Timeline contains 7 prerendered HDV2 1440x1080 mpegs.
Total lenght of HD project is 160 mins.
Project contains 1 main menu and 2 submenus..

Goal: Make BD disc image on HDD and burn to 25gb BD-RE Blu-ray disc with LG GGW-H20L in a second fase.

First observation: S12 has no Automatic option and is hence not able to automatically set a bitrate that results in optimal use of BD disc space. Quite a shortcoming I'd say.   

So I manually set bitrate to 18mbps. Disc-o-meter says 160 mins used and 3 mins left with 72% quality. File size 47.1gb
Thought let me play it save and I lowered the bitrate to 17mbps, resulting in S12 reporting 9 mins left and 68% quality. File size 47.1gb

Rendering ok, BDMV folder created after almost 7 hrs. (sys specs in profile)
Next step: burn to BD disc from previously made image.
Result: Altough a BD-RE disc is inserted, S12 is not able to burn and it keeps saying it needs a writable or re-writable disc ....

Let me try it with Nero8.
Nero8 reports BDMV folder can not be burned to disc because it's 28.5gb and doesn't fit on a 25gb disc.
I browse to BDMV folder and Windows confirms it's 28.5 gb.

Why didn't S12 report that the disc image it's was going to create would be bigger than 25gb?
Why did disc-o-meter reported 9 mins left while in fact the image was 28.5gb?
Why did S12 say it was not able to burn because of no appropriate disc in burner while the problem was in fact an image that didn't fit on the disc?
Is it acceptable that Studio even starts making a 28.5gb BDMV folder while it's supposed to create an image that fits on the 25gb disc that's been selected under Make settings?
7 hours of rendering time lost ... and then Nero8 told me wath S12 should have warned me for 7 hours earlier...

BTW, I have it now set to 16mbs with, dixit Studio 12, 16 mins left, 64% quality.
It's rendering for over 3 hours now, 150,000 frames of 219,000 finished.
Hope the image is under 25gb this time.

Anybody with a/the formula to calculate things myself before I start rendering?

I have the same burner and the same problems....

I'm getting a file that is too big to burn on a BD-RE rewriteable Blu-ray disc too. (I had set a lower bitrate because my file was 133 minutes and a 25 GB BD-RE in S12 has a maximum of 120 minutes @ 100% quality. 

I also tried to burn to a BD-R disc and it failed, the disc is ruined...that gets expensive quickly.

Any ideas??

plemmens:

Anybody with a/the formula to calculate things myself before I start rendering?

An estimation would go like this:

The free space for the video is about 23GByte (if you do not have a lot of motion menus). For your 219,000 frames in PAL (8760 seconds) this translates to about 22.5 Mbps.

That value includes the audio stream, padding, system information and stream headers. To be on the safe side, the video should take 75 to 80 percent.

In that case, you have approx 17 Mbps for video.

I hope that helps and I will forward this problem to engineering.

I recently created a BD disc image whose source project used a mix of 1440x1080 AVCHD, stills, various title frames, transitions, and music, and two 640x480 MPEG video overlays sized to be inside a title frame.  I set the BD-MPEG (not BD-AVC) disc image output bitrate at the maximum that would fit on the disc, which was about 22 mbps.  That left about 3 minutes "free." 

 When I previewed the stream files on the hard drive disc image, the first two chapters appeared fine.  However, the third one had mysteriously morphed into standard definition, with a smaller pixel size and letterboxing.  Its sound vanished too.  Although the original discometer reading indicated that the output size would be a little under 25 GB, the actual disc image created was only about 17 GB in size.

If the total disc space truely needs exceeds the amount Studio says it needs, does something trigger the downsizing?

I may soon try this all over again.  But, since the processing time is significant, it's worth asking for an expert opinion.

Precisely the same project burned fine to standard definition DVD at 70% quality (6 mpbs?), but of course without high definition.

mpingel:

An estimation would go like this:

The free space for the video is about 23GByte (if you do not have a lot of motion menus). For your 219,000 frames in PAL (8760 seconds) this translates to about 22.5 Mbps.

That value includes the audio stream, padding, system information and stream headers. To be on the safe side, the video should take 75 to 80 percent.

In that case, you have approx 17 Mbps for video.

I hope that helps and I will forward this problem to engineering.

Thanks a lot for your answer mpingel.

No motion menus, nor animated menu buttons here.

75% of 23gb is a bit over 17mbps.

It looks like Disc-o-meter is using the same math but ... as posted earlier, I did set that figure and the resulting BDMV folder was 28.5gb.

