Need clear answer if VS can produce a true 60fps BD

[Highwinder]

I have read much in this forum and have tried to find clear answers on creating 60fps Blu-Rays. It seems I either can't or if I try, it will somehow wind up as actually being 30fps (30P specifically). Either way, this shatters the whole point of buying any camcorder that can shoot video above 30p. Can't express how disappointing this is given the whole "useless gimmick" race the camcorder world has been in for many years, only to discover that any Blu-Ray I try to create is going to suck compared to what my camera can actually shoot. Some of us have no desire to store precious family video archives on USB sticks, hard drives, or anything else that could be wiped out in the blink of an eye with a virus, mechanical failure, careless teenager, or by bit rot over time. Blu-Ray is the only truly long-term data/video storage that actually exists, specifically M-DISC if the claims are to be believed.

And so my question is this:

I am trying to understand the relationship of 30/60 interlaced vs progressive vs resolution (720/1080) when it comes to creating Blu-Rays in VideoStudio (9.5).

Q: I have read that 30P is the same thing as 60I. In what universe does anything interlaced equal anything progressive?
Q: Is it at all possible to create 1920x1080 Blu-Rays that actually play at a legitimate 60fps (60i or 60p - I'll take either)? If so, what are the detailed steps to doing this with VS?
Q: I shoot in AVCHD 1080/60P/5.1 Surround just to ensure maximum quality of family events (best my HC-V770 can do). Is there a way VSX can somehow still make an actual 60fps Blu-Ray out of this format without dropping to a lower resolution or relying on some external playback technology like TV interpolation/smoothing features?

Tremendous thanks to anyone who can provide a detailed answer to those questions above!

HW

[lata]

Hi

I can understand your confusion when trying to understand Progressive and Interlaced when there seems to be so many types of frames per second descriptions.

Ok I will give it a go…

There is Interlaced video and then there is Progressive video

Interlaced video cuts each frame in two creating two half frames, frame A and frame B
These are played back in order but could be A first or B first.
The order they play is called Upper Field First or Lower Field First

For most types of video including Digital video Upper Field First is generally used, although
some types DV-AVI uses Lower Field First. The field order is determined/ created when recording video.

Interlaced video
30fps interlaced or 60i is the same type, different description for the same video.
Aka 30fps Upper Field First or 60i

Progressive Video
30p and 60p are different, each using full frames, also known as Progressive or Frame Based.

Burning Bluray Discs
We can use 1920 x 1080 “60i” aka “30fps Interlaced” those rates are the same. (30fps interlaced = 60i )

We cannot burn a disc using 1920 x 1080 x 60P, that does not comply with international Bluray standards

We can burn a disc using 1280 x 720 x 60P is allowed and complies to International standards.

There is also 30P, 30 progressive, as far as I know can be burnt to disc using 1920 x 1080.

Q: I shoot in AVCHD 1080/60P/5.1 Surround just to ensure maximum quality of family events (best my HC-V770 can do). Is there a way VSX can somehow still make an actual 60fps Blu-Ray out of this format

No it has to use 60i aka 30fps upper field first

The limitations are not set by Corel Video Studio but Bluray International Standards
And yes its about time they updated the standard to allow 60P discs.

[Highwinder]

I truly appreciate your reply. I guess I should clarify part of my question:

Your response of "No it has to use 60i aka 30fps upper field first" is probably the closest to the answer I was looking for.

I should have asked:

Will my 1920x1080 BluRays actually play at 60i or 30p? Which one will actually be playing on my screen? Because though 60i might be an interpolation of 30P, 60i would be smooth and 30p would be jerky. I have never seen a clear answer to this question.

So if I want a BluRay that plays at a smooth 60i, I select "30fps Upper Field First" in VS?

Thanks, and sorry to be so annoying with this clarification issue.

HW

[lata]

I truly appreciate your reply. I guess I should clarify part of my question:

Your response of "No it has to use 60i aka 30fps upper field first" is probably the closest to the answer I was looking for.

I should have asked:

Will my 1920x1080 BluRays actually play at 60i or 30p? Which one will actually be playing on my screen? Because though 60i might be an interpolation of 30P, 60i would be smooth and 30p would be jerky. I have never seen a clear answer to this question.

So if I want a BluRay that plays at a smooth 60i, I select "30fps Upper Field First" in VS? Yes

Thanks, and sorry to be so annoying with this clarification issue.

HW

If you use your camera to record to AVCHD 60i aka 30fps interlaced, the video file should be BD compliant.
When you add to the timelines the program will prompt you to match the project properties.
When you do Share - Same as Project Properties or Same as First clip can be used, that will use the videos original properties and retain original quality.

