I have created two test files as mts 720p custom templates for H264 AVC.

I attach the Media Info of one of the files.

Changes to create template:
1. Select AVCHD 1920x1080
2. Select Custom Icon
3. Profile Name changed to AVCHD 720p
4. Description changed
5. Video tab - Resolution 1280x720p
6. Rate control > Mode CBR
7. OK to save

That's it.

Adrian has more to add.

Dafydd

On the same subject can someone tell me why when I render to 1920X1080 in H.264 or Mpeg2 the dialogue box shows 1080i which to me is interlaced video.

See attached screen shot.

Cheers

Robert S
My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

Dafydd and I have tried some experiments. Unfortunately neither of us has 1080p 30 .mov files.

However using 1080p 30 .mp4 from the Sanyo 1010 and 2000 and producing from the standard profiles :-

720p .mt2s file is scanned as progressive
1440 .mt2s file is scanned as MBAFF
1080 .mt2s file is scanned as MBAFF

It is reaching the limits of my knowledge to comment much deeper but here's an understandable explanation from another forum. I don't know the date of this info tho'.

"MBAFF, or Macroblock-Adaptive Frame/Field Coding, is a video encoding feature of MPEG-4 AVC that allows a single frame to be encoded partly progressive and partly interlaced. Maintaining the quality of interlaced video can be a challenge in video encoding because of the larger spaces between horizontal lines in the same field. MBAFF allows an AVC encoder to examine each block in a frame to look for similarities between interlaced fields. When there is no motion the fields will tend to be very similar, resulting in better quality if you encode the block as progressive video. For blocks where there is motion from one field to another the quality is more likely to suffer if encoded progressive, so these blocks can remain interlaced.

In addition to quality improvements, progressive frames require fewer bits making them more compressible for the same quality as interlaced frames. This also applies to individual macroblocs, meaning that by using MBAFF you may greatly improve quality for a given bitrate. Since all the decisions required for MBAFF are made by the encoder it can slow encoding speeds greatly. Being a relatively new technology it's also not supported well among AVC playback software. Unlike many of AVC's advance features, though, MBAFF doesn't affect decoder speed. "

Why PD8 is configured to use MBAFF for original progressive footage, or whether it is intrinsic to the H.264/AVCHD encoder, I don't know.

Nor do I know what effect/characteristics this scan type has, given that it seems to be both progressive and interlaced.

Cheers
Adrian

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

Thanks Adrian, you certainly are a treasure trove of information. I have never heard of MBAFF. This may explain though why sometimes I get a tearing/comb effect on some of my rendered videos. By the way I only shoot progressive video.

I just wish the developers of video formats would come up with a standard....... Although it does say in my Sanyo manual "Video clips conform to ISO-standard MPEG-4 AVC/H.264"**

The kicker being the ** leads you down to the bottom of the page where it says..... "Video files recorded with models VPC-CA65 and VPC-CG65 are in the same H.264 format as this model. However, such files cannot be played back, since they are not compatible due to..... differences such as the data compression method.

No wonder Cyberllink has problems getting our videos to render properly. So many different video formats and even sub-formats inside major formats. My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn

As I have said in previous posts (somewhat cynically) camera manufacturers will choose/develop the best codecs for capturing video (perhaps so that the marketing guys can say how fast/good/small/huge capacity/etc etc their camera is) and the editing software guys and the end editor just have to tag along as best they can.

As we know, to our cost, advances in technology (needed or not) are very rapid, making our cameras etc technically obsolete within 12-24 months.

Maybe CL chose this particular encoding path when 1080 was mainly i and p was 'on the horizon' but not mainstream. Maybe there's no choice?? I don't know.


Cheers
Adrian
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

This is the exact reason I prefer MPEG 2. Hope you get it working for you. __________________________________
CORNBLOSSOM

Hi all, I was busy the whole week and didnt have time to test the changes in the profile until today.

Thanks Dafydd and Ad for your support, but unfotunately, the problem is somewhere else. I Encoded the same file again, but this time without any transitions nor effects, just the source files. My camera is a Canon sx1 IS, fullHD 30p files in a mov container. I assumed that the PD output files were 60i because of the interlace artifacts, but the mediainfo shows something else. Attached the file you will find. The thing is, the main header seems ok, but the artifacts are still there. Im not sure if with avc you can do the same thing as with mpeg2, where you can have a main header with certain params and another header per frame or gop with another AR for example. I haven't found a tool to analyze this yet but it'd be interesting to check if the frames match the header info. If I load the produced file in tsMuxeR it recognizes it as 720i, so there is something fishy going on.

Is there a way to force (via registry ie) the encoder to make 30p and not 29,97(i/p) ? I could send you the source and production files so you can check them and maybe we can see where it goes wrong.

Thank you guys.

Wow, where to begin with all this. Thanks for all the info here, an amatuer like myself would be lost without expert help, so thanks.

Unfortunately, I tried using Dafydd's custom template directions as well...but mediainfo still said my resultant AVCHD 720p file was interlaced, not progressive. I'm going to guess that PD8 uses MBAFF and mediainfo just reads it as interlaced? I dunno.

I just bought PD8 this weekend...hoping to convert my "raw" M2TS video from my Canon Vixia HF200 into a [1280x720 h.264/AVC] video (with CL PD8) that I could upload to YouTube. However, YouTube's encoders apparently choke hard core on .m2ts and .mts files right now, and double the video playback time (slow the frame rate in half). At least, that is what happened to me; and I seem to not be alone according to the 2 hrs I just spent reading all the YouTube forum posts that have the same problem (by just doing a .m2ts search I might add). It appears to be due to the fact that .m2ts files are interlaced, and they need to be progressive for YouTube's encoders to handle it. WMV and MPEG-2 seem to work fine, so I think I'll just stick to WMV 9 HD standard quality for now.

Oh the other intersting thing here...Facebook seems to handle .m2ts video with no problem.

It would be nice to have more control over h.264 encoding in PD8. Is there a way to put in a feature request to Cyberlink? It seems we would benefit from more settings and options for H.264 AVC...although I'm not experienced enough to know what features to ask for.

Thanks,

Chris

I know this doesn't help with youtube but Vimeo handles .m2ts videos fine.

cheers

Robert My youtube channel====> http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2?feature=mhsn