Hello,

I'm very interrested in editing HDV-Files from my Sony HC7E with Studio 12 and burn a BluRay-Discs (MPEG2).

Has anybody already experience? What about the disc-menues, can they be edited as easy as DVD-menues? I want to play the BluRay-Discs on my PS3. 

Which BluRay writer works well? Which media for PS3?

Thanks,

QEK 

I have had great success with my LG BD burner with competing software. LG reccomends Verbatim media for best results.  Never an issue playing on my PS3.

As for S12 don't know yet since I "pre-ordered" my upgrade on May 29th and it is being delivered via a snail on downers.

Iam working on my first project now. I have a full 2 hour movie edited with motion menus etc all ready to go.
Last night I set up to burn to Blu-Ray on my LG burner. I put it on safe mode (create file then burn)
start time 10:30 (all the rendereing had been done in the back ground)
I got up about 4am (washroom)
the create file looked like it was complete but still writing to disk.
I got up at 7:30 still writing to disk. Iam not sure if the info bar had moved at all.
I figure there must be something wrong so re-booted.
The disk would'nt work (which I figured anyway)
The create file worked as I found the movie in my documents and I run the stream file and it worked great. Well except for a mistake I made. I guess I forgot to adust a volume setting at the end of the movie and I had no sound at the end.
Anyhow Iam re-creating the movie to-day. So I put it on Creat the movie only. Then when I get home I shall try Burn movie from previous content.
I'll let you know how it goes...

I too am working on a 2 hour long project with menus.  This is primarily all AVCHD footage.  Takes quite a while to load the project to the timeline even on my pretty strong machine. 

One of the first things I did when I finally received my upgrade was to burn  a BD-RE of a BDMV I had created with VS11.5.  This worked great.  Only took about 20 minutes to complete the burn of approx 13.5 GB to a Sony BD-RE using my LG burner. 

I have made a couple of frisbies when using Memorex BD-Rs prior to receiving studio. Actually my LG burner died and was replaced under warranty by LG.  The LG phone tech specifically stated to not use Memorex brand media as it has some unusual structure and may have contributed to the drives demise. Who knows for sure how true this is but I certainly am going to avoid this brand disc. It was recommended that I use verbatim media for best results according to LG's tests.  I have found this to be good advice.  2x speed rated media actually burns at the full 6x speed the drive is capable of with flawless results. 

I am trying to find an good explaination of the difference in the two formats that are available for rendering of BDMV within Studio12.

I shoot personal family stuff with my Sony SR-7 in AVCHD and proffesional stuff in HDV for weddings and such.  I presume the two presets could relate to the formats used by the cameras.   But a little clarification could go a long way. 

My research has lead me to understand (at least I think I understand) AVCHD was meant as a final delivery format and therefor makes it difficult to edit.  I shoot with my SR-7 at the highest bitrate available, 15000.  The default "best quality" bitrate in Studio is 25000.  One would think setting the custom output rate tomatch the original footage might keep the footage from being re-encoded and subject to possible quality reduction.  This is just my theory.  Allowing it to re-encode at 25000 would net no improvement since you could only be as good as the original.  That is unless the re-encoding process is always slightly lossy like with JPEG images. 

I have experimented a little by starting a make movie render to an image using strickly AVCHD clips then watching the frames being written.  Keeping the bitrate the same as the original or setting for best quality seems to make no difference in render speed versus going for "best quality".  However,if I change to BDMV (MPEG) I notice the render seems to move much faster but still slow.  not even 1:1. 

My next test will be to start the same render to image using HDV clips using the two preset.  My guess is that HDV to BDMV(Mpeg) will be super speedy and BDMV(AVC) will be super slow. 

more to come

Ok,

I burned the blu-ray dvd tonight, using studio 12, burn previous content and the burn was succesful.
The video turned out not bad but...
The menu I made looked a little washed out and the chapter icons did'nt look crisp like High Def.
I was 'nt happy about the quality of the movie in comparison to the same movie I burned in HD-DVD (using studio 11). I dont think that is Studio 12 's fault I think its just Blu_Ray. Even though both disks were burned at 25,000 kbits/sec the blue-ray is'nt as sharp,clear or jaw dropping the same way hd-dvd hits you."
Dang it, wish the world would turn back to hd-dvd, it's a real pity but, we lost the war there.
I found it especially bad when there was a bit in the film where I was panning, even though I panned slowly and used a tri-pod. It looked like blu-ray did,nt know how to handle the information and everyhing become a bit blocky and pixelized.
Anyhow I guess we are stuck with this now and we shall have to adust and hope things get better.

Overall opinion of S12.... Love it, best value for money out there

Ok another update..

