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In my experience, for video editing and disc burning, it is rare for one program to do all tasks well, or to be free of any serious bugs. From my prior work with DV files, I found PE3 the most stable program for video editing, and the MPEG-2 files produced by the MainConcept encoder (included with PE3) were rather good. However, PE3 DVD authoring was completely unacceptable for my needs. So, I used Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 for burning DVDs. If I needed to fit two hours of video on a DVD, the MPEG-2 files generated from PE3 were far superior to those generated by DMF. For less than an hour and a half of video, DMF was usually fine. I suspect the same MPEG encoder is used for both DMF and VS, so that is why the output doesn't look very good when trying to fit two hours of video on a Blu-Ray disc, especially with only single-pass VBR encoding available. (CBR does work too, but produces some horrible artifacts in my tests.)

Anyway, my thought now is to see about converting my AVCHD files into HDV, editing and rendering to MPEG-2 in PE3, and then importing and burning the files in VS. Unfortunately, I haven't found an inexpensive program suitable for converting AVCHD to HDV where I can download a fully-functional trial. A $450 program with a demo that limits me to one three-minute clip isn't cost-effective, nor is it especially convenient for testing. But, I haven't had enough time to look into this in enough depth yet. Does anyone know of a fully-functional demo I can try out (that has a low license fee), or better yet, a freeware program suitable to convert AVCHD to HDV?

Also, it is rumored that Adobe will be releasing a patch or update for Premiere Pro CS3 and Elements 4 to allow AVCHD import "any time now," but as of yet it is still vaporware. If it does come out, then maybe I'll get PE5, where they might have some of the bugs worked out.

Of course I'll report back if/when new things develop regarding burning Blu-Ray discs. And, as always, thanks for any help and feedback.

That's curious about the MainConcept codec in PE being better that the one in VS/MF. I believe VS and MF actually use a MainConcept codec under licence!

As for a conversion program, Magix Movie Edit Pro 14 Plus converts directly from AVCHD to what appears to be HDV format. The program has a free trial version.

However, a couple of observations. First, you have to be patient. The program looks at though it cannot recognise AVCHD, but it can. It just takes time before it will even acknowledge the existence of the file you are trying to open in it, and the longer the file, then it takes very much longer to open. And when it opens, it says it is not in a format which is easily edited -- do you want to convert it to such a format. You click yes, and again, after an age, a new file is created. It retains the format of the AVCHD (I was using video from a Panasonic S9 camera so it is 1920 x 1080). It uses mpeg layer 2 audio at 224 kbps (where the original IIRC was 384 kbps).

But most curious of all, while the original AVCHD is Upper Field First, the converted file is shown as Lower Field First. Yet when played, shows none of the usual artifacts of getting the field order wrong!

Sony Movie Studio Platinum also has a trial version, and it is supposed to be able to handle AVCHD. But I am afraid I was never able to find it in the version I downloaded...

bm707,
I just got finished looking at most of the 2.5 hour Blu-Ray Disc video. I had to use Cyberlink's trial version, to let me burn the BR folder, made with Uleads' Movie Wizard. I used SV8 to make the mt2. video; I like the way it lets me fade into one scene, to another without adding time to the rendering, It's hard to use at first, but all you have to do, is over-lap the 2 video clips in the timeline, and it auto-fades the two. I had a problem, with my camcorders' white balance changing, and I really didn't notice, at night, in the stadium. Uleads' auto white balance, worked great for this, but Sony's was manual, and usable also.
When I made the mt2 file; settings were the, Highest quality Blu-ray (It has no manual rate adjustments) just 3 or 4 fixed settings. The resulting video file was around 28000 BPS, maybe less. But the quality was equal to my SD disc, minus the 5.1 surround sound. (The 5.1 sound is converted, into a seperate AC3 file) only usable by Sony. But SV8, only lets you make a, menuless Blu-Ray disc. The Sony DVD architech, won't make Blu-Ray anything. When I used Movie Wizard, I had to lower the Blu-Ray bitrate to 20000, to fit the 2.5 hours, on the BR disc. Anything I didn't like about the Video, was from the camera (1st gen AVCHD) itself. Speaking of 2 hour DVD videos, SV8; produced the best quality I've seen so far, and using single pass, VBR. Try their trial version. I had programs, that wouldn't let me put a 2 hour DVD on it. Right now all S11+ is doing for me, is making my BR menus (Movie Wizard), adjust the final bitrate to fit the disc, and make the Blu-Ray folders. It doesn't even let me burn the folders. I don't think, I even like how the HD Videos look, if I edit them with Ulead Editor; I have to expierment again. I'll probaly have to buy the Cyberlink, unless Ulead gets it act together.

