Messages posted by Dave524

Hi,

Just wanted to provide one more update...

Everything worked. In fact, I didn't even have to add the chapters back in - I already had a project that referenced the produced video that had the chapters, so before starting PD 14, I just replaced the "bad" produced video with the "good" produced video (i.e., no hardware acceleration, SVRT, or "GPU" of any type) by renaming the files on the disk. Then, when I reopened the project, the "good" video was referenced, with all the chapters still intact. I even did the same thing with the motion menu, replaing the "bad" file with the "good file" before opening the project in PD.

Bottom line - after burning, everything appears to work. I'm now repeating the process with the next project. It's slow, but it wins, just like the tortoise.

Jeff, thank you for all your patience and help, and I hope this thread can help someone else struggling to get everything "right".

Dave

Quote
Your above comment and your previous comments on BD authoring times are the reason why I suggested the 4 steps. I'm simply trying to get you to use the CPU (Central Processing Unit, your i5 you mention) to render the entire video. No SVRT and no GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) for any of the timeline encoding. I realize I had a error in item 4 (it would be slow not fast) but did you finish those steps and did that playback successfully? The produced file of step 1 is larger in GB size as the "Produce" option of step 1 creates a ~24Mbps video stream while the "Create Disc" will create a ~16Mbps video stream. So the size is about 1.5x bigger and will get full reencoded when you create the BD as PD creates those at the lower bitrate. From my experience a fully CPU encoded video content burned to the BD has the best chance of successful playback in a standalone player provided your play is compatible. If you are unsure of any setting in the 4 steps, post some pics so one can see what you have.

No I do not think a system upgrade will cure a faulty BD playback of 720p source video.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

OK, I was finally able to get back to this after being buried at work all week. To save time, I folowed all of your 4 steps with the one small exception of using the motion menu and putting all the chapters back. In other words, I did everything but the end of step 3. You were right, step 4 took a long time (a couple hours) to author, and the entire movie was indeed able to fit on the disc as you predicted.

The best news of all - for the first time, the disc played back successfully in the player from start to finish!

I'm obviously going to now go back and add the chapters and motion menu to the produced movie and see if everything's still good, but for the first time, I'm optimistic.

So just so I understand, when everything was done with CPU, the produce of the clips to a single clip'movie was one reprocessing/reencoding, and then authoring was another reprocessing/reencoding? I'm not sure but I think I can tell there's a (very) little bit of quality loss from the original clips, but if things work and can playback, it's more than acceptable.

I'll let you know how the whole thing turns out with the motion menu and chapters added back in, but like I said, I'm optimistic.

Dave

Hi Jeff,

Quote Yes, could be very significant, to me indicates some of your authoring was done with SVRT and in the other case much of the timeline was probably CPU encoded provided you used the same settings. The 15min to 120min is a big encode time difference. The ~15min to burn with a 6X media and compatible burner as is the LG BE14 is about right for your estimated size of 20GB. I'd doubt USB port source of any issue.

OK, that makes sense. When I encode with SVRT enabled it seems to take ~15 min. And when SVRT is disabled it takes 2 hours or more.

Quote Since the 00000.m2ts played back ok by itself, did you burn the folder to BD and see if playback was good?

I tried it and the result was the same - glitchy playback starts 2/3 - 3/4 of the way though.

It's worth reiterating that the 1280/720/24p burn worked, in that the playback doesn't seem to glitch, but the quality of the video is much worse (while the playback is smooth, the faster motion scenes are noticeably not so smooth).

Quote Since it appears you are using a iGPU of some variety, I'd disable both items in pref > HA or at least make sure your iGPU driver is current.

I confess I still don't know what the CPU vs. GPU is exactly about. G = Graphics I assume? I'm on Windows 7 with a 2.5 GHz core i5 CPU, 8 GB RAM and a solid state drive. I don't know where to check for GPU information.

Quote If burning the above folder to BD does not playback sucessfully I'd probably try the following.
1) pref > HA nothing checked
2) Produce your entire timeline to H.264, m2ts container, HD 1280x720/60p and do not use any form of "Fast video rendering technology:" near the bottom of the produce menu
3) Bring produced file in line 2 into a new project and place in timeline. Yes you lost your chapter points. Add them back.
4) In the "Create Disc" area make sure H.264 and HD 1280x720/60p are selected and burn again. Also make sure the "Enable Intel Quick Sync Video" is unchecked on the "Burn in 2D" tab settings. Authoring should go very fast and then about ~15min to burn.