Thanks for escalating the issue to engineering. 

... the story goes on ...

After deleting aux files, setting bitrate at 16mbps (S12 reports 16 mins left on disc) and another 7 hours of rendering I again ended up with a BDMV that is to big to burn on a 25gb BD disc.

In fact, with 28.5gb in the newly created BDMV folder, it has exactly the same size as the one created with bitrate set at 17mbps.

There is definitally something wrong here.

I played the image with PowerDVD and PowerDVD reports a VBR of 18 to 25mbps depending on the content of the movie.

Questions to Pinnacle:
-How comes that the actual bitrate used is much higher than the one I set?
-What is the 16mbps I set supposed te be? The max bitrate? The average bitrate? The ??? bitrate.
-What the hell do I have to do to create a BDMV folder from my 160 mins project that fits on a 25gb BD disc?

As you have found out, anytime you adjust the bit rate, S12 produces a Blu-ray file that is too big.

 
The one time I had success was when I used the automatic setting and not the adjustable bit rate. My project then was smaller though.

 
I hope they fix this quickly as I have work to do!!
 

I suspect this problem may be a reappearance of a bug noted with Studio 11 projects that would not recognize changes in bitrate in order to fit on a larger or smaller disc.  Once a certain disc size gets coded into a Make Movie designation, this impedes subsequent efforts to change it.   See:

http://forums.pinnaclesys.com/forums/permalink/166700/166700/ShowThread.aspx#166700

It will be helpful to hear back on the matter.

I have numerous Studio 11 projects, based on AVCHD, which burned to SD DVD, which I'd now like to burn to BD  in HD with menus, using Studio 12, but note this (and other) setbacks.

Some additional info about how the project is set up:
-As posted earlier, project has 3 menus.
-M1 is at start of TL, immediatly followed by M2
-M3 is placed some 120 mins into the TL, after the main movie.

M1 has 3 text buttons:
-B1 = Play movie, it does start the main movie and plays through the end.
-B2 = Select a scene, it is linked to M2 that has 2 pages with 12 chapter buttons each.
-B3 = Extra stuff, it is linked to M3 that has 2 text buttons:
*B1 of M3 is linked to a 26 mins long prerendered to HDV2 slide show.
*B2 of M3 is linked to 14 mins of extra stuff that has not been edited in any way. 

I had a closer look at the Stream folder.
It contains 4 .m2ts files:
-0000.m2ts = 22.1gb = 1hr57mins21sec = main movie (has 24 chapter points)
-0001.m2ts = 5.82 gb = 26mins30sec = slide show
-0002.m2ts = 485mb = 2mins 16sec = Extra stuff - Problem: This extra stuff chapter is 14 mins on TL, of which only a bit over 2 mins is actually in the stream. Almost 12 mins are missing.
-00100.m2ts = 23.6 mb = seems to be the menus but is hardly playable with any mediaplayer on system (MPC, WMP, PowerDVD, Nero Showtime)

Some additional thoughts here:
-Could it be that S12 disc-o-meter gets confused about project size because of M3 not being placed on TL immediatly after M2 but after chapter 24 of main movie, i.e. almost 120 mins into the project?
-Why didn't S12 process the last 12 mins of the TL?

-Could it be that S12 disc-o-meter gets confused about project size because of M3 not being placed on TL immediatly after M2 but after chapter 24 of main movie, i.e. almost 120 mins into the project?

I again deleted temp files, kept video bitrate at 16mbps, changed audio from DD5.1 to DD 2 channel, moved M3 to front of TL so immediately after M1 and M2 and let it make a new BDMV folder.

Another 7 hours later I ended up with a 28.2gb sized image folder.

This is driving me crazy.

Lucky I still have SS available in this S12 build. 

Thanks JKoch for the link to that other thread, it's one (of many ) I missed.

I didn't yet "play" with that registry workaround and because of Jacques reporting that it doesn't solve the prob, I have no intention to do so.

To summarize things, I see 2 probs reported here:
1. S12 miscalculates (image) disc size of (longer???) projects.
2. Changing bitrates just does nothing when project is longer than xxx mins.

... or am I missing other thing(s)???

Regards from a near to frustrated S12 user.

Two possible workarounds (until something else works):

1)  Try reburning the image with only one menu in the project.

2)  "Select" the entire timeline, chose "copy" on the pulldown menu, open a new project, "paste" everything to the clean timeline, and then go to Make Movie and try to set up fresh parameters for the BD.  The select, copy, and paste procedure might take some time, but work.