Can I suggest that you stick to one thread
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... 360#159360

You are leaking bits out in that thread and other bits out in this thread.
Clearly you have a problem where your attempts at burning a Blue Ray disc are not completing the task. You need to explore why you are having that problem. It is impossible for any of use here to offer you advice if you do not put ALL of the facts clearly in ONE thread rather than us having to try and extract bits from one thread and other bits from another thread.

Ken,

I think it makes sense to post my replies in this thread for continuity, since it contains all of the topics I have discussed so far regarding this issue. If you would like for me to post in the other thread, or in a new thread, please say so, and accept my apologies in advance.

In any case, thanks for all of your help and support. I am looking into Magix Movie Edit Pro per your suggestion, as well as Elecard Converter Studio and other conversion programs. I probably won't have time to test them all for a few days, but I will post an update when I have further info.

Regarding MPEG-2 encoding, I know that PE3 uses the MainConcept encoder, since it requires separate activation directly through MainConcept. If VS and DMF use MainConcept as well, then it must be configured with different settings, or perhaps it is a different/older version. Encoding the same video in PE3 with two-pass VBR takes about twice as long as rendering in DMF, and in my experience, produces much better results at lower bit rates (clear video down to about 4000 kbps in most cases, where DMF might require 5500 kbps to achieve the same video quality.)

Thanks again.

It's been a while since I've posted, and unfortunately no news is not good news. However, I may have figured out the crux of the problem, and it appears to be a bug in the MPEG-2 encoder in VS.

As I suspected earlier, temporary files created while trying to encode a disc are saved, so I was able to locate the MPEG video file generated by VS that could not be multiplexed. Unfortunately there was no audio file to go along with it, but that was resolved by choosing the "Normalize Audio" option while exporting, so both an audio and video file were created while attempting to burn a disc. I then tried several standalone MPEG multiplexers using those video and audio files, but all failed. Only one gave an error message, which stated that there were too many dropped frames to continue.

I also tried converting the original AVCHD video to an uncompressed AVI for testing purposes. That wouldn't be practical for production, as the video files are unacceptably large. However, I created a 22 minute clip that was about 110 GB, imported it into PE3, and it failed MPEG-2 encoding as well, as soon as it started the second pass. I'm not sure if it's the same issue, but certainly my problem was not solved.

I have tried several other options without success, and more recently, installed a trial version of Nero 8 Ultra. Unfortunately, the trial is extremely limited, and will not even import AVCHD without purchasing a license, and it will not export to a Blu-Ray disc without purchasing an additional license. (So much for a useful trial.) So, I simply put the MPEG-2 video and audio files generated by VS onto the Nero timeline to see if Nero could multiplex them, and lo and behold, found that they were radically different in length. As it turns out, my NTSC 60i (reported as 29.97 fps) video had been mangled into 25 fps video during encoding. That is why so many frames were lost and multiplexing was not possible. It seems that VBR two-pass in VS somehow recodes the video to 25 fps regardless of what the original video source is. Obviously this seems like a bug, and I suspect it is only a problem for those of us with NTSC 29.97 fps video. In fact, it is also possible that there is something specific to the Canon implementation of AVCHD 60i that is causing the problem; for all I know, Sony or Panasonic AVCHD might not have a problem. Unfortunately, I have no other AVCHD video source, and no choice other than 29.97 fps AVCHD, to try this with.

So, to make a long story short, I do not know if this issue is repeatable by anyone other than me, but it would be great if other people with 60i/29.97 fps AVCHD video could try. All you really need is a suitably long clip and to use the Blu-Ray burning module. Just select the "create Blu-Ray folders" option instead of burning a disc. Whether it completes successfully or fails, it will help to narrow the scope of the problem. Again, it is conceivable that there is something peculiar to my installation. If the problem can be replicated by someone else here, then it could provide a case for Ulead/Corel to do the test and replicate the problem as well. Ken, what do you think the odds are of that, and of getting a bug fix if they can replicate the problem? If nothing else, I certainly do not want to see this issue carried forth into the next version of VS, if it is a repeatable problem. Thanks in advance for any help.

