Bluray rendering format confusion

[brouillette]

I'm confused with what to select in the SHARE tab at rendering time. I read many posts on similar topics but still not sure what to do best.

My aim is QUALITY (size does not matter and my recent computer is powerful so bitrate and rendering time is not an issue). I mainly do elaborate travel & family videos of about 25-60 minutes. Photos have usually a resolution of 2200+ lines 16:9 so quality is there, and videos are 1080-30p or 60p 16:9.

I usually like to create .ISO files and burn multiple Bluray discs later to hand-out. As suggested , I sometimes I break my travel project in 3-4 VSP projects and render each VSP into a video file that I then group together at Bluray authoring time into one .ISO file for future burning of my travel video on disc.

Some questions :

(1) to render to highest quality Bluray standard disc from a VSP , I do SHARE>DISC>BLURAY> AUTHORING window opens> click the bottom left icon (with gear)> the project output settings window opens> default is MPEG but if I click the "Change MPEG settings..." button, the dropdown box gives me 2 choices for 1920 x 1080, that is "Bluray (1920x1080)" or "Bluray H.264 (1920x1080)". Which one should I pick for best Bluray quality ?

(2) if I want a video file for each VSP that will be part of my overall travel video, I do SHARE>COMPUTER icon> for best quality and future grouping into a standard bluray at authoring time, do I pick “AVC/H.264” or “MPEG-4” ?

(3) if “AVC/H.264”, in the dropdown box, do I select 30p or is there a quality benefit to select 60p (motion blur ?) ?

(4) same if “MPEG-4” , do I select 30p or benefit if 60p ?

(5) I am currently “remastering” my older DVD travel videos into better resolution Bluray (photos have high resolution so benefit there, but videos are DVD resolution at 480p). If I start from my original VSP file and select SHARE>DISC>BLURAY, will VS upscale my 480p videos reasonably well to full screen 1080p or should I tweak my VSP project to keep my DVD videos in a smaller window on the screen to preserve its relative 480p size for quality ?

(6) I just got a 4k camera (3840 x 2160 30p or 60p video recording); not used yet but to produce a 4K file playable on 4K smart TV, what should be my selection in SHARE>COMPUTER : "AVC/H.264" or "MPEG-4" ?

(7) if "AVC/H.264", in the dropdown box : AVC 4K 30p or 60p?

(8) Or is 4K quality better with "MPEG-4" ? What should I use in the dropdown box, “MPEG-4 AVC 4K” or “XAVC S MP4 HD” ? 30p or 60p ?

Not obvious for me !

Thanks !

Guy

[Ken Berry]

You are producing Blu-Ray discs (BD), so your workflow should be constrained to what the Blu-Ray standard will allow or accept. Essentially, there are two formats which can be burned to a BD. These are transport stream mpeg-2 and AVCHD/H.264. Both will produce equal high quality on the final disc, though the mpeg-2 option will produce larger files for the same quality. (There is also a third format which is BD compatible but few people produce it at our level.)

Note here, though, that the current international BD standard will only accept 50P or 60P fully progressive video if the frame size is 1280 x 720 (i.e. commonly called 720P). In other words, if you film in 50P or 60P but with a frame format of 1920 x 1080 (or higher), then this will be down-converted during the BD burning process to 50i or 60i with some diminution in quality associated with any conversion of mpeg formats. Since in effect some of the frames are thrown away in this conversion, then the lessening of quality might become more apparent in faster action video scenes.

In other words, if you intend from the start to make BD discs, then use either 25/29.97P or 50/60i settings on your camera.

But another factor here is what format your camera shoots in. Most HD cameras these days film in AVCHD which is mpeg-4 formatted using the H.264 codec. Normally its extension is .m2ts and it is directly BD compatible out of the camera, so there is no point converting it to anything else. You can edit it in VS and burn it to BD with no loss in quality (using Same As Project Settings or Same As First Clip).

However some cameras, and many smartphones these days produce video with either the .mp4 or .mov (Quicktime) extensions -- though in reality most of these nevertheless use the H.264 codec. But to burn to a BD they will first need to be converted to AVCHD .m2ts. So again it is best to choose AVCHD in any of your settings rather than the other mpeg-4 ones. (There are quite a few mpeg-4 types which use codecs other than H.264.)

As for remastering your old standard def DVDs, they use, as you know, standard def mpeg-2 so in any conversion to BD they will be upscaled to BD specifications. You will be aware of the old saying that you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear... So you can't expect miracles in this sort of conversion, and you will get similar results regardless of whether you choose BD mpeg-2 or AVCHD. Only you will be able to decide whether what you see on a large screen HDTV is acceptable or not, and this will decide for yourself whether your suggested option of tweaking your old projects to keep your DVD videos in a smaller screen is a good one.

As for your 4K camera, again if you intend to burn footage to BD, then you are limited to what the international BD standard allows i.e. mpeg-2 or AVCHD .m2ts, and 50/60P only with a frame size of 1280 x 720. Generally, though, people are finding that down-converting 4K to HD produces excellent results.

