Vegas 11 Platinum renders corrupt m2v file for Blu

Jillian wrote on 7/15/2012, 9:21 PM
I am working with 17MB AVCHD video in Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11 with Win7/32bit, on an Intel Core i7 - 2600K machine and 8GB DDR3 2200 memory. I have three 1TB SATA III drives as C, D, and E, all about 25% full. I am set up with 4GB page file caches on each drive for a total of 12GB.

I completed a six part project and rendered them as Sony AVC m2ts video/audio files and imported them into a new project to render as a BluRay project. As recommended by Steve Grisetti in his book and as presented in the Make Disc menu, I burned this to m2v video and W64 audio.

My project is 1h 45m long. The W64 audio file is 1:45 long. BUT, the video m2v file is 1:27 long. Both files will play without problem or distortion in media player. The audio file will load into Movie Studio and DVDA. The video file will not load into either Movie Studio or DVDA and is clearly corrupted in some way (possibly the header information???).

Is this a known problem? I could not find any mention of it with search.

Is there a better codec to use for transfer to DVDA for BluRay? Movie Studio and Steve recommend m2v, but Sony Knowledge Base recommends MainConcept MPEG2.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 7/15/2012, 9:40 PM
Use the Sony AVC codec using the appropriate BluRay template to encode your video.
Render your video project only once, to .avc

Encoding AVCHD to AVCHD again to MPEG-2 (m2v) for BluRay doesn't seem to make much sense, unless I'm not seeing something in your post.

Wave audio is probably an unnecessary use of disc space. AC3 should sound just fine.
Jillian wrote on 7/17/2012, 3:51 PM
Hi Musicvid,

Thanks for the reply.

I did as you suggested and rendered with the Sony AVC codec and was able to successfully make the BluRay. It ended up looking very close to the original video in sharpness and color.

I tried the MC MPEG-2 codec in several different configurations and it always rendered my project at the same (incorrect) length... which almost seems as if it is actually rendering at 50i even though it indicates 60i. The file looks fine in Media Player, it just plays fast, and of course, DVDA would not accept the file.

An interesting aspect of all this is that I discovered creating the corrupt m2v file through the MAKE MOVIE command takes 1:56 to render. The same file through the RENDER AS command renders in 1:36 and that using the AVC (at 16MB) takes 2:48 minutes. I can understand why the AVC at a higher compression would take longer, but do not understand why the same MC MPEG-2 codec would take different times depending on how they were initiated. Oh well, another mystery from Vegas Movie Studio.

As to why I had to render twice, I know of no other way to edit 17 hours of AVCHD video to 1:45 min. other than to break it into manageable pieces. Since Vegas Movie Studio won't let you nest projects, and DVDA won't accept projects, only rendered files, I saw no other way than to break the video into sub-projects, render, then combine the six pieces into the overall video. I tried to render them into DVDA acceptable files, but I couldn't get DVDA to make a disc that would play six segments without a pause between the sections.

My experience is that any editing program starts to have heartburn when a complex project passes 20 minutes. So, you end up with a huge edited project which kills the program, or won't render properly.

Thanks again for your help.
musicvid10 wrote on 7/17/2012, 4:16 PM
Jillian,
With all due deference to your newness, you are overthinking a bit.

1. Your AVCHD source is AVC. Sony AVC is AVC. They are implementations of the same codec. Sony AVC offers various templates through File->Render As to render a compliant DVDA video file from which to directly prepare a BluRay.

2. MPEG-2, although also capable of rendering files for BluRay, is entirely irrelevant to you. There is no reason to convert to another codec when you already have the one you need. Doing so introduces even more unnecessary encoding losses, and is a waste of time, any errors notwithstanding.

3. Always render as few steps as is possible, preferably only one. Were there memory errors or something else preventing you from putting all your files in one project? If you need to render short segments to combine in a new project as a matter of convenience, I suggest using a lossless intermediate rather than doing a second lossy encode. That is a separate topic that you can research on your own.

4. Don't use "Make Movie". That's a PHD option ("Push Here, Dummy")
;?)