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Hello! This is my first post here, so I sure hope I don't make a fool out of myself and ask something that's addressed concisely in the manual or some such. Here goes!

Mission: Take the video shot with my Sony HDR-CX12 AVCHD camcorder and create a standard Blu-ray disc (NOT an AVCHD disc!) using VideoStudio Pro X2.

Problem: The AVCHD is always transcoded to MPEG-2 when I do Share -> Create Disc -> Blu-ray. I can't figure out any way to override this behavior, and the MPEG-2 looks awful next to the AVCHD original.

Mystery: Creating a Blu-ray *file* works fine; I can do Share -> Create Video File -> Blu-ray -> NTSC HDMV-1920, and I get a beautiful Smart-Rendered concatenation of all of my AVCHD cuts. So why does creating a Blu-ray *disc* always convert to MPEG-2 when creating a Blu-ray *file* doesn't? I'm mystified. Creating a 45-minute *file* takes only about 15 minutes, whereas creating the *disc* takes over two hours (due to the transcoding--"Converting title..." in the UI), even more reason why I'd like to avoid the MPEG-2 transcoding! Also, if I take the Blu-ray file created by VS and try to make a disc with it, the same thing happens; it gets transcoded to MPEG-2.

Cheers,
Aaron

Edit: Camera's AVCHD is 16Mbps 1920x1080i 29.97fps AVC with Dolby 5.1 audio. In case that matters.

Hi Aaron,

welcome to the forum!

It's helpful if you fill in all the pc-related stuff in your member profile - that way it will be accessible to us when we click on your "system" tab, and saves asking questions about what OS you're using etc.

Does your pc have a blu-ray burner?

The symptoms you describe suggest to me that VS is pointing to a normal DVD burner and therefore defaulting to mpeg2 output.

Hi, 2Dogs!

I added a signature after the fact, but apparently signatures aren't retroactive. D'oh! Anyway, all the details are there now, in my sig as well as profile.

Indeed, I have a Blu-ray burner. And when I speak of VS creating Blu-rays for me, I'm talking about BD-RE discs. And they play fine, they're just ugly.

I was attracted to VS for its "Smart Render" ability and am a long-time Premiere/Encore user from my DV days, however those programs can't touch AVCHD without recompressing/transcoding it, even in their most recent CS4 incarnations. My original plan was to use VS only for cutting my main programs, then create my Blu-rays with Encore. Encore, however, is terribly buggy when it comes to importing ready-made AVC source material, and crashes left and right. If I create a short video with VS and output as NTSC HDMV-1920, then demultiplex and import into Encore, I can *sometimes* get it to produce a Blu-ray without transcoding, but more often than not it crashes before I get there (and Encore can't import 5.1 audio in a transport stream like VS can, which makes Encore a real pain; I have to demux everything to even have a chance). I was hoping VS's Blu-ray burning capability might rescue me in the meantime, but I just can't talk it out of transcoding. That's a real deal-breaker.

Regardless, I'm still addicted to VS's Smart Rendering, even if it can't make me the Blu-ray I want (since nothing else presently can either!).

Cheers,
Aaron

Hi Aaron,

I'm sort of glad your sig wasn't applied retrospectively to your original post -since it would have made my question about having the blu-ray burner look pretty dull!

I currently have VS11.5 installed. (yet to install X2 received as one of my holiday gifts!) but I see exactly the same thing as you do. I can create an AVCHD disk, and clicking on the "cogwheel" icon gives me access to all the video properties which show h.264 encoding.

If I select "Blu-Ray", however, I see exactly the same as you report. I have always assumed that this is because I do not have a Blu-Ray burner though. Perhaps your system is still seeing your burner as a DVD burner. If you have another optical drive, you might try disabling it to see if you can force VS to point to the Blu-Ray unit.

Does it make a difference if you actually have any blank Blu-Ray media in the drive when you try to create the disc? That might also help bring VS to its senses!

Your CX12 is a second generation Sony HD camcorder. VS has problems with the latest AVCHD camcorders, especially those from Canon, but if you're lucky, it may work OK for you. The problem surfaces as a glitch at transitions, so you may do some render tests to check to see if you get it. It will add to the sum of knowledge on this forum!

2Dogs wrote:I'm sort of glad your sig wasn't applied retrospectively to your original post -since it would have made my question about having the blu-ray burner look pretty dull!

Well, I tried to be quick about it, but that's a moot point now!

2Dogs wrote: Perhaps your system is still seeing your burner as a DVD burner. If you have another optical drive, you might try disabling it to see if you can force VS to point to the Blu-Ray unit.

Does it make a difference if you actually have any blank Blu-Ray media in the drive when you try to create the disc? That might also help bring VS to its senses!

Yeah, I wondered about that too, and disabled my old DVD-RW drive which was enumerating first. I've never *not* had BD-RE media in the drive when I chose to create a disc, soo.... Alas, no difference. It still wants to transcode to MPEG-2. And the video format popup menus are all grayed out. Are they ever not grayed out?

Cheers,
Aaron

Unfortunately, I am away from home and do not have a recent version of VS installed on the computer I am using.