I did the production, and it seems to playback OK, but the size of the produced video file is > 25 GB and my BDs capacity is only 25GB! So I think I'm kind of stuck. What's your suspicion at this point? The fact that the 60p video does playback OK for a while, but then gets glitchy later, makes me think something either burned wrong or is playing back wrong. But like I said in an earlier post, this BD player (Sony) hasn't shown problems like this before.

At this point I'm starting to think maybe I need a system upgrade...

Dave

Hi Jeff,

I'm not ignoring you or this - I've just been too danged busy the last couple nights to get back to this. Hopefully tomorrow - hoping to get this figured out and thanks for the help so far!

Dave

Hi Jeff,

Thanks very much for the quick reply!

To answer your questions:

1) What video encoding format did you use in your BD creation?

From "Create Disc": H.264 (the same format the original source clips are in)

2) CPU or GPU encoding? If GPU, what GPU?

CPU (I believe; I explciitly unchecked "Enable Intel Quick Sync Video" in the "Final Output" dialog in all cases)

3) Any accelerated effects added to your timeline? If so, what is your pref > "Hardware Acceleration" settings of the two options?

I don't believe there are any accelerated effetcs - just basic fade in/out effects. (But FWIW, in Pref > "Hardware Acceleration", "Enable hardware decoding" is checked. "Enable Open CL technology..." is not checked.)

4) If you create a BD folder with the HD 1280x720/60p settings, does the created My Video\BDMV\STREAM\00000.m2ts playback ok?

Just tried it, and yes it seems to play back fine. Also, I don't know if this is significant, but when I burned straight to disc, the authoring took only ~15 min and the burn ~15 min. Creating the file/folder just now took 2 hours.

I wonder if maybe I'm using the wrong USB port on my laptop to send the data to the burner. At this point I doubt the burner (external LG BE14) is the issue; I've read plenty of good things about it which is why I bought it.

Thanks again for the reply and any ideas...

Hi,

This is essentially a repost of something I wrote almost a year ago, and wasn't sure it would be seen, so I decided to start a new topic for it. My apologies if I just should have posted there.

I've been working with PD 14 and have seen some unexpected behavior in a video after burning it to disc.

I have a number of 720p/60fps clips I trimmed, cross-faded, faded to black, etc. - just basic edits, really. All original clips were 720p/60fps, and so I was careful to produce/burn them at the same resolution/rate as the original clips. Previewing everything in the Edit/Produce/Create Disc windows has looked perfect. I added over 20 chapters to it, anc even created a custom motion menu for it. Before burning, I used the Create Disc "Preview" to check everything once more time and again, video and menu looked perfect. The size of the video is about 20 GB.

The problems I'm having occur when I burn to a Bluray disc (Verbatim BD-R 6x, 25GB), using an external USB 3.0 drive (LG BE14). I always select "Add buffer underun protection", and the burn operation itself always completes successfully. However, if I've selected 720p/60fps (1280x720 @ 60fps) in the Create Disc settings, about 75% of the way through the disc playback on the BD player, the video and audio both start slowing down and getting choppy significantly. If I've selected 720p/24fps (1280s720 @ 24fps) in the Create Disc settings, the video plays back OK (albeit with some quality loss in the motion due to the lower frame rate), but most importantly the motion menu video slows down and becomes out of sync with the audio.

I'm baffled. The entire video looks great in PD 14, and it and the motion menu look great in the Create Disc preview.

I tried burning at a slower speed (4x) but it didn't seem to make any difference.

My BD player is a Sony and has played all kinds of BD discs/movies fine. It also plays this disc fine for the first 90+ minutes of the 150+ minute video, but then starts to have problems. I'm just trying to understand what the problem really is. Is the 60fps the problem once the disc gets to a certain point? The 24fps version plays without glitches but the full motion playback leaves plenty to be desired, and like I said, the motion menu is totally out of sync.

Any suggestions? Any more information (from PD14) I could provide? Thanks very much for any help. This seems like a basic problem wthat I'm sure someone else could benefit from as well.