Well I changed a few settings.
First I switched off background rendering.
I changed 'Use this codec for background rendering' to DV:best for DV tape. Just in case.
Deleted the auxillary files in 'Project preferences'
In the Make Movie settings I changed the video quality from Best Quality to custom and selected the 25000 kbits/sec.
ticked 'always re-encode the whole movie'
and selected create disk content and then burn to disk.
Pressed create disk, clicked ok to erase disk, clicked on the folder for the create disk contents.
Then I crossed my fingers and went to work.
When I came home everything was done the disk turned out very clear all the pixelisation was gone almost as good as hd-dvd.
Iam very happy with the result.

Ok completed my 2nd movie using a complete new film, used motion menus,I used the same formula as above and it turned out very good. It's pretty hard to tell the difference between the same movie I burned in HD-DVD.

I have still to try the complete project from capturing the film from my HD camera right through to the finished product.

What I have done so far...

(Pre studio 12) Used studio 11.2
captured the film from my camera.
cut it up and got rid of the junk
added a title
added the transitions
got rid of the unwanted sound  in different parts of the film and added music, some smart music, some mp3.
made the film into HDV2 1080i

Brought the new film into studio 12 and divided the film into 240 second clips
checked through the clips to see if they were a good place to start and end, some clips I would shorten or extend and combine to find a desirable positions.
Then I would add my menu and adjust the thumbnails
add a 2nd menu at the beginning (to choose go direct to movie or menus.)
add some music for the menus
switched off background rendering.
I changed 'Use this codec for background rendering' to DV:best for DV tape. Just in case.
Deleted the auxiliary files in 'Project preferences'
In the Make Movie settings I changed the video quality from Best Quality to custom and selected the 25000 kbits/sec.
ticked 'always re-encode the whole movie'

I have had complete success using this method twice in a row

I've tried jasm's tips but no luck on a BD-RE for S12 Ultimate. I have a project that will burn to standard DVD with no problem but I get export errors when trying to burn to BD-RE or even BD-R.

Any ideas?

Joe 

I got the export errors also when trying my first Blu-ray last night.

What I did (to get it to work) was wait for the background rendering to finish (green line above the timeline turns orange when it's completed - took a good 20 minutes or so for a 4 minute slide-show Montage with about 50 pictures. Since background rendering was on, that's what I had to do. Anytime I tried to burn anything immediately, it gave the the export error. I had to wait for it to render the entire timeline - sit on my hands and be patient - then try the burn command. Seems that just going to the make movie tab started the timeline to change colors and proceed on it's own. Wait until it's done before clicking on the create command

I'm now trying it with background rendering turned-off. Seems slower.

The Verbatim RE Blu-ray I created using the steps I outlined played on my PC but would not play in my Samsung blu-ray player connected to my TV. Perhaps it doesn't like the RE format? I'll try a regular Blu-ray later on tonite.

I hope this helps.

Tony....Quad Core 6600 with 512Mb video card. 4 Gb RAM total using XP home. LG Blu-ray burner.

Thanks for the info Tony. I also tried waiting for the background rendering to finish but I still got the errors. In fact, while on the Edit tab I have waited for the background rendering to finish (all orange timeline). But when I click on the Make Movie tab it seems to lose some of the rendering for a few clips. Sometimes it will show that it is re-rendering everything and the entire timeline turns orange and sometimes it starts re-rendering clips but doesn't re-render some transitions. I'm not sure what is up with that. If it does not render those transitions I've tried just clicking Create Disc and have the transitions render on the fly (that failed) and I also tried closing Studio, relaunching it and reloading the project and that allows those transitions to re-render. However, I still get the export error when I click Create Disc.

I'm thinking about your comment that anytime you tried to burn anything immediately, it gave you the export error. I did have success twice now on burning Blu-ray projects but even though I've been keeping notes on what I've done, I don't know what I did differently to make those work. They worked after repeated attempts at creating the disc. 

Last night I ran through a few tries and they all failed. In those trials the entire timeline did background render but once I saw that the timeline was orange and that my processor wasn't maxxed out, THEN I clicked the Create Disc button. However, each try failed. Maybe I need to wait longer. Also, I watched the rendering process after clicking Create Disc (not fun) and the first time, it got halfway through the menu and then failed. The second time it got through the menu but failed right after. The third time it got through the menu and then some of the video and then failed. With that said, I'm starting to think that the "waiting" is the way to go. I'm going out of town today and won't be back until tomorrow around Noon. I'm going to load my project in a few minutes, allow it to background render and then sit until I get back tomorrow. I'll click Create Disc and see what happens. I'll post my findings here.