But I am curious as to why you want specifically what you call a Blu-Ray disc and not an AVCHD disc. And using the latter term, I am wondering further if there might not be some confusion in terminology here. By 'AVCHD Disc' I understand that you would in any case be burning your AVCHD project to a Blu-Ray structure on the disc (regardless of whether it is a Blu-Ray disc or a standard def DVD -- i.e. for the latter, a *hybrid* AVCHD disc...) if you choose Share > Create Disc > AVCHD. It burns all the usual files associated with the Blu-Ray format, and the video is in a BDMV folder on the disc.

Ken Berry wrote: But I am curious as to why you want specifically what you call a Blu-Ray disc and not an AVCHD disc.

Hi, Ken:

Well, I hadn't thought much about making AVCHD discs, since my original plan was simply to use VS to cut the video and Encore to produce discs (it doesn't do AVCHD at all), however I began playing with VS's AVCHD disc functionality this morning, and there are a few shortcomings that make it unattractive (to me):

1) It only supports putting AVCHD on DVD media (this may be the definition of an AVCHD disc, I don't know, but I have a number of two-hour AVCHD programs which are 16Mbit/s average, so a DVD won't do).

2) Even though my sources are AVCHD, it appears that I'll still be forced to recompress when creating AVCHD discs. Very odd. But, I just tried it, and even though I have checked "Don't convert compliant files." and the maximum bitrate is >16Mbit/s, VS still recompresses such that the average bitrate is far less than the original--looks like ~8Mbit/s, and looks pretty bad.

3) Support for playing AVCHD discs is still being kicked around a bit by the set-top player manufacturers. Many players don't support them. Support for recordable Blu-ray discs appears to be far better.

If it weren't for #2, I might give it a go. Any thoughts on why it would force me to recompress my AVCHD for an AVCHD disc? Is it because a DVD at 1x speed can't accomodate 16Mbit/s, and AVCHD disc playback is confined to DVD bitrates? That would seem pretty crippling if true! I know the first-gen AVCHD camcorders were 8Mbit/s devices, so perhaps the AVCHD disc spec or else VS's support for it were tuned with that in mind.

Cheers,
Aaron

I am mystified why you are having trouble. I don't have a Blu-Ray burner but I make lots of AVCHD hybrid discs using the Blu-Ray structure I described, though on standard def DVDs. And I use a bitrate of 16.8 or 17 Mbps without trouble. You should certainly be able to do the same using a Blu-Ray disc. Such a bitrate only allows around 20 minutes of AVCHD on a single layer DVD (4.3 GB) but the quality is excellent -- as good as the original. I play them using my PS3 which I see you also have.

Ken Berry wrote:Unfortunately, I am away from home and do not have a recent version of VS installed on the computer I am using.

Not good enough Ken! You must take your quad with you in future!

Ken Berry wrote:But I am curious as to why you want specifically what you call a Blu-Ray disc and not an AVCHD disc. And using the latter term, I am wondering further if there might not be some confusion in terminology here. By 'AVCHD Disc' I understand that you would in any case be burning your AVCHD project to a Blu-Ray structure on the disc (regardless of whether it is a Blu-Ray disc or a standard def DVD -- i.e. for the latter, a *hybrid* AVCHD disc...) if you choose Share > Create Disc > AVCHD. It burns all the usual files associated with the Blu-Ray format, and the video is in a BDMV folder on the disc.

I'm still looking at VS11.5, but at the bottom left of the screen in the Share>Create Disc>AVCHD step, just above the "cogwheel" icon, the choices are limited to an AVCHD disc capacity of 8.5G, 4.7G, 2.6G and 1.4G. There isn't a 25G option, never mind a 50G, so I have to assume an AVCHD disc is in fact a hybrid disc, burned to a regular DVD or mini DVD.

Or perhaps VS recognises that I don't have a blu-ray burner. I find that doubtful, since if I install my old single-layer-capable-only DVD burner, the 8.5G choice remains.

@Aaron; you should be able to click on the "cogwheel" icon to change the AVCHD properties to match your source clip. I don't believe there's an 8Mbps limit on the video bitrate - I'm pretty sure Ken has described successfully making up AVCHD discs using 16Mbps in other posts, though in fairness it is VBR so the average will be lower than that, as indeed it is with your source VBR footage.

Ken Berry wrote: I don't believe there's an 8Mbps limit on the video bitrate - I'm pretty sure Ken has described successfully making up AVCHD discs using 16Mbps in other posts, though in fairness it is VBR so the average will be lower than that, as indeed it is with your source VBR footage.

Just a comment regarding the bitrate being lower on files and discs created by VS compared to the original clips. I find the same thing as jaholmes with my Sony SR-11 clips. Although X2 allows selecting a 18Mbs bit rate, the resulting AVCHD file or disc has a bit rate significantly lower than the original clips from the camcorder. I use PowerDVD8 Ultra which can display the bit rates while playing video. My original SR-11 clips show a bit rate that consistently varies between 15 and 16 Mbps. Even though I select 18 Mbps when creating an AVCHD file or disc from those clips, when I play them back with PowerDVD, it shows that the bit rate varies from 8 to 11 Mbps. I don't use Smart Render because it causes audio/video sync problems, so VS is re-encoding the entire video, and it seems that for some reason it uses a lower bitrate than what was selected in the options.

