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Hi,
A menu designer like the one on TMPGEnc Authoring Works would make me very happy !
But first there's a few things that I would like Cyberlink to fix on the current menu designer of PD10. I upgraded from PD8, and a few things are not working like they used to :
1- When designing motion on thumbnails, the video is always at 23.967 frame per seconds, even if the original video frame rate is at 29.97. That's not a problem I had with PD8. I don't think it's possible to change the frame rate of the thumbnail motion.
2- I don't know if the frame rate is causing the issue, but even though if I select the duration in the menu playback mode (I would like to have 15 seconds menu duration), I always end up with menu that are 19 seconds, and look to be in slo-motion. Not a problem I used to have with PD8.
3- The Navigation buttons cannot be updated. I created a menu template in PD8 that I'm still using in PD10, and in that menu I used the little 'Grey house' as my navigation buttons. Now, I tried everything, but the only highlight I can get is a lime-green color. I tried to change it several times, but it always comes back to that green color. I thought maybe it was because it was a template designed on PD8, so I re-did everything from scratch, but again if I use these navigation buttons, any highlight color I select will become lime-green. Plus, under PD10, the highlight also does kind of a black contour, which didn't happen in PD8, that I cannot remove even when removing all type of borders and shadows.
Now, there are a few things that are part of the current menu designer which never worked for me, under either PD8 or PD10 :
1- The text alignment is useless. Even when I click 'left' 'right' or 'center' it doesn't change anything.
2- Aligning a few items is not always exact. I will align 3 items when designing the menu, but when I'll use it, when selecting these 3 items at once and clicking on 'align bottom' will result in one of them moving.
3- Centering is not always working properly. When centering text, it's most likely going to be off.
4- Thumbnails are changing sizes when moving them in the screen. One example : I want 3 thumbnails by screen, with the second one right in the middle of the screen (and everything symmetric). So, if I have a video with 4 chapters, the second screen will have only 1 thumbnail, at the left side of the screen. If I click on 'align center' that thumbnail is not always the same size as the one from screen 1.
5- Moving things around and trying to set it at the same place under all menu pages is almost an impossible task.
What I really like about TMPGEnc menu designer is that the canvass is like a grid. If my menu is 1980X1080, then everyone one of these is a numerated pixel (X and Y axis) which makes it very easy to move things around, making sure it's the right size and at the right place. For every item on the canvass. I can see the location of the item, the length and width. That would be the most useful thing to add to PD10, imo.
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Thanks Carl, however if I select H.264 then it will re-render the entire video using the h.264 codec.
Since the MPEG-2 codec and the 720p are blu-ray compliant, I'm surprised this option is not available under 'Create Disc'....even TMPGEnc Authoring can handle these video types to BD discs without re-rendering, and that program is a lot less flexible than Power Director when authoring blu-ray discs. That's why I'm thinking I missed something here (or it's not available on the trial version).
As for the SD 480i video, I was not mixing 2 different resolution. On my test, the entire video was SD 480i encoded MPEG2 (which is DVD compliant, and also part of blu-ray standards). On PD8, the problem was handling these SD files that had a bitrate above 8.3 mbps. On PD10, the bitrate seems to remain a problem (even though to be DVD compliant, the bitrate as to be below 10 mpbs, which it is) plus PD10 doesn't seem to recognize that the video is interlaced, so it's re-rendered progressive.
As I said, MPEG-2 encoded videos are usually the easiest to be blu-ray compliant (h.264 files are more complex), so I expecting that since PD10 can provide SVRT on most h.264 videos, it shouldn't have to re-encode most MPEG-2 files....
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I have PD8 ultra, and I've installed PD10 trial to see if I could now author to blu-ray disc without re-rending the video.
