14 Replies Latest reply: Nov 23, 2009 10:27 AM by theGadgetGuy RSS

    All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.

    theGadgetGuy Community Member

      Having just produced my first videos in the CS4 suite and authoring them as Blu-Ray in Encore I find that they do not play on my players which have always worked fine with my productions from Sony Vegas/DVD Architect.

       

      My Sony produced disks have full menus that looked and acted just like a commercial Blu-Ray disk.

       

      The renders from Encore, however, do not play the menu (first play item) video although the menu audio track is played.  The player also displays "AVHD" for the disk type, rather than Blu-Ray as with the Sony disks.  Without a menu, it is not possible to "play movie".  If a make a Blu-Ray disk without menus and a single play file, and make that the 'first play' item, then I can see the 'movie.'

       

      I can find no explainations in the SW, the Help files, or various forums as to what is happening here.

       

      How do I get "real" Blu-Ray output rather than AVHD?

        • 1. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
          theGadgetGuy Community Member

          GAd!  I'm really surprised there are no comments yet!  This must be a broad issue.

           

          I can't believe there isn't some way to make Blu-ray disks rather than AVHD.  The latter does NOT act the same when played in a Blu-Ray player!

           

          If anyone has any ideas, please comment!

          • 2. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
            Neil Wilkes CommunityMVP

            When you transcodce your video files, what type of codec are you using?

            • 3. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
              Bill Hunt CommunityMVP
              GAd!  I'm really surprised there are no comments yet!

               

              I am too. However, I have to admit that this is the first time that I saw either of your posts. The forum underwent major maintenance on Monday, Nov 16, and were also acting wonky before that - even more wonky since. Either I missed them, or they just were not displaying for me.

               

              Now, can you outline your entire workflow, from PrPro to Encore to burning? Encore has no issues with BD-compliant discs, so there must be something in that workflow, that is giving you the problem.

               

              Neil has asked about the CODEC used, and that will be important. Still, the full workflow might have other clues too. Do not go lightly on those details, as any one might be the culprit.

               

              Good luck, and I hope that I will be able to see this thread from now on - sorry that I missed it (or it was hidden from me) earlier.

               

              Hunt

              • 4. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                theGadgetGuy Community Member

                My Premier Settings are:

                  AVCHD 1080i30(60i) Anamorphic

                 

                From Premier I go right into Encore via the Adobe Dynamic Link>Send to Encore.

                 

                My Encore Project Settings are:

                   Authoring Mode: Blu-ray

                   Settings:  NTSC at 1440x 1080 with Upper Field First the MPEG-2 Codec and a frame rate of 29.97

                 

                While the Premier settings are identified as AVCHD I have been hoping that Encore actually creates Blu-ray formats for it's output, but based on my experiences that does not seem to be the case.  I cannot find a Blu-ray appropriate setting in Premier, however, so any insights you can offer will be GREATLY appreciated.

                 

                I am about to head out for a month in Thailand and sure want things right for the travelogue video.

                 

                Thanks.

                • 5. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                  theGadgetGuy Community Member

                  Hunt - Awesome.  I was beginning to despair of ever getting an answer, which

                  surprised me as it seemed like a good general topic.

                   

                  I'm emailing rather than posting as I can include images this way.

                   

                  From my Guides to video Production ( which I put together as I only do 2-3

                  major projects a year, and forget between efforts all the myriad things to

                  do!) here is my flow.

                   

                  Our two cameras save images in slightly different forms.  The Cannon

                  snapshot cam (orange) saves snaps and video in square pixels (1.0) while the

                  Sony Hi-Def video camera saves snaps as (1.0) but video as (1.33) anamorphic

                  files. However all of the images are correctly displayed in a (1.33)

                  anamorphic defined Premier project sequence.

                   

                   

                   

                  For High-Def Blu-ray video Project creations I open a new project as a AVCHD

                  1080i30 (60i) Anamorphic Sequence. . .

                  [I've always worried that is the source of the problem, but see no other

                  choice in order to get the resolutions I need.]

                   

                   

                  I'm assuming that what editing I do in Premier is not relevant, given that I

                  do not modify the above parameters.

                   

                  Upon Premier project completion I then File>Adobe Dynamic Link>Send to

                  Encore the results.

                   

                  Encore opens up a New Project automatically with the following parameters. .

                  ..

                   

                   

                  After building the menu structure desired I then Build an Image file rather

                  than going to disk directly in case there is an error or problem.

                   

                   

                  To burn the Image file to actual disk I use CyberLink's Power2Go disk burner

                  and burn the Encore iso file to Blu-ray disk.

                   

                   

                  There are no parameters so set here.  It is just a direct file to disc burn.

                   

                  One thing I never thought about though was what file format Power2Go is

                  using.  I've always accepted the default but in going to the setup

                  parameters for the pgm I see is it set to UDF 2.0 (see below). 

                   

                  Might this be the issue?  Should I select 9660/Joliet instead?

                   

                   

                   

                  I'm thinking this may be the answer, but please advise.

                   

                  BTW-thanks for suggesting a flow dialog.  It really forced me to examine

                  each step.  Good approach!

                   

                  Ken Burkhalter

                  • 6. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                    Bill Hunt CommunityMVP

                    Ken,

                     

                    First, I am still only doing SD, so am anything but an expert with any HD/BD Projects.