Thanks for your perseverance. Unfortunately, I live in a PAL country so cannot experiment myself. I have to say my kneejerk reaction would be to doubt such a bug exists -- though I don't rule anything out. But it is strange that no one else seems to have reported similar behaviour. And for it to be classed as a bug it would have to be not only widespread, but also capable of being replicated by others, including Corel as you clearly realise. And if they can't replicate it, then they won't issue any fix...

Clutching at straws here, but I guess I should ask whether it might have been possible that somewhere along the line when presented with a choice between 60i and 50i, you inadvertently chose the latter? Mind you, I can't think where in the AVCHD workflow that could happen... I know it's there -- and I made that mistake -- when editing HDV format video, but as far as I am aware, it is not there in the AVCHD choices.

Anyway, hopefully some kind soul might volunteer some NTSC AVCHD expertise on this...

Ken, Thanks very much for your reply. There is no choice of 60i versus 50i when in the Blu-Ray burning module; the field is greyed out, and shows "29.97 fps." The project settings in the VS editor are also 29.97 fps. Note that I have no problem if I export CBR or VBR single-pass; the problem only occurs when using VBR two-pass. Since VBR two-pass is not the default option, I wonder how many people use VBR two-pass. Also, since I am using a Canon Vixia HF-100, I wonder if there might be something peculiar to Canon's implementation of AVCHD. This camera has only been on the market for a couple of months, so it couldn't have been tested by Ulead before VS 11.5 was released. Anyway, I realize I'm grasping at straws to a point, but I can't think of another reason other than a peculiar bug caused by a cascade of events (Canon AVCHD + VBR two-pass + maybe something else) that would cause this to happen. That's why I was hoping someone else could try this out.

BTW, I forgot to mention that I was able to use the Elecard converter to generate an MPEG-2 file, which burned with no problems using VS. But, the quality of the encoding was not very good, so it was no improvement over just using VBR single-pass in VS.

Again, I must state that you have been extremely helpful, and I truly appreciate it.

For what it is worth, I have been discussing by email your problem with someone who does a lot of AVCHD editing and is quite knowledgeable in the field. He has the following to say:

"I never use 2 pass encode on any highly compressed formats, especially AVCHD video.

AVCHD is technically not the best format to edit video in. You're supposed to convert the avchd video files first to a more editable format (which requires almost 4 times the disk space), but that's the nature of the beast.

My observations are that AVCHD is technically not an editable format, software developers let you edit it only because of consumer demand.

My experience with 2 pass encoding is that it is very effective when converting files between 2 different codecs/formats and the source file being either DV, RAW video, HD-Cineform files.

2 pass encoding for avchd video does not work for me either. The format is too highly compressed.

But going from an AVI uncompressed or HDcineform codec (codecs that don't use alot of compression), then 2 pass encoding works."

Ken,

Thanks so much for all your feedback and help. To make a long story short, I bought Nero 8 Ultra, and it really does an excellent job of converting video. Two-pass VBR works fine with my AVCHD input files, and the resulting output is surprisingly good. And, for two hours of video, it takes only about eight hours to render. I can't burn Blu-Ray discs from Nero since I didn't spend the extra $30 for the Blu-Ray burning license, but the MPEG-2 files generated by Nero burn fine using VS. So, I can now burn Blu-Ray discs successfully, using the Canon-supplied software to trim and merge the clips, Nero to do the rendering, and VS to do the burning. If I need to edit the video in more depth, I can convert to uncompressed AVI using Nero, edit it anywhere, and then re-render the edited files into MPEG-2 using Nero. Yes, it can be a long workflow, but it works, and the results are good, so I'm content for now.

BTW, as a side note, I also had the occasion of trying to import video from an existing DVD-VR, and it failed using VS and DMF. PE3 imported the video, but couldn't export it without re-rendering it (a 16-hour exercise and with reduced quality.) Nero imported the DVD successfully and allowed a smart-render export that took only about ten minutes, with no apparent reduction in quality, so it has been quite useful for that as well. However, while Nero is an excellent video converter, I must note that the interface is terrible, editing capabilities are extremely limited, and the program is quite buggy and will crash at the drop of a hat. So, in keeping with my prior experiences, all video editing programs excel at some things, but also have serious bugs as well.

Thanks again for all of your help.