For those having an absolute nightmare burning blurays, I have some information for you. First, you're not alone. Second, the solution to the mystery of bad blurays that skip and freeze is that PowerDirector's H.264 encoder is broken, particularly if your bluray is 60 to 90 minutes in length or longer, but can still happen if shorter. I have been able to create MPEG-2 blurays that can have the same problem as well, so it might not be limited to H.264.

PROBLEM
H.264 bluray burning will complete, either burn or ISO, but if your disc is longer than 60 minutes in length, your bluray will almost always stutter and skip, and potentially freeze. I have never produced a 90 minute bluray in PowerDirector that does not have this problem if H.264 was used. MPEG-2 blurays work just fine under all circumstances. H.264 blurays can start stuttering and freezing before or after 60 minutes, but the most common location in my discs is around 90 minute mark or after. This can fluctuate a lot, but it WILL happen if your BluRay is 90 minute sor longer. If seen this happen in BluRays shorter than 30 minutes.

Important: Using H.264 encoding to produce standalone video files that are not part of a bluray disc play just fine with no problems. it is the bluray disc image/data files that have problems.

TESTING:
Witth EXTENSIVE testing of many different hardware and software combinations, including different OS's and completely different systems (all full systems, none of them laptops), here is what has brought me to this conclusion, and before you crtiticize or disagree with the information below, read all of it first.

1. Creating a BuRay in MPEG-2 works msot of the time. It's safe, but the quality drops a bit as well as how much more of the disc is used up comapred to H.264.
2. This problem is not an issue with different brands of BluRay burners. Different bluray burners were tested.
3. This problem is not an issue with different brands of BluRay media. Different brands were tested.
4. This problem is not an issue of different recording speeds. Different speeds were tested.
5. This problem is not an issue of processing power, ram, hard drives, drivers, hardware, etc. Totally different systems wewre tested.
6. This problem is not an issue of graphics card usage or not. HA and Non-HA modes were tested.
7. This problem is not an issue of burning to hardware or creating ISO files. Both methods tested with different burning software.
8. This problem is not experienced when producing standalone video files that are not part of a bluray disc project - H.264 and MPEG-2 work fine in all cases of standalone video file production that are not part of a bluray disc authoring project. The problem is only experienced in bluray authoring.


FINDINGS:
1. PowerDirector.s H.264 is broken for BluRay creation, burned or ISO files. PowerDirector creates bluray discs and ISO files that burn and play just fine if MPEG-2 is used. It does not matter what settings you use, and it does not matter wht the length of the bluray disc winds up being.

2. PowerDirector will create stuttering, skipping or freezing BlURays no matter if burned to disc or if an ISO file is created if created in H.264. The data itself is bad, but usually if the length of the bluray is 30 minutes oir more. Somthing is going corrupt in the encoding process if it's encoding 30 minutes of video or more in H.264. MPEG-2 encoding does not have this problem.

3. It does not matter if you are creating standard 60i or the way cool super-awesome 60p blurays, nor did it matter if it was directly burned or creating an ISO file. If H.264 encoding was used, skipping stuttering or freezing is the result if created if the disc length exceeded 30 to 60 minutes. Always experienced if the disc length reached 90 minutes or longer.

4. Other software products were tested, such as Corel VideoStudio Pro. None of them had H.264 encoding problems, and the discs played fine no matter what settings wwre used, and it didn't matter if they were directly burned or burned later from an ISO file. The data itself was uncorrupted in all cases except PowerDirector. PowerDirector is the only software that creates bad H.264 blurays in every test.

5. These "bad spots" on the disc usually lasted anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes worth of footage on the disc and would eventually smooth back out. A disc may have one or many of these "bad spots" of corrupted data. In some cases, PowerDirector produced a few discs that skipped and stuttered and froze all the way through the disc after about 20 minutes or so.

6. The symptoms of the corrupt H.264 bluray is always the same: Skipping video, usually freezing solid, while audio continues. In the case of using a PlayStation 4 as a bluray player, a notably high quality player built to withstand the punishment of regular video gaming, the video and audio would skip for long periods, but would not freeze.

7. The discovery was made that this 1080p/60 bluray template is actually a manipulation of the AVCHD 2.0 standard, in that it simply allows the creation of an AVCHD 2.0 project to be burned to BluRay without the standard AVCHD 2.0 disc/stick/device size limitation, possibly just a re-work of the AVCHD 2.0 burn-to-hard-drive profile. This means it is not a true bluray, but a renamed AVCHD 2.0 project burned to a bluray disc.


I have been testing these things non stop for a week now, and has had me spending money on many different products to figure this out. Why? Because anything less than the 60p blurays that PowerDirector creates are undesirable, I hate MPEG-4. I don't want to have to return to Corel VideoStudio, but H.264 works everywhere else.

So ir is definitely the case that H.264 is broken in Powerdirector, and seems to go haywaire when creating blurays of any length beyond 30 minutes or so. This is tragic.

If H.264 gets fixed, PowerDirector will truly be the best bluray production software on the market. Until then, that's definitely not the case and I'm being forced to use Corel VideoStudio as long as H.264 remains broken in PD. PowerDirector does actually have fantastic competition, a fact I've re-awoken to over this last week.

WORKAROUND: Burn using MPEG-2. Even though it has some limitations and I have expereinced some skipping issues on a few discs, at least it's more stable and reliable than H.264.


I can reproduce this H.264 bug on any system, any drive, any brand, at any settings if H.264 is used and the bluray is 60-90 minutes or more. If 90 minutes or more, it's pretty much guarenteed. Note that if using H.264 to just create media files (without ISO or disc burning), the video plays fine with nio skipping. The problem is with bluray media format only in PowerDirector.


I will be working directly with tech support over this issue, and this post is really just a report and not a request for any help.