : 59.940 (Double NTSC)
Bit Rate (bps) : 25,999,360

What do you think of this? It also includes audio. I haven't tried rendering anything yet...

Hmmm I tried that template and it ended up giving me 15.6 Mbps with a 59 fps frame rate.

I'm sure you know by now that if you render your AVCHD in Vegas, you are not going to retain "highest quality." Only a remuxer (I suggested a couple) can do that, as Vegas does not smart render AVCHD.

It still seems you are fundamentally confused about your stated purpose. Highest Quality or Recompression.

Pick one and go with it.

No, it's starting to sink in. I've tried a few of the various templates and can see the differences in quality. I do understand what you're saying about just editing (remuxer) the files in their virgin format. However, that would mean that there's no value in even owning the Sony software though, right? I should just chop up my original files and view the pieces in their native state without any fades or titles etc.

My goal was to be take all of my family footage I've been accumulating over the past two years and turn it into something I can watch on BluRay and can save for the long term. As I've stated before, it's of next to no value to me to have 400 folders worth of gigs and gigs of raw, unedited video. I'll just never wade through it once I finally find a way to create a satisfactory compromise between quality and convenience. I haven't found that yet though. Given my frame and bit rates of the originals, I can't find anything so far.

I hope you don't think I am trying to argue with you.... I am just trying to learn this on the fly and do appreciate your input.

What I believe Musicvid is recommending is that you chop up your source video with a remuxer, saving the parts you wish to retain as an archive. This material can then be edited with Vegas to provide whatever effects, titles, etc. you want. The advantage is that you will still have pristine source material, without unwanted content, that you can always re-edit.

You might want to do this because of improved software, change of circumstances or whatever, but you'll be able to generate quality at least as good as you first edit.

Jay204: 400 folders full of gigs and gigs...

If you are a family person that is invaluable.
I started recording video some 20 years ago and in the beginning I also just deleted the tapes etc when the family had seen them a couple of times.

For the last 15 years I have kept everything, however, and that stuff is pure gold when trying to tell a story in a time-perspective - recently I made 2 x 20 minutes videos showing the development of 2 grandchildren from birth to before the confirmation (at 14 years here).
All the old dusty raw recordings became invaluable for finding clips to tell that stories.

Imagine yourself in 15 years wanting to tell the story of - whatever - and then thinking some 15 years back to today remembering when you deleted some 400 folders full of pure gold :- )

Having dealt with old recordings I also have cursed quite a few times that I did record in a not too god quality in order to save some space.... and in 15 years when we all have the 200++" oled tapestry on the walls one will repent not having stored the "nuggets" in the best quality achievable.

Just my 0.02 USD

"My goal was to ... turn it into something I can watch on BluRay and can save for the long term."

I don't think you're arguing.
What wasn't clear until just now is what you want to archive. It's not the trimmed source material as I thought, but the edited, finished movie, right?

So, now that we know, there is another, easier way to "smart render" your BluRay movie, so you can watch it anytime without a special hardware or software player and save it forever..

Start by authoring and preparing a BluRay movie in Vegas/DVDA. As a beginner, you may have to jump through a few learning hoops. But there is a ton of support around here and online.

Download a free program called MakeMKV. You can have chapters, multiple audio tracks if you wish, even subtitles. The media itself is a bit-for-bit copy of your finished BluRay (except that menu support is still weak). You can mux your MKV file directly from your finished BluRay folder, ISO image, or disc. Best thing, there's no recompression needed and MKV will play on just about any modern computer, media center, and even some portable devices.

In short, MKV is just a handy transparent container for your BluRays. Think salad saver.
You can even extract the original BluRay video and audio from an MKV file if you want to use it for something else.

Mission accomplished.

Well, thanks to all your help I now have a better understanding of how to handle my my family videos. My new plan is :

1. Buy VideoRedo TVSuite H.264 and pre-edit my footage before even touching Movie Studio. This way I can archive the useful stuff I want to keep in its original format. I'd have to do all of this trimming in Movie Studio anyways so I guess I'll do it with VideoRedo. It's only another $100 worth of software I suppose.

2. Create my home movies in Movie Studio and burn them to BluRay, which was why I bought Movie Studio in the first place.

3 Add the .ISO BluRay files to my archive in case I want to reburn another copy later and no longer have a working version of Movie Studio.

4. Find an acceptable template to render these videos for viewing on my computer and long term storage as well. Admittedly, this won't be as high a quality as the original files.