 The cost: 14 hours.  The only other alternative is to buy yourself a 50 GB BD-DL-RW and experiment.   It should be a rewriteable one, though, since I'd bet the disc won't play or will look bad.  Every hear of "Murphy's Law"?

I was about to burn a new image of my pending project, but it is so close to the 25 GB disk size in the original 22 mbps rate, that lowering it to use less disc space might incur the same problem you face.

Meanwhile, curious to learn if any other users have burned a large (> 20 GB) BD project with menus sucessfully to a 25 GB BD.

Thanks so much for the suggested workarounds, ... however,

1) ... I've designed it to have 3 menus and so it will be.

2) I've had so much hassle with this project (render stops whithout any message, render/calculation errors, crashes to desktop aso) ... but ok, copy/paste into a new project, that's something I am going to give a chance in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, curious to learn if any other users have burned a large (> 20 GB) BD project with menus sucessfully to a 25 GB BD.

Yep ... I am even curious if any guy at Pinnacle was able to achieve that goal. 

plemmens:

To summarize things, I see 2 probs reported here:
1. S12 miscalculates (image) disc size of (longer???) projects.
2. Changing bitrates just does nothing when project is longer than xxx mins.

... or am I missing other thing(s)???

Yes, I missed two more:

3. I no longer have a "Automatic" setting.
4. S12 does not process last part of project (12mins missing in final movie).

Nuts ... still
Followed the advice given earlier and copied the whole TL into a new project and saved under a different name.

Tried to make disc and saw an error message popping up saying "%?? the file already exists, do you want to proceed" or something like that.

Known error message due to corrupt menu structure. Looked at TL and yes, all chapter points gone, only one RTM left on TL.

Rebuild the menu structure and let S12 once again do it's thing. 16mbps bitrate, Disc-o-meter still reports the same figures as it did before and again says 16 mins left on disc. 

Another 7 hours later .... still sames problems:

BDMV folder still 28.5gb
Last part of TL missing in the stream files. 

I give up on it and am looking for another app to make my BD's.

This should be an easy problem for Pinnacle to replicate.  One need simply throw a generous mix of AVCHD, stills, music, effects, titles, and transitions on a time line, maybe about 20 GB total, then create some menus and chapter links, next try to burn a BD disk image compatible with the 25 GB size of a BD-SL, and finally test whether it plays back on another machine.  Do the diskometer readings tell the truth?  Do adjustments to the bitrate function?

Picking up where plemmens left off, I will try to export units of my project to HDV-MPEG2, then import those files into a very simple sequence of large clips, set up the menus, and links, and then try again to burn a disc image whose size conforms to what the diskometer says and which (based on the size of the HDV-MPEG2 files themselves) ought to be compatible with the space on a 25 GB BD-SL.  This will not be a "fix," but may demonstrate whether the problem relates mainly to complex timelines above a certain size.   Maybe, or maybe not.

If anyone can claim to have burned a big BD project with multiple types of content and menus, please describe your projects and any issues you encountered.  Thanks.

Two questions for plemmens:

1) Did any application yield a BD that would play back on just about any ordinary BD player and not solely on a machine with a particular brand firmware or software?

2) How does the image quality compare to the original?

JKoch:

Two questions for plemmens:

1) Did any application yield a BD that would play back on just about any ordinary BD player and not solely on a machine with a particular brand firmware or software?

2) How does the image quality compare to the original?

Hi JKoch,

I only very recently bought the LG BD burner. So far I didn't yet burn any project on BD. Back in S11 times I did however burn BD content on a normal red laser DVD.
I tested those discs in several BD players, mostly whithout much problems.

Also the quality was superb when I watched those discs on a Sony full HD TV set.

I did post about my experiences on these boards. Let's see if I can find the thread concerned.

BTW in order to be able to burn the long project on BD, I just this morning (re)installed the 2008 Plus version of one of those other NLE's that support burning to BD incl. menus.

Added later: It looks like that other thread no longer exists.
The link in this post should lead to it but it no longer does.

Yesterday I "copy/pasted" the first 118 mins of the original 160mins project into a new project.

I added a main menu and a chapter menu (2 pages with 12 buttons each) and this time it made a perfect Blu-ray disc.

Bitrate was set 23000kbps - quality 92%

Resulting BDMV folder measures 22gb.

As reported earlier in this thread by another user, it looks like S12 has no problem with "under 120 mins projects" but it seems like it's not able to fit "over 2 hours projects" on a 25gb BD. 

BTW, I still do not see an "Automatic" entry in the "Video quality/disc usage" drop down list.

Anybody knows if I am supposed to have such an entry?