                     

                    I also know zero about Power2Go, so cannot help there.

                     

                    One thing that you might consider as a test, would be to do the Project in PrPro, and then Export from there. I'd use elemental/elementary streams, i.e. one Video-only file and one Audio-only file. Then, manually Import the Video-only file as a Timeline in Encore, and Import the Audio-only file as an Asset. From the Project Panel, drag the Audio-only file to the appropriate Timeline, where it will snap. Obviously, we're bypassing Dynamic Link, but this is only a test. When you've added your Menus and established your navigational links, try to Burn to Disc directly from Encore. Does this work? If not, what errors, or problems do you encounter?

                     

                    Good luck,

                     

                    Hunt

                    • 7. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                      theGadgetGuy Community Member

                      Hunt -

                       

                      Good ideas.It never hurts to get back to basics!  Best way to test there is!

                       

                      I've get it a try and advise the results.

                       

                      Thanks.

                       

                      Ken Burkhalter

                      • 8. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                        Jon Geddes Community Member

                        I do Blu-ray projects all the time and have not encountered the problem you have.

                         

                        Our workflow is to edit in Premiere, then using the Adobe Media Encoder, encode a Blu-ray h.264 file. This file is then brought into Encore, with project settings set for MPEG2 (just in case there are any motion menus that need to be rendered, as authoring in h.264 mode causes errors). By the way, the h.264 file will not be re-transcoded.

                         

                        Once authoring is complete, an image file is created, and either Encore or ImgBurn is used to create the disc from the image.

                        • 9. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                          theGadgetGuy Community Member

                          Interesting!

                           

                          I just went thru the step by step process outlined above and created a BD Image File in Encore (as I always have before).

                           

                          Then using CyberLink's  Power2Go disk burning software I Burned the iso image file, created by Encore, to disk.

                           

                          When I put it in my player it showed up as a BD-ROM (the same as commercial BD disks)!!!!

                           

                          This is exactly what I wanted, but what I could never obtain before.  The only change is that this time I used the Power2Go software rather than the CyberLink BD Solution burning software I was using before.

                           

                          Apparently the prior SW insisted on burning data disks instead of properly formatted BD video disks.

                           

                          Anyway, I am now a happy camper.

                          • 10. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                            theGadgetGuy Community Member

                            Jon - thanks for replying.  As you can see from my post just after yours, I surprisingly got things to work.

                             

                            Question for you, however, why do you render from Media Encoder in H.264 Blu-ray rather than MPEG2 Blu-ray, especially since you then use the MPEG2 format in Encore?

                             

                            I assume you have discovered some advantage in doing that rather than staying with MPEG2 throughout?

                            • 11. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                              Jon Geddes Community Member

                              The main reason I encode to h.264 is that is produces a better quality video compared to mpeg2 at the same bitrates. Though it does take much longer to encode, the image quality is superior.

                               

                              Unfortunately Encore is not able to properly build a disc when motion menus are transcoded to h264 (error messages during the build process). Your only option for a successful build (when using motion menus) is to author in MPEG2 mode. All this setting does is set the default transcoding format for motion menus and assets that are not transcoded already. You can however right click on an asset, and manually change the transcode settings to h264 if you want. Also, your h.264 encoded blu-ray file from Adobe Media Encoder will not be changed to mpeg2. Does this make sense?

                               

                              Your motion menus will be encoded to MPEG2, where as your main video can be h264.

                              • 12. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                                theGadgetGuy Community Member

                                Jon - A final question.

                                 

                                Why encode at all?  I just use Adobe Dynamic Lick to send the finished project directly to Encore without any encoding.  Much faster, any subsequent required project changes immediately show up in Encore without having to re-encode, and I have always assumed the highest possible quality is attained.

                                 

                                Am I missing something?  This seems like the simplest way too.

                                 

                                Ken Burkhalter

                                • 13. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                                  Jon Geddes Community Member

                                  Doesn't re-encode? It certainly does have to re-encode if you make changes to the edit... and if it doesn't, something is wrong.

                                   

                                  In my experience, Encore works much better when it's dealing with an asset that has already been transcoded for final output, especially when it needs to render a scene selection menu with animated buttons.

                                   

                                  My company designs advanced motion menu templates (created in After Effects) for DVD and Blu-ray Authoring. We highly recommend Encore to author using our products, although it is not required. Obviously many people are hesitant of using Encore because of all the bugs it has. We needed to provide our customers with a workflow that works, with proven reliability. We spent many hours troubleshooting all the problems with Encore, and actually found a solution to all the bugs we encountered, and documented them on our blog. We provide a complete walkthrough video tutorial for authoring our custom menus in Encore for Blu-ray or DVD, and demonstrate great features such as the Chapter Index, Pop-up menus, transitions, and more, all while avoiding many of the bugs with the program. This tutorial is available for everyone to see from the tutorial section of our website at http://www.precomposed.com/

                                  • 14. Re: All my Blu-Ray disks produced seem to be AVHD instead.
                                    theGadgetGuy Community Member

                                    Of course it re-encodes.  I just meant that it did so (I have always assumed) in the most efficient and highest quality means possible rather than having me assign (possibly inappropriate) encoding methodologies. 

                                     

                                    Thanks for the tips pointer.  I will look at it with great interest.

                                     

                                    Ken Burkhalter