19 Replies Latest reply: Nov 5, 2010 9:19 PM by zorrocbr RSS

    Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5

    zorrocbr Community Member

      Since 25 gb blu-ray disks have become affordable, I would like to take advantage of the increased capacity to put standard DVD content on them.

      In a nutshell, I would like to put approximately 8 hours of 720X480 8000 Bit rate video on a 25gb blu-ray disk with no transcoding.  If I specify my project is DVD I can tell it to "Don't Transcode" my assets but as soon as I change the option to Blu-ray, I have a wide range of Hi Def only options or Automatic transcoding.  This makes the file size much larger than 25 GB.  I can do this in TMP GENC Authoring Works, I can specify each track whether or not to transcode and what bit rates etc., and then burn a blu-ray compatible disk- with standard def content- but my menu options are more limited than in Encore and the work process is slower.   I would much rather do this in Encore if possible.  Is there a way to do this in Encore CS5?

        • 1. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
          Keith_Clark Community Member

          its not exactly what your asking, but i'll make a suggestion as far as my own workflow personally i dont see why so many people are insisting on transcoding in encore. in my experience it has been tedius, and time consuming. i only use encore to compile the menus, build, and burn. and thats it. everything else is either done in PrePro or PhotoShop. i just created a 9 hr BD-R in stanbard definition 720x480 (source material was analogue 8mm tapes, original encoded in AVI DV setting with tv capture card) on a regular 1 layer bd-r and the entire project was about 23 gb at build.


          i do all encoding/transcoding with my project in PrePro cs5. i set up my feature how i wanted it on the timeline, added titles and transitions, and editing everything how i wanted it fixing audio in Audition, doing some after effects if need be, then added all chapter stops, named chapter stops, and so on. then i chose "file" "export" and for my settings i chose:

          Format: Mpeg2 Blu Ray
          Preset: Match Source Attributes (high quality)
          check mark for audio and video export
          under teh video tab below-

          codec-main concept mpeg
          quality -5

          under that for bitrate i chose:

          VBR 2 Pass
          min-4, target:5-6, max-7 (you can change the target up higher, if you want higher quality, but 5-6 seemed plenty fine, since its just SD video to me)

           

          above on teh "audio" tab i chose:

          dolby digital codec
          basic audio settings: dolby digital (this is more compressed than PCM, so it give you more space to do higher quality video )

          bitrate: 224-320 kbps

           

          after that, i chose to queue in AME so i could see the time left on it, and the elapsed time as well.

           

          for these settings, and it just being one long 9 hr feature. it came out to be about 21 gb total. looks fine to me. and if its already encoded in blu-ray format in PrePro, you wont have to transcode it in encore. it took about 3 hrs to encode the whole thing to blu-ray in PrePro... encore was giving me like... 18 hrs. big pay-off! lol i recommend this workflow better than Dynamic Link with bigger projects... i was trying dynamic link... but everything just took forever and a day to do!! but i can't notice any quality difference myself... but then again, my source for the only blu-ray project i have attempted was 8mm tape... if your source is digital with a decent digital camcorder, it may come out more pixelated than you'd like. try it out and see though

          • 2. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
            zorrocbr Community Member

            For your project your assets were transcoded in Premiere Pro though?  Would there be a way to edit in Premiere Pro without having it transcode?  If so this would be ideal.  Edit in Premiere Pro, don't transcode, save in blu-ray format (even though the assets are actually 720 X 480 standard def) and then just do the menus and authoring in Encore.

            • 3. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
              Keith_Clark Community Member

              To be specific... I don't really know exactly what "transcode" means, so I'll explain it a way that *I* can understand :P I edit the video in premier, and then save it as the setting 'mpeg blu-ray' with all those settings that I explained in last post. When it's saved, I import it in encore, and since it's already blu-ray compliant, encore doesn't touch it at all. So all I have to do is make the menus and build disk. It's ALOT more efficient this way, I think.

              • 4. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                Keith_Clark Community Member

                I just re-read your OP, and basically if you add anything to encore it will have to transcode it. UNLESS it is already dvd/blu-ray compliant. Otherwise, it has to transcode it. The easiest way is to encode it in PrePro without it having to transcode in encore, is in an already blu-ray or DVD compliant format. If you choose the "keep source settings" option or whatever it is, then adjust THOSE settings, it keeps it 720x480.

                • 6. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                  JSS1138 CommunityMVP

                  I don't really know exactly what "transcode" means

                   

                  Using this software, you should.

                   

                  http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/transcode

                  • 7. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                    zorrocbr Community Member

                    If I try to encode in Premiere Pro, as soon as I put the option for MPEG Blu ray the file size goes way up.  A small sample asset in DVD is 1600 MB, as soon as I put the option to MPEG Blu Ray the file size becomes 7722 MB, this is with the Preset at "Match Source Atributes", Format "MPEG 2 Blu-ray", so not sure how I could get Premiere Pro to make this Blu Ray compliant while at the same time not increasing the file size.  If I encode in Premiere I will probably only be able to get about 2 hours of video on the blu-ray disk which defeats what I am trying to do.  Could I in Encore set the type to custom and with the file at about 23GB or so then just put in a blu ray disk and burn it (the  setting would be for DVD though, not Blu ray).  I do not imagine I could do this.  Am I able to use Encore CS5 or is it not capable of doing what I want at this time?

                    • 8. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                      Jeff Bellune CommunityMVP

                      If you want SD content on a BD disc, you need to encode your assets as SD, not BD.

                       

                      -Jeff

                      • 9. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                        Keith_Clark Community Member

                        zorrocbr wrote:

                         

                        If I try to encode in Premiere Pro, as soon as I put the option for MPEG Blu ray the file size goes way up.  A small sample asset in DVD is 1600 MB, as soon as I put the option to MPEG Blu Ray the file size becomes 7722 MB, this is with the Preset at "Match Source Atributes", Format "MPEG 2 Blu-ray", so not sure how I could get Premiere Pro to make this Blu Ray compliant while at the same time not increasing the file size.

                        Jeff Bellune wrote:

                         

                        If you want SD content on a BD disc, you need to encode your assets as SD, not BD.

                         

                        -Jeff

                         

                        i dunno jeff, i highly beg to differ. you CAN encode in regular mpeg, or mpeg dvd, or whatever, but i don't think you *need* to. refer to pics below...

                         

                        to zorrocbr, just do the whole thing in Blu-Ray... it works. trust me. heres some pictures of my new project i started working on yesterday. i'll give a screen cap of the folder with source material, a screen-cap of PrePro encoder with default mpeg-blu-ray settings, and a screen-cap of my customized tweaks to that setting. you can encode it in regular mpeg format, but wouldnt encore have to transcode it to blu-ray format? in my experience it did... and it was going to take a day and a half... and i have a freakin' quad-core, nvidea g-card, and 16 gb ram. it was hopeless... after almost 2 weeks