That said, I cannot see any difference in quality compared to the original clips, even though the bitrate is lower. And I have done some pretty extensive A/B'ing on my HDTV with the SR-11 connected to one HDMI input, and a Blu-ray player connected to another HDMI input playing the same clips from an AVCHD disc (on standard DVD media).

2Dogs wrote:@Aaron; you should be able to click on the "cogwheel" icon to change the AVCHD properties to match your source clip. I don't believe there's an 8Mbps limit on the video bitrate - I'm pretty sure Ken has described successfully making up AVCHD discs using 16Mbps in other posts, though in fairness it is VBR so the average will be lower than that, as indeed it is with your source VBR footage.

Actually, my source footage does *average* 16Mbps, which is pretty typical of 1920x1080i AVCHD, I believe. 8Mbps is typical of 1440x1080i anamorphic, as in the first-gen AVCHD camcorders. The Canon HF11 (and maybe some other really new cams) will go up to 24Mbps average.

dalemccl wrote: I don't use Smart Render because it causes audio/video sync problems, so VS is re-encoding the entire video, and it seems that for some reason it uses a lower bitrate than what was selected in the options.

That said, I cannot see any difference in quality compared to the original clips, even though the bitrate is lower. And I have done some pretty extensive A/B'ing on my HDTV with the SR-11 connected to one HDMI input, and a Blu-ray player connected to another HDMI input playing the same clips from an AVCHD disc (on standard DVD media).

I've run into some hideous audio/video sync issues after demuxing and importing streams separately into various NLEs. For example, if I Smart Render about 40 mins of AVCHD -> HDMV-1920 using VS, demux, then import into Adobe Encore, the audio is a full five seconds shorter than the video! Ouch!! Keeping as a single Transport Stream seems to avoid this, but Encore will then always transcode a TS containing PCM audio, and can't import a TS with 5.1 audio (even though it supports 5.1 in a standalone AC3 file. GRRRRRR!!!)

W.r.t. the quality of recompression: Not sure, but my particular footage may exacerbate things. I just got back from a hunting trip and took a lot of nature shots. I can see a tremendous drop in detail when the video gets recompressed; it's the difference between a forest floor covered with pine needles/twigs and a forest floor that just looks like homogenous brown soil This goes for the 8Mbps AVCHD recompression as well as 35Mbps MPEG-2 transcode.

In other news, I discovered that if I smart-render in VS, I can still tweak the audio format without causing the video to be recompressed. Neato! This gets me a little closer. If I change the audio output to stereo AC3, I can then import the result into Encore without demuxing. Preview looks great, too. Trouble is, if the file's bigger than about 1.5Gb, Encore crashes as soon as I choose to burn. D'oh! (Encore must be the crashiest program on Earth!)

So...

Again, if anybody has any revelations about the no-recompress, no-transcode Blu-ray from AVCHD using VS, I'm all ears!

Thanks for the great response, folks!

Cheers,
Aaron

Again, if anybody has any revelations about the no-recompress, no-transcode Blu-ray from AVCHD using VS, I'm all ears!

I suggest TsMuxer (and leave VS)

bankroot wrote:I suggest TsMuxer (and leave VS)

I'll give it a go and see what happens. Didn't notice that it supported joining files. That is cool. However, it really all hinges on whether the TsMuxer output is any more agreeable to Encore than the VS output. If it isn't, then VS will be the superior choice by far, since it will permit me to do minor editing as well; unfortunately, I can't reduce all of my editing tasks to simply joining raw clips!

Cheers,
Aaron

Well, I finally got an (unfortunate) answer from Corel on this:

Allan with Corel Support wrote: Although Blu-ray player must support MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and SMPTE VC-1, VideoStudio Pro X2 by design uses MPEG-2 as the video format for Blu-ray. As of the moment, VideoStudio Pro X2 doesn't support MPEG-4 AVC and SMPTE VC-1 as the options for a Blu-ray project.

D'oh!! Maybe in X3?

FWIW.

Cheers,
Aaron

jaholmes wrote:; unfortunately, I can't reduce all of my editing tasks to simply joining raw clips!

my question is why ?
have you ever seen a movie with plenty of transitions or PIP's ?
Of course, this is your decision.

Trade off is: would you like to have the best picture quality (original clips) and small files (AVCHD) or reencoding of your original clips ?
In my opinion all of your fantassies you can put into menu and show how are you creative.
The movie should be free of any edition gadgets.

Even if you wanna make transition, you can do it for two clips (neighbors) in VS or different NLE, but join and make BD structure in TsMuxer.
The same is for audio track, you can prepare it separately and join in TsMuxer (very fast and without reencoding).

By the way, did you try to use Cyberlink Power Director 7 Ultra ?

Cheers,

PS. Sorry for my bad English