AVCHD & BR render crashing programe and computer

[sging2]

Hi all

Just thought I'd share a problem I have been trying to sort for the last week to help anyone in the same position.

I edited a wedding video that is over 90 minutes long (it was a wedding in Ireland). It was filmed in AVCHD on a pro video camera.

I wanted to produce a standard DVD and a Blu Ray copy to send over. The DVD copy rendered fine but the Blu Ray as well as the AVCHD file crashed every time and even crashed the computer to re-start. It crashed at around 30% in and I tried a number of different combinations to accomplish this render.

What I then did after a few attempts was to look at the last frame of the couple of files it did render to see where on the time line it was crashing.

It turned out it was on a transition I customised, I think using proDAD VitaScene. It was a transition that created a twinkling star effect from one scene to the next. As soon as I removed this one transition and it rendered a Blu Ray file with no problems at all.

Hope this helps anyone having the same problem.

One question though, I am not sure why there are so many choices of Blu Ray and AVCHD in the menu. What is the difference and which one would be the generally used one.

Regards

Stephen

[lata]

Hi Stephen

Thanks for the info on the crashes and prodad transition.
I will have a look at this but the pc is busy at the moment, always up for a challenge.

When you say it crashed around 30% what were you doing, Share Create Video File or share Create Disc

I don’t suppose you could duplicate the effect using the sample video from the library. That way I will see exactly what effects you used.
Then send the VSP project file via e-mail, you will find my address via my Quick Guides.

Share Create Video file provides many templates. If you select one the properties used to convert the video can be seen in the lower panel of the Save window.
Suitable for burning a disc Bulray. Avchd, DVD will give you compliant settings, each being slightly different.
You should choose the one that best reflects your original video file
As an example some options may use “frame based” others Interlaced “Upper Field”
Again your AVCHD may use Frame Based and this should be used in your final output.

Which is why you will get asked for your Video Files Properties.

Although there is a good variety there may not be exactly what you require, Make Movie Templates Manager will allow you to create your own template.

Type of discs
DVD will create a file suitable for a Standard DVD for you in the UK uses Pal at 720 x 576. a max of 8000kbps
BluRay is as it says will produce compliant Bluray files. 1920 x 1080
Avchd could be used to create a hybrid disc, that’s HD video burned to a standard disc. Although HD may not be Bluray compliant, and I don’t fully understand that either. The bit rate would start at 12000kbps .

As mentioned the two factors you need to keep in mind is to maintain your Field Order and the Bit Rate as original, for HD that is.

I am sure the HD guys will comment on Bluray V Avchd

[Ken Berry]

I am sure the HD guys will comment on Bluray V Avchd

It's a wee bit complicated. Blu-Ray is essentially both general and specific. General, because there are in effect three different formats which can be burned to a Blu-Ray disc in their original formal. The main two that consumers like us will use are the *specific* Blu-Ray format, which is high def mpeg-2 transport stream and AVCHD which is of course high def mpeg-4 using the h.264 codec. (The third format, if memory serves, is VC-1.) HDV, which is also high def mpeg-2 using anamorphic frame size 1440 x 1080, will be converted to the Blu-Ray mpeg-2 format by VS.

That is one part of why VS and other software editing packages makes a distinction between AVCHD and Blu-Ray. The AVCHD settings, while fully compatible with a true Blu-Ray disc, can also produce what is called either an AVCHD disc or a hybrid disc. This involves burning an AVCHD files to a standard DVD disc instead of a Blu-Ray disc. These hybrid discs have the same folder structure as a Blu-Ray BDMV folder, but can only be played on a Blu-Ray player rated to play such discs. (There will usually be an "AVCHD" sticker on the player's top frame.) And if using VS's top 18 Mbps output for AVCHD video, you will only be able to fit around 20 minutes onto a single layer DVD (plus a menu). The main advantage of hybrid discs is that they allow people who don't want to pay the still fairly high price of Blu-Ray blanks to nonetheless put their masterpieces in a format which renders at a very quality.

[sging2]

Just an update. My PC started crashing again when attempting to create a Blu Ray or AVCHD file from footage that is mainly all AVCHD and I mean the whole computer just switches off and restarts. DVD and all other files are all ok and I cant really understand why the programme is working my PC so hard to create a Blu Ray or AVCHD file when the source footage is AVCHD.

Anyway it took over a week of trying different settings on my project to try and get it to create a Blu ray file for me but I think I have sorted a work around. It seems that VS x 5 is working my PC so hard the processors give up. I have an XPS 720 H2C duel quad core PC. The H2C is liquid cooling and because of this the PC is designed to be over clocked.

To enable me to make suitable Blu Rays I had to set the processors down to the standard speed and also turn off hardware acceleration in the VS settings. This slows everything down but a Blu Ray does then completes.

I also noticed that the one Blu Ray selection goes to 35000kbps and I though VS x5 would only go to 18000kbps. My source video is just over 20000kbps.

I don’t know whether to start another post but since doing the above, the custom settings I use when making standard DVD’s has gone a little strange. I select MPEG and then all the other settings, including 2 pass encode, upper field first, variable, screen ratio etc, but it has now started to let me set the kbps above the maximum 8264 it used to do for DVD. It lets me go to nearly 18000 kbps. It seems to let me select MPEG but with all the settings of Blu Ray. It used to set limits so not sure what’s changed. Does anyone have any ideas what could have changed to remove these safeguards.
I did a render last night at 10000kbps.

Stephen

[Ken Berry]

When you select Share > Create Video File > Blu-Ray, the drop down window will offer several options. The first two are high definition mpeg-2 in Blu-Ray format, and with VS, this offers a bitrate of 35 Mbps. But if you go down the list, the H.264 options are all AVCHD with the max. bitrate of 18 Mbps. So if you want to burn a Blu-Ray using the native AVCHD format, then select one of the H.264 options.

As for you DVD settings going wonky, you say that in Custom, you selected MPEG -- but, apart from the MPEG-4 option, there are two MPEG options, and it sounds to me as though you have picked "MPEG Transport Stream files (*.m2t)" rather than just the straight DVD-compatible "MPEG files (*.mpg)". The Transport Stream option is of course high def Blu-Ray compatible and offers the higher bitrate than a standard def mpeg-2.