I do have one for DVD but not for Blu-ray.

plemmens:

... the first 118 mins of the original 160mins project into a new project. ...Bitrate was set 23000kbps - quality 92%  ...Resulting BDMV folder measures 22gb.

 It is curious that a BDMV folder with video that lasts 118 minutes and uses 88% of the disc space yields 92% quality.

What was the native bitrate of most of the source video?  Given that a 4.7 gb DVD-SL holds about 30 minutes of 17 mbps AVCHD video (plus menu, etc), one would think that a 118 minute project would use roughly 4-times that space or 19 gb.  One would think that similar video at 23 mbps would require 23 / 17 or 35% more, meaning just about 25 gb for 188 minutes.

When you play the BD on the Nerovision player, what readings does it give for the bitrate and other aspects?

Your revised project was a few minutes shorter than the one I tried to create at 22 mbps that the diskometer indicated would use about 24.x gb, but whose disc image came out smaller and with the final part of the project oddly corrupted.

Given the high cost of BD media, users can hardly be blamed for reserving the discs for large projects with maximum quality and bitrate.

No, there is no "automatic" maximum quality / disc space option BD discs.  It would be good to add one, and also to clarify or fix the constraints on larger projects which confuse the diskometer presently.

What dis-o-meter names quality isn't really quality, it just says that the choosen bitrate is a percentage of the max of 25mbps. I set 23 and that is 92% of 25mbps. I can imagine that real quality (whatever that is supposed to be )does not necessary changes in a linear way with linear changings in bitrate settings.
Besides, actual bitrate used is variabel and not fixed. It's depending on the video content. Fast moving parts will have high bitrate while stills or static titles or slowly moving sequences will have a much lower rate.
Studio uses single pass VBR and that makes it hard to estimate with great accuracy the final file size/disc usage. 
I am not sure if it's the case but I can imagine that the bitrate that one sets is seen by Studio as the average to use over the entire content of the timeline.
The bitrate of the captured HDV 1440x1080 HDV source files from Sony HC3 cam is rather stable and ranges from 24.56 to 25.82 mbps.
The actual bitrate on the BD disc goes from 6mbps for static sequences up to 26mbps for fast moving parts.

WinXP properties window reports BDMV folder is 21.9gb or 23,550,222,512 bytes.
The 2 menus take 25 secs on the TL.
Total TL lenght incl. menus is 117mins 44sec 11fr.

I'd also like to see a "Automatic" option in bitrate setting drop down menu.
I have a strange feeling that the problem(s) reported here and specificly the miscalculating-with-larger-than-120 mins-timelines was known by Pinnacle and forced them to remove the "Automatic" menu entry.   

mpingel:

I hope that helps and I will forward this problem to engineering.

Any news yet from engineering on the problem(s)?

plemmens:

mpingel:

I hope that helps and I will forward this problem to engineering.

Any news yet from engineering on the problem(s)?

The problem is that the encoder always uses 20 mbps as average bitrate. In other words: The settings you change are ignored.

This has been fixed internally. I have no release date for a possible update, but as you know from a well known other discussion thread there will be one.

mpingel,

Thanks a lot for that info.

Hope the patch that fixes this issue doesn't remove SS.

plemmens:

Hope the patch that fixes this issue doesn't remove SS.

But a pitty if the patch gets held hostage to the SS issue, which involves contract terms and $ due an outside vendor, and could take time.  SS users probably won't lose the option to keep S11 or 12.0 on their systems.  I suspect that the order to discontinue SS support came from high levels in AVID by managers trying to cut costs to turn a profit on a product that is just breaking even.   To reverse that mandate may exceed anything Support or Engingeering could achieve before October, when AVID may be making some strategic announcements anyway.  Once the CEO and CFO draw their pistols, little folks must duck and cover or become buzzard bait.

I would hope that Pinnacle can proceed promptly with any patches that are not held back by such outside contracts or negotiations.

Right now, my entire HD ambitions are frozen still because Studio will not properly import DD 5.1 sound, because the AVC output is choppy (ruling out AVCHD-DVD), and because the BD disc burn controls present some flukes, even when I select BD-MPEG.  I presume mpingel's allusion to the "other well-known thread" refers to the rogue frame, flashback problem noted by Sony AVCHD users.  I simply hope that a fix to that issue will also fortuitously fix the quality loss I witness, or that I can at least expect to get 2-channel sound, as opposed to lop-sided mono.

FYI, AVCHD in 1920x1080 30p @ 24 mbps will appear in some videocams soon, and this hurdle may demand Studio changes, but I hope not to wait until November for a "mother of all patches."