Dave

Hi,

I'm working with PD 14 and seeing some strange variances in a video after it's been produced then put into a BD-folder structure and finally burned.

I have a bunch of clips I trimmed, cross-faded, faded to black, etc. - just basic edits, really. All original clips were 720p, and so I was careful to produce them into a resulting single M2TS video (let's call it "vid.m2ts") that was also 720p, at at least as good a bitrate (or better) than the original clips.

I then imported vid.m2ts into a new project in PD 14 and looked at it in the editor - it looked perfect. I added over 20 chapters to it, then went to the Create Disc tab and created a custom menu for it. I used the Create Disc "Preview" to check everything and again, video and menu looked perfect.

But here's where it starts to get strange. If I play vid.m2ts in PowerDVD, it can get choppy, esp. in the later third of the video - the audio seems OK but the video starts to slow down and speed up seeimingly randomly.

But wait, there's more. Back in PD 14, I went to Create Disc's "Burn Disc", and only created a BD file structure of the vid.m2ts + menu & chapters. Then I tried to play that file structure in PowerDVD - and got pretty much same result as just playing the vid.m2ts file.

Most unfortunately, if I burn at 6x to a Bluray disc (Verbatim BD-R 6x, 25GB), the disc has the same problem (or worse) as PowerDVD - actually, the video and audio both start slowing down and getting choppy significantly in the latter third of the video.

I'm baffled. The entire video looks great in the PD 14 Editor and it + the menu look great in the Create Disc preview. I'm going to try burning a disc at a slower speed than 6x and see if that makes any difference, but I'm wondering what in the world could be going on, and if anyone has any other ideas or suggestions? BTW, I'm using ImgBurn to burn the disc, not PD 14.

Thanks very much - hoping this ultimately can help someone else with similar problems.

Dave

Hi Alain,

For what it's worth, I asked a very similar question not long ago:

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/46505.page

Maybe you'll find some of the techniques suggested there helpful. I did!

Good luck,
Dave B.

Hi Tony,

The bitrate on the original clips was around 12.6 Mbps. I guess PD suggested the 22.5 Mbps because that's the bitrate of the only bulit-in AVC 1280x720 60p profile?

But, it must have only come into play when I had to reencode(?)/rerender after the crop and color boards. When I selected the built-in profile with the 22.5 Mbps bitrate, I'm thinking that's what caused the jump in file size to 7.5 GB. When I created and used the Custom Profile with a 12.6 Mbps bitrate, the output file size went back to being 4.1 GB.

Thanks again and see you around these forums! :^)

Dave

Thanks to both of you - I'm continuing my gradual climb up the learning curve.

So no re-rendering is required/SVRT is enabled/the built-in "AVC 1280x720 60p" profile is suggested as long as I don't introduce either the crop (the "orange_i") or the black color board. Doing either of these seems to cause PD to want to re-render things (which I guess I understand).

I also noticed that after doing the first production to merge the seven clips into one, importing it into the timeline, right-clicking on it to "View Properties", that its bitrate is 12.66 Mbps (see attachment). No crop or black color boards have been added yet. And the built-in profile with its bitrate of 22.500 Mbps is still the suggested/available one.

So it would seem that once re-rendering is needed (either by crop or color boards or both), that's when PD suggests the "Custom Profile". In "Produce" I still select the settings for H.264 AVC 1280x720 60p - and while the re-rendering works, it produces the much larger file.

Anyway, with allthat as background... I figured out how to create the Custom Profile, with the only difference being a bitrate of 12.654 Mbps instead of 22.500 Mbps, and re-rendered the movie with the crop and color boards. It did take much longer, but the result? The quality is the same (I asked three different people to see if they could tell a difference between the original captured clips and the final result, and they could not!). And the best news? The resulting file was 4.1 GB! So the difference in file size seems to be attributable to the bitrate used in the profile.

So... I think I'm done with all my questions now! Any more I have, I'll probably just open another topic. I'm truly grateful to you (both) for your patience and guidance!

Dave

...attachments...