But if you forget about BD discs and do what many of us are doing these days and playing both HD and 4K footage directly on our HDTVs either directly into the HDTV or via a BD or other player, then you can use higher quality settings than are allowed for BD discs. You can use 50P or 60P footage at full HD or 4K frame sizes, in other words, and in the format which comes out of the camera. In this regard, XAVC-S is a more recent format which gives high quality in a smaller file size, so would be preferable. However, at these levels of high qwuality, I would suspect any difference in quality between MPEG-4 AVC 4K or XAVC-S MP4 HD would not be detectable by the human eye.

Personally, I have all my HD edited videos these days either on USB stick drives or external hard drives. My HDTV is a bit older, so I have to plug these drives into my BD player or WD streaming player. But the results are wonderful, and with full 50P (as I live in a PAL country) the result is noticeably better than BDs using 50i... and in this case, while small, the difference in quality *is* noticeable to the human eye!

[brouillette]

Ken,
thanks for that great explanation that clarifies a lot for me ! Now I understand why many don’t burn BD discs anymore and go for the digital video file on USB or HDD.

Based on your input, some more questions:

(1) So do I understand that currently the best standard Bluray burned DISC quality is 1080p-30p to be playable on commercial BD players ? If so, why is the VSX9 SHARE>DISC>BLURAY >PROPERTIES(gear icon) show only 29.97 fps “Upper Field First” which is interlaced (and not “Frame -based” that is progressive ) and why VSX9 does not allow selection of better quality 30p instead ?

(2) If I render to a video file (AVC/H.264 1080-60p) instead of burning a BD disc , will I lose CHAPTERS created in the timeline ? Any way to create/preserve chapters in a digital video file like AVC or MPEG-4 ?

(3) I guess MENUS cannot be created anymore (as embedded in BD disc creation authoring) ?

(4) My HDTV is not 4K yet (currently Full HD 1080-60p max) . My new camera can be set to 4K-30p or 1080-60p. Many positive comments on internet that 4K downscale to 1080p is as good as 1080p (sometimes even better due to higher Luma/Chroma data ) . Any downside if I set my camera generally to shoot 4K-30p and then render in AVC/H.268 1080-60p video file for now , but then positioning myself for future remastering of my videos to 4K by having 4K camera videos already?

Many thanks for your help !

Guy

[Ken Berry]

I have to confess I was going from memory when I spoke about the BD-compatible formats, and I have now checked the actual specifications and found that I misled you. Abject apologies! Here is the full list of compatible formats from Wikipedia.

You will see that 25P and 29.97P (or 30P) are not included -- although apparently if you burn such clips to a Blu-Ray disc as data rather than in a BD structure, and have a Blu-Ray player which will accept the disc (as most do these days), it will play. But I stress not in a BD structure. So forget about menus/chapters.

So in other words, the only fully progressive (P) video which can be burnt to Blu-Ray is either 1280 x 720 which can be either 23.97/24P (normally called cinema speed) or 50/60P; and 23.97/24P if the video is 1920 x 1080 or 1440 x 1080.

You will, however, note that this list indicates that 4K video can be burnt to Blu-Ray -- though I suspect not yet by Video Studio -- at full 50/60P. I am unable to account for the fact that the list shows also 25P but not 30P.

I'm afraid I simply don't know the answer to your question (2). Perhaps someone else might...

Regarding (3), that is right -- no fancy menus. However, when you plug a USB stick or drive into a HDTV or BD player, it will bring up a simple menu of what is on the drive, so you can still select what you want to play.

Regarding (4), as noted above, you can apparently burn 4K video to Blu-Ray (with a question mark over 30P). I can't talk about X10 as I have not yet lashed out to buy the Blu-Ray module for it. But with X9 the burning module does not accept 4K video for burning to BD, and I assume X10 does not do so either. I may need to ask Corel about that. X9 and X10 can, however, produce both mpeg-4 and AVCHD in 4K format at both 25/30P and 50/60P.

[brouillette]

Thanks Ken for clarifying !

You have been educating me for the past couple of days and I have read a lot on internet on that topic since.

As an aside, it’s sad that Bluray disc burning cannot keep up with the pace. I personally liked burning BD discs because of menus, chapters, direct printing on it of a family picture and title, insert it in a binder along with other travel movies, being its own physical backup, but mainly the fact that you can hand out copies as gifts and souvenir after family and friends have watched it together with us.

Anyway , though I now understand the limitations of BD discs, and other USB and HDD quality alternatives, if I do still want to burn BD discs, can I assume :

(1) As currently the best BD 1080 resolution boils down to 60i (and because VS burns only BD at 1080-60i), am I better to set my camera to 1080-30p videos ; it seems that conversion from 30p to 60i is made by duplicating each frame and then extracting the upper field of the 60i from the first frame, then the lower field from the second frame (which is the same image as same frame duplicated from the 30p), as opposed to setting my camera to 1080-60i or 1080-60p which would result in the upper field taken from the first frame and the lower field taken from the second, which is shot 1/60th of a second later and therefore could result in a “jagged or comb effect” according to articles on internet ?

(2) The same logic would apply if I set my new camera videos to 4K-30p and then render in VS to BD disc 1080-60i , until I remaster my VSP project to 4K rendering in the future once I get a 4K HDTV ?

Does that make sense ? Any thoughts on this ?

Guy