[Highwinder]

Ok, here are some definitive answers that clarify this issue, as I have researched many different online forums and articles:

I'm going to say this in multiple ways so this cannot be misunderstood: 30P and 60i are NOT one in the same. 30P is 30P, period. 30P does not magically interlace itself into 60i. Though 60i is MADE from 30P, 30P remains 30P until an additional and intentional conversion from 30P to 60i is completed. When you produce a "30 Frame Upper Field First" disc, that's exactly how it will play on any BluRay player - 30, not 60. 30P also does not magically convert itself to 60i on playback, neither by the disc player or the TV itself. You can, however, kick your HD TV into a higher frame rate for playback, which uses "interpolation" to produce a 60-frame effect. However, your BluRay itself is still playing content exactly as it was produced - in 30P. Your "30 Frame" BluRay will never show on your BluRay system as being "60". You created that disc as 30 frame and that's exactly how it is going to be played by the bluray player.

60P BluRays Are Possible And Supported: Though 60P is not part of the official BluRay standard, the dirty little secret is that most good quality bluray players will actually play 60P blurays just fine because despite the bluray standard, companies like Sony, Samsung and Panasonic ignored it and added the capability anyway. The problem is actually being able to create the discs, since these cheapo video editing software products never bothered to "take the next step". It can be done, but sadly, here's where it gets ugly: You have to ditch Corel VideoStudio and use Cyberlink's PowerDirector 12 or above, which allows you to make us of the very clever "TurnOnBD1080P" hack, which allows you to produce BluRays in 60P. And yes, it works very well, as most high quality BluRay players actually play 60P discs, and this can be found in their detailed product information. 60P bluray players have been around at least since 2011. Allow me to illustrate by including something I pulled off of the thread that contains the hack:

"Virtually all new BR players will play a 1920x1080 60P 28Mb w/o problems. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung , all have firmware updates that enable 60P on some of their older models. Mine is a over 3 year old Samsung BD-C5500 and after updating the firmware over a year ago plays 60P perfectly. I have burned at least 50 different BR disks with this format and they play w/o problems in our neighborhood on players that are up to two years old. " (http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/30115.page)

BluRay Standard: The BluRay standard allows you to create 60P discs if you're willing to kick down to 720 instead of 1080. That might have been acceptable 10 years ago, but with the advent and growing popularity of 4K, 720 is pretty much now the "Standard Def" that will be scoffed at in the near future.

If you want to stay compliant with all standards and keep 60P and also keep it at 1080, and also keep 5.1 DD, then creating AVCHD 2.0 discs is your only option. Most players support these discs now, so this is a safe disc format. However, good luck producing an AVCHD 2.0 BluRay - you can't - this is a DVD-only standard. Sucks, huh? The oly way around this is to jump through some hoops to eventually be able to re-burn everything onto a BlueRay. Go ahead and pen up a quick project in VSX and try to create an AVCHD Bluray. You can't. And PowerDirector has the same limitation.

Attention Corel: Wanna stick it to CyberLink? Add both 1080/60P BluRay and AVCHD 2.0 BluRay burning to VideoStudio's next release.

Thanks for reading

RLH

[lata]

Hi

Clear answer is NO unless using 1280 x 720 frame size

We do not work for Corel but just users like you trying to help others.
Some Corel employees do visit here from time to time, but if you want Corel to see your post then I would send it to Corel Support or Corel on Facebook.

My thoughts are that Corel are following the Bluray Industries standards when burning a disc, that will remain so till those standards are updated.

[Highwinder]

PowerDirector has actually had 1080/60p BluRay functionality built into the product (full menu choice, hack mentined above not require) since version 12. At least up to version 9x, Corel still hasn't added this (not sure about v10, as i switched over to PowerDirector for this feature alone). Would gladly go back to VSX if Corel would make this easy addition. Whoever gives my 1080/60P blurays gets my money. Right now that's Cyberlink.

[aljimenez]

Ok, here are some definitive answers that clarify this issue, as I have researched many different online forums and articles:

I really appreciate your post here. It was very informative.

I want to ask a question in this thread since it has many BluRay fans. I have given up on DVDs and Blue Rays since about 3 years ago or more. I find that most of my family no longer have any DVD/BlueRay players. I see players falling behind in 4K for example, and most are now renting movies from the Internet streaming them into their TVs. If I want to distribute a video story, I now use thumb drives; while more expensive than DVD/BlueRay, most new TV's can play them and they can handle new formats. Most of my distribution is via Youtube/Vimeo/Cloud drives.