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the reply - I found the "SVRT track" display option in the timeline and this seems to bear all this out. What I did before the first production (cutting and adding cross-fade transitions) apparently did not require re-rendering ("timeline_1.jpg") and allowed me to select SVRT for the production ("produce_screen_1.jpg"). But what I did before the second production (cropping and adding a black color board track to the timeline) apparently did require re-rendering ("timeline_2.jpg", as you said) and did not allow me to select SVRT for the production ("produce_screen_2.jpg" - attached to next reply).

One thing I noticed between timeline_1 (i.e. after only cut and fade edits) and timeline_2 (after first production, reimport, and crop and color board edits) is that the SVRT analysis for the two was different. In timeline_1 the analysis indicated that the existing "AVC 1280x720 60p (24Mbps)" profile could/should be chosen for production. In timeline_2 the analysis indicated a "Custom Profile" should be chosen - the only apparent difference being the bitrates (timeline_1: 22.500K; timeline_2: 12.654K). However, in the Produce screen I could not see how to create such a Custom Profile.

I'm wondering how/why the bitrate changed? And it went *down* from 22.500K to 12.654K. When I produced the second movie, I used the existing "AVC 1280x720 60p (24Mbps)" profile since I didn't know how to create the recommended Custom Profile. Did choosing a higer bit rate than what was indicated by the SVRT analysis somehow cause the resulting file to be so much larger?

I hope I'm not monopolizing your time too much, but there's so much to learn/understand and I'm hoping others can folow along and learn as well...

Thank you again,

Dave B.

Hi Tony,

A positive update and another question...

Thanks to you, I managed to crop the bottom and wind up with the black bands on the top and bottom as I wanted! So I am very grateful and hope this will help someone else who has the same simple editing need.

I do have another question regarding SVRT rendering during production. The first time I produced the video, it was to merge the clips into one (per your suggestion) so that I would only need to apply the crop and black color boards to the one resulting clip. On the "Produce" screen, I was able to choose SVRT rendering during this production - and it went quickly and the quality looked good. The file size was 4.1 GB for 42 minutes of video.

After that was completed, I imported the new "merged clips video" back into PD and applied the crop and the black color board, and again all went great. However, when I went to produce again, I could *not* select the SVRT rendering as before - only the Intel Quick Sync Video (which I did not select). This time, the production took much, much longer, as no fast renderer had been selected. And, the resulting video was over 7.3 GB for the same 42 minutes in length! So my question is: Should I be able to select SVRT rendering again during this second (final) production? Why was the final video file size so much larger? What (if anything) am I doing wrong, or don't I understand?

Thank you again for all the help,
Dave B.

Ah, OK. Thanks for the link/examples. Yes, the original clips are straight video captures at 720p60 (using a Hauppauge HD PVR2) and as such haven't been "touched" by anything else before I use PD with them. I understand that of course PD needs to do some processing when it loads clips and reencoding when it produces movies... but as you say, if the _format_ was the same throughout the process (720p60) I was just wondering how significant that reencoding might ultimately be.

Based on all I've learned, I'm guessing the quality of the result will be fine. I'll let you know - it's been hard lately to find time to actually try most of this! :^)

Dave B.

Thanks Tony - just one follow-up question to what you said:

> That pre-producing suggestion is less-than-ideal, especially as the video had already been processed before you started working with it.

So even if the original video is 720p60 and the "produce" result is 720p60 (at the same or greater bitrate), you're saying that importing the original video into PD always results in some processing/quality loss? (In other words, initial video import always results in some quality loss?) Just making sure I understand...

(But as you said, reimporting after producing, editing again, and producing again to 720p60 at the same or greater bitrate won't result in any *further* loss.)

All of this is very interesting...

Dave B.

Hi Tony,

Just one quick sanity-check question...

Thank you - it's a great idea to produce all the clips into one movie, then reimport and apply these changes to just the single movie clip. My question has to do with any re-encoding/loss of quality. If the original video clips are all H.264 720p60, and the clips are edited and produced as the same then reimported, edited again (cropped, overlay, etc.) as a single clip, and produced again as the same, is it the case that there shouldn't be any rencoding or quailty loss from the original? If so, what if during the "produce" steps, one of the "fast video rendering technology" options like SVRT is selected - would that have any effect?

I really appreciate your willingness to answer all these questions!

Dave B.

