Strange variances in production/authoring/burning results and playback, (the sequel)

Dave524

Newbie Joined: Dec 01, 2015 01:21 Messages: 20 Offline

Solved by

Jan 17, 2017 21:07

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

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Jan 17, 2017 21:29

1) What video encoding format did you use in your BD creation?
2) CPU or GPU encoding? If GPU, what GPU?
3) Any accelerated effects added to your timeline? If so, what is your pref > "Hardware Acceleration" settings of the two options?
4) If you create a BD folder with the HD 1280x720/60p settings, does the created My Video\BDMV\STREAM\00000.m2ts playback ok?

Jeff

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jan 17. 2017 21:30

Dave524

Newbie Joined: Dec 01, 2015 01:21 Messages: 20 Offline

Jan 18, 2017 01:02

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...

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Jan 18, 2017 07:33

Quote: 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Jeff

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jan 18. 2017 07:45

Dave524

Newbie Joined: Dec 01, 2015 01:21 Messages: 20 Offline

Jan 20, 2017 01:32

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

Dave524

Newbie Joined: Dec 01, 2015 01:21 Messages: 20 Offline

Jan 22, 2017 14:16

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

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Jan 22, 2017 15:06

Quote
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).

One of the things that happens when you create the 24p BD is the entire timeline had to be reencoded since you say your source video is 60p. Yes, as you noticed you loose high motion quality as you only have 24fps vs 60fps.

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

Dave524

Newbie Joined: Dec 01, 2015 01:21 Messages: 20 Offline

Jan 28, 2017 19:46

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

Dave524

Newbie Joined: Dec 01, 2015 01:21 Messages: 20 Offline

Feb 04, 2017 19:23

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

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Feb 04, 2017 21:37

Quote 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.

Shouldn't really need all the steps you took for this project to play back correctly, maybe a little faster tortoise could be utilized.

Two suggestions that might aid contributors to give recommendations of reasonable work flow:
1) What are the real specs of your source video, other than 720p/60fps, can you attach a small sample and/or MediaInfo details of your files.
2) What is your intended BD-R encoding format and quality you would like to use?

Jeff