There's 2 type of files that I couldn't use in PD8 without re-rending:
1- 1280x720p MPEG2
2- 720x480i MPEG2
For the first file type (MPEG-2 720p), these are tv shows that I capture to my PC with a digital antenna. When I input the file into PD10, the SVRT says it can be produced with re-rendering. But when I select 'Create Disc', in the video settings I cannot select MPEG-2 / HD 1280x720p.
For the 2nd file type (480i), these are old VHS tapes that I captured and restored to my PC. Again, when I input the file, the SVRT says it can be produced without any re-rendering (I couldn't do that under PD8, because the bitrate was deemed higher than DVD standard at 9.3 mbps). Then, under Create Disc there's an option for MPEG-2 / SD 720x480 but I noticed that the resulting file is always re-rendered. For some reason, the bitrate is always downsized to 8.0 mpbs, plus instead of keeping the video interlaced, it's rendered to progressive (even though I manually change the settings to 'interlaced, top-field first' under the 'Edit' tab.
So, my questions are :
- Any chance I can author these type of files to BD disc ? I'm a bit surprises PD10 is that picky for MPEG-2 since most video editor can handle MPEG2 without any restrictions (the reason I chose PD8 was because it was the only editor that let me use 1080i AVC video without re-rendering, so I thought I could edit the more friendly MPEG2 files without any issues...). Is it because I'm using the trial version ?
- Why the SVRT is showing no re-rendering under the 'Edit' tab when it seems it will re-render under 'Create Disc' ? How can I know for sure if the video will be re-rendered when I try to author to disc ?
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Thanks guys !
Would it be possible to get the complete specs PD8 requires in order to allow SVRT to work with AVCHD (m2ts) video file ?
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I have been using PD8 for a while, but I'm not 100% sure that my projects are always smart rendered, even if the line on the edit mode is green. Is it possible to know for sure that the video has not been re-rendered ?
If not, then I guess I can assume based on the time PD8 is taking to complete the project. What would be the estimate time of a 20GB project that is smart-rendered versus another one that is re-rendered ?
Also, is it possible to get the complete specs PD8 requires in order to allow SVRT to work with AVCHD (.m2ts files) ? Because when I use files from the Hauppauge 1212 (the HD-PVR produce an m2ts file itself) SVRT seems to be working, but when I try to encode myself an m2ts file using Mainconcept Reference I always get a re-rendered project due to File Format.
One last thing regarding SVRT...someone knows why MPEG-2 file with a bitrate higher than 8.3 mbps cannot be smart-rendered ? Any video that was recorded at XP speed (1 hour per DVD-R) on a standalone DVD recorder cannot be smart-rendered in PB8.
Thanks for your help !!!
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I have not see anything on the Cyberlink presentation, so I'm wondering if anybody can tell me if PD9 is now supporting Smart Rendering for 720p output to blu-ray disc, and also for mpeg2 file that have a birate higher than 8.3 mbps ?
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I guess it has to do with the file format, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong...
I use PD8 mostly for authoring file I recorded using the Hauppauge HD-DVR. In PD8, files from the Hauppauge HD-DVR can be smart-rendered (well, the video file is smart-rendered, the audio has to be re-encoded to fit the output bitrate).
So when I first had problems with h.264 files encoded with Reference, I compared the specs of those files to the ones produced with the HD-DVR. And as per MediaInfo, they seem to be identical. The bitrate of the Reference file might be higher, but if it was a problem with PD8 it wouldn't show 'Coding Parameter' but something like 'Bitrate Output'.
So I was hoping somebody could confirm if it is possible to produce h.264 file with Mainconcept Reference that can be smart-rendered in PD8. If nobody has tried Mainconcept Reference, then what about ProCoder 3 ?
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I have some files that I want to encode using h.264 to use in PD8. I've tried a few things, but my resulting .m2ts file will never smart render in PD8. The dissimilarity is 'Coding Parameter'. My encoder is Mainconcept Reference 2.1.
Anybody has the recipe to encode to .m2ts file (1080i) which PD8 will be able to smart render ?
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