One final thought about my issue where when I switch from the Edit tab to the Make Movie tab and the timeline needs to re-render some clips. Maybe there is a bug in Studio that makes it LOOK as if the project is rendered under the Edit tab but it really isn't as evidenced by the green timeline when switching to the Make Movie tab. Maybe Studio DOES need a little more time to render the project even after showing an orange timeline. Again, the waiting might be the issue so I'll run my test tonight. Thanks!

Joe
 

In fact, while on the Edit tab I have waited for the background rendering to finish (all orange timeline). But when I click on the Make Movie tab it seems to lose some of the rendering for a few clips. Sometimes it will show that it is re-rendering everything and the entire timeline turns orange and sometimes it starts re-rendering clips but doesn't re-render some transitions. I'm not sure what is up with that.

I don't know about AVCHD, but I do see some of this while rendering MPEG.

It sure looks to me like Studio isn't always using the background-rendering that it does during Edit when it gets to Make.

If you look at the created Auxiliary Files, it almost appears like the background rendering during edit is done to "preview" resolution, and the background rendering in Make is done to "final" resolution -- but only on SOME of the video, as it does seem to differentiate between transitions and effects, resized video, and "should be untouched" video.

Basically, what I'm seeing is that there isn't much benefit to background rendering during editing,  except for making preview of complex sequences more "smooth" after background rendering completes.  Those same sequences are likely to be re-background-rendered when entering Make mode.

One thing *I* wonder about:  I don't see why background rendering is even DONE in Make mode -- you'd think that you'd simply go to Make, click the create button, and Studio would render what it thinks it should render, and copy already-rendered sequences on compatible already-rendered sequences.  If you go into Make and background rendering immediately kicks off, then even doing the old "File/Delete Auxiliary Files" to purge all aux files may not actually purge all aux files, as background rendering will just automatically kick off again, even though you're no longer in Edit mode.  Maybe.

But in short, I do think that you are seeing more background rendering than we saw in previous versions.  I know I am, anyhow.

BittMann

I agree about the background rendering thing - I was amazed to see how long I had to wait for that process to finish in the Make Movie tab before I could issue any command to Studio (12). Then again, I'm new to this HD editing thing and perhaps just need to adjust my expectations - and accept that my Quad Core ain't so hot when compared to just SD - it's the bare minimum now it seems.

Still don't know why my RE BD won't play in my Blu-Ray player and now every burn I try with the "used" RE BD disk fails in Studio - like it's not a rewritable. Is there some re-initialization or reformatting I need to perform to "re-use" the BD disk?

Let's keep this discussion going so we can find a repeatable successful procedure for BD. Seems like so much of a "hit & miss" in Studio (BTW - that Montage feature IS pretty slick ).

Tony

OK folks, I just authored my first Blu-Ray disk using Studio 12 - and it played on my Samsung Blu-Ray player . Nice quality images with 5.1 sound. I just let the background rendering do it's thing - and had the resolution set to 1920x1080/60i. I think I was using 1400 before. Anyway, it's working.

Oh, and I found out that I needed to manually erase the RE BD to be able to re-use it (duh me) - right click on the Blu-Ray drive (in My Computer) and use the InstantBurn Erase option.

The background rendering times seem to vary all over the place, depending on the image source, transitions, etc (to be expected I guess).

Ok, now what camcorder do I get to provide the best images for BD? Digital photos are kewl, but now let's get funky....

Tony

Update. I set up the project at Noon on Tuesday and let it run through the background rendering until I got back home on Wednesday at about 3pm. When I clicked on Create Disc and the pop up box opened for me to choose my disc image folder, I clicked Ok and Studio hung up (shocking). I had to kill Studio and then relaunch. When I reloaded the project and clicked Create Disc, everything seemed good for a quite a while. It was writing the frames for a while and when it got to around 20000 out of 29000, the export error showed up again. I tried to just create the disc again but got the export error immediately. I had to close Studio (the regular way) and relaunch it.

However, NOW when I have reloaded the project and clicked on Settings under the Make Movie tab, it states that no disc writer can be found. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the export error or not. I had it under the option of Create Disc Content but Don't Burn so it "shouldn't" matter. And with the disc writer missing, create but don't burn is my only option. I read a post on the forum about deleting the Make Disc registry folder so that Studio "re-learns" it when relaunched but that didn't work. I'm trying the create disc process again right now even with this error.

Tony...what settings are you using? Did you let the entire project background render? Are you creating an MPEG or AVC image? And did you check "Re-encode entire movie" under Settings?

Joe 

Ok, so I'm trying to keep track of the steps required to perform a successful burn to Blu-ray and I'm not there just yet. As noted in my previous post today I was getting export errors after letting the project background render for an entire day. After getting those export errors I decided to check the box to re-encode the entire movie and create the disc content but not burn. I did this and the content was created successfully. However, the project still isn't perfect. I tried burning both an MPEG and AVC image type and the results were exactly the same in regards to where the errors were. The errors were a few flashes of video frames and the photo slideshow with pan & zoom effects stuttered on each picture.