My question: what is the advantage of DVD/BlueRays vs the other forms of distribution in the current and future environment?

[aljimenez]

Here's some data to back up my comment about DVDs and Bluray players:

Time magazine: http://time.com/3921019/streaming-dvds/
Fortune magazine: http://fortune.com/2016/01/08/blu-ray-s ... aming-age/
UK
Daily mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... -over.html
Newswekk: http://www.newsweek.com/2016/06/17/dvd- ... 67648.html

[Highwinder]

The fact that everybody is streaming movies doesn't mean BluRay going anywhere. That would be an extremely short-sighted view. BluRay happens to be the only viable media for long term data storage due to sealed edges which prevents layer rot/disintegration. Hard drives, USB sticks, DVDs and CDs are all worthless for long term data storage, they all fail and corrode even when stored properly. BluRay is the only existing solution that doesn't, and thanks to 4K (which nobody needs or really cares about and can't be streamed anyway), capacity is future-proofed up to 200GB+ per disc due to layering, which is excellent for permanent archival data storage that doesn't fail or corrode if stored properly. For this reason alone, BluRay is going to be around for a LOOOOOOONG time.

When it comes to priceless home movies, take a guess which media format will actually be playable 50 years from now after all other hard drives, discs, and USB sticks have long since failed and/or accidentally deleted from cell phones, laptops, and drive crashes. That's right - BluRay.

[aljimenez]

Thanks for sharing this about BluRay. You make some very compelling points, but I see no evidence that this format is being sold, nor marketed with this application in mind. IMHO long term storage is going to Raid hard drives and the Cloud, where data is redundant or being backed up for the customer. I certainly have no fear about losing my data any more.

BTW, I have some media of more than 50 years old that was preserved without the existence nor the need for BluRay that I was able to digitize and are now safely stored in Raid drives and the Cloud.

[Ron P.]

The fact that everybody is streaming movies doesn't mean BluRay going anywhere. That would be an extremely short-sighted view. BluRay happens to be the only viable media for long term data storage due to sealed edges which prevents layer rot/disintegration. Hard drives, USB sticks, DVDs and CDs are all worthless for long term data storage, they all fail and corrode even when stored properly. BluRay is the only existing solution that doesn't, and thanks to 4K (which nobody needs or really cares about and can't be streamed anyway), capacity is future-proofed up to 200GB+ per disc due to layering, which is excellent for permanent archival data storage that doesn't fail or corrode if stored properly. For this reason alone, BluRay is going to be around for a LOOOOOOONG time.

When it comes to priceless home movies, take a guess which media format will actually be playable 50 years from now after all other hard drives, discs, and USB sticks have long since failed and/or accidentally deleted from cell phones, laptops, and drive crashes. That's right - BluRay.

As Al stated you do provide a compelling argument for them. However markets can determine what survives and what doesn't. Look at how the portable solutions have moved from having on-board CD/DVD burners/players. It's more difficult to find laptops with them. Popular desktop solutions don't even resemble the desktops from just 5 yrs ago, having the burners/players built in. They're slim, using wi-fi, blue tooth to connect any external I/O devices, and they will have USB 3 as well. The internal HDDs, are small SSD, unless you want to shell out some major cash for one that is 500GB-1TB. The BD burners can still be purchased and not all that expensive, which kinda speaks to the not-so much in demand. I'm sure if there was a high demand the prices would reflect that.

The BD discs seemed to have come down in price a little. They range anywhere from about $0.85 to $18. per disc, depending on the amount of storage. The latter being the 200GB archival discs. I don't know of that many people willing to shell out $18+ per disc with other forms of archival storage, such as EHD, and cloud available now.

Long term not only has to take into account if the medium will not degenerate over time, but if the means to read/retrieve that data is still around. I still have some CDs I've backed data up to from 2000, and they play fine. I've since pulled a lot of that data from them storing it on current media (cloud and EHDs). You recall BETA video tapes, and recorders don't you? I had one, was one of those that thought it was going to be the thing to last. Well I have a Sony Betacam, sitting in my closet, been there for over 10 yrs, nice collectable now, taking up space in it's wonderful case. Luckily the PC technology allowed me to digitize all the family videos I shot with it before the player gave out. Hard to find one of them now, but I haven't checked the museums out.

Just MHO, 20 yrs from now, (if we haven't managed to destroy ourselves), I think CD, DVD, BD, EHD, will be ancient dinosaurs. If you have data on those, good luck getting to it. Technology is moving so fast, and getting into really scary things now. While AI is neat, there's just so far before it becomes dangerous to us, like these cars and trucks that you don't need to drive.