Hi Tony,

Thank you again. I think I (finally!) understand how to work with the keyframes across the entire clip. For anyone else's reference who might be reading this: make the changes at one keyframe (ex. the one at the beginning of the clip), jump to the other keyframe (ex. the one at the end of the clip), click the "duplicate" button and click the appropriate popup menu choice (ex. "Duplicate Previous Keyframe"). The changes are then copied across the whole clip uniformly. Now that I understand how to execute it, I'm embarrassed at how simple it is!

I also discovered the useful view magnification selection at the bottom right of the Crop/Zoom window - selecting a value >= 200% helps me to see exactly which lines are being cropped.

So, it turns out the actual number of lines that I want to crop from the bottom is 36 (not 80). So here's what I'm planning to do:

1) Use the Crop to crop 18 lines from the bottom. When I drag the clip "down" to do the crop (using the blue circle), 18 black lines fill in at the top in the result, which is actually what I want!

2) Use an 18-pixel/line height overlay in another track (as you described) to mask the remaining 18 lines at the bottom.

End result - bottom 36 lines gone, replaced with 18 lines of black at the top and bottom. All other lines of the clip are retained; and the aspect ratio unchanged.

That's the theory anyway - hopefully the practice matches!

One more question - I have a total of 7 clips that I want to apply this same set of modifications too. Is there any "shortcut" way to make the changes across all 7 clips at once, or do I need to repeat the modifications for each clip?

Thank you again for your patience as I learn and your willingness to help!!!

Dave B.

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the great guidance, I appreciate and think I essentially understand - but I'm still struggling getting things to work.

In the Power Tools Crop/Zoom, it looks like I can use the blue circle in the middle of the clip to drag the clip "down" in order to crop the bottom area that I want to get rid of. And when the clip is moved "down", it looks like black does fill in at the top of the clip/screen. Is that right?

So let's say I want to get rid of the bottom 80 lines of a clip and keep all the others, and have 40 black lines at the top and bottom when all is said and done. If I move the clip "down" so that 40 lines (of the 80) at the bottom are cropped, 40 black lines appear to be added at the top. That leaves 40 lines at the bottom still to be "removed". It seems like I could apply a black overlay of 40 lines at the bottom. And then I'd be done. Is that right?

I'm also struggling with keyframes. It doesn't seem like I'm duplicating them correctly - the entire clip doesn't seem to be affected.

Finally, is there any way to precisely/exactly specify (or monitor) the number of lines cropped, as opposed to simply dragging the box and guessing?

Sorry for my ignorance but I'm very grateful for the help, and I have to believe there are others who could also benefit.

Thanks again,
Dave B.

Hi Tony,

Yes, I want to crop out the bottom portion of the screen (maybe only 10%-15%), which often contains a scrolling stock ticker, latest football scores, breaking news headlines, etc.

Now let's say the above is the bottom 70 "lines" of the screen/video. After cropping those lines away, I would like to replace them with black, and then move the entire remaining visible portion of the clip down by 35 (i.e., 70/2) lines, so that there is an equal amount of black at the top and the bottom, such that the video is vertically centered on the screen.

Does that help? Sorry for the confusion, and thanks for replying!

Dave

Hi,

I'm a newbie to PD14 (just recently bought the full version after playing with the trial version), but have done some editing off and on with open source tools (ex. VirtualDub, AviSynth) over the past number of years. I've searched through the forums on this question, found a few tips, but so far have been unable to accomplish what I'd like, and I'm hoping someone can quickly describe how to do things, or point me to a tutorial.

What I want to do seems relatively simple:

Crop the "network crawl" ("n" lines) from the bottom of a video clip and replace it with black.

Move the entire clip "down" so that "n/2" black lines are left on the bottom, and that "n/2" black lines are added to the top.

I want to preserve the aspect ratio (16:9) throughout the entire process. I have a number of clips with the same "crawl" that I'd like to do this with, so if there's a way to do the above across multiple clips I'd love to know that as well.

I've looked at the PD PowerTools Crop/Zoom and the Mask features, but haven't yet been able to make much headway - although it feels like I'm poking around the right areas.

I've loved everything I've discovered about PD14 so far, and am hoping that continues with what I want to do here. Let me know if there's any more information I can provide.

Thanks for providing a forum (literally) where new PD users like me can come!

Dave B.