So now I tried to delete the aux files and create the image using the re-encode entire movie option. Another export error on this. I'm going to try to leave the computer while it renders in the background (under the Make Movie tab), check the box for re-encode the entire movie and create an MPEG image. I have it set to best quality as well which defaults to 25mbps.

I also found my issue with the Sony BD-RE disc I was using. Even though it was BRAND NEW I had to use my Roxio Premier Blu-ray software to erase the disc. My content did burn successfully and these BD-REs erase in mere seconds. Nice....

Joe
 

Settings:

Hardware Accel ON

Background Rendering ON

Set Codec Automatically: MPEG-2

HD 1920x1080/60i

Under Make Movie tab: Settings... button next to Create disc.... 

(under Make Disk tab):

Blu-Ray disk

Custom

Dolby 5.1 

25,000 Kbits/sec

Create disk content then burn to disk checked

Write Speed: Auto

Let me know if you need more. Again, I used a Verbatim RE BD. Erased it prior to re-using as I described in previous post,

Tony

Thanks for posting your settings Tony. My settings are exactly the same except I chose to create the disc content but NOT burn it. The reason is because the last time I tried this the burning failed for some reason. Also, I checked the box to re-encode the entire movie. It seems that even if I allow the background rendering to do its job, the project still fails when trying to create the image. But as long as I do both (background rendering and re-encode entire movie) it works. One other thing is that my page file is turned off. I got this tip from another post on this forum (THANKS!) and since then, Studio is running MUCH better.

Ok, I've had 2 successful renders tonight and here is the common thread between the two:

• During any editing of the project I had the background rendering OFF (I only have a dual core processor so this is a must during editing)
  
• Once the project is ready I go to the Make Movie tab
• Delete the aux files
• Turn background rendering ON and wait until the entire timeline is orange
  
• Under the Settings button:
• Blu-ray disc
• Dolby 5.1
• Best quality (defaults the bit rate to 25000)
• Create disc content but don't burn
• Always re-encode entire movie
• Write speed: Auto

So Tony, it looks like we're both on the same page except for the re-encode entire movie option. For the successful burns you've had, has your video had any issue likes I've had? Jittery pans, video frame flashes, pan & zoom effects on pictures not working? Since this "checklist" is working for me I'm going to stick to it. Something must have hiccupped during the first render job because the 2nd time it rendered perfectly. The entire video looks great. I have a motion menu (no motion thumbnails) along with music for the menu. I am VERY satisfied with this burn. I would like to try the progressive option under the Make Disc settings. Now that I have a good disc image saved maybe that'll be my next test.

Sorry,

forgot to mention that I did use Always re-encode entire movie. I don't have any menus but I am using the Montage feature (which I sure hope takes a lot of recources ) otherwise It's gonna be slow going even w/o Montage.

Glad you're having success. HD sure looks nice don't it ?

What's your source video (file types) and where (what cam) did it come from?

Tony

Man...HD looks just awesome. I find myself just staring at parts of the picture in awe of how clear and detailed the images are. My HD is from a Sony HDR-SR11 camera which records in AVCHD format. I've always been a Sony fan and I'm coming from a standard def Sony DV videocamera. This HD camera is no disappointment. I like the functionality, feel, and it has an excellent build quality. The AVCHD file sizes are much lower than what I had anticipated, which is nice because it is going to take a long time to fill my 1TB hard drive I bought to store the HD content. And I really LOVE not having to deal with tapes anymore. You can record in full 1920x1080 HD or a lower HD level at 1440x1080 along with 2 SD modes. I did run some tests between the 2 HD recording levels and found that when you have access to and see the 1920x1080 video...there's just no way you can record and anything less than full HD. And with 7 hours HD recording time on the 60GB hard drive, I'm not even CLOSE to filling it up before transferring the video to the PC.

It's been a tough road getting the editing process to where I am now, but man...have I learned A LOT. I'm not new to video editing nor am I new to Studio (I've been a Studio user for about 6 years now going back to Studio 8). This HD editing and AVCHD format and little ins and outs can be exhausting and frustrating. But when you get a clean final product...in HD...it's sooooo worth it.

Joe
 

Thanks for the feedback Joe. I'm about to buy an "HD" camcorder and am still learning - which one: HDV, AVCHD, does it matter? Hard drive (what do you do if it's full and you're on vacation with 4 days left?), DVD, Tapes....on and on....

Sony, Canon.....

Will Studio input the files from all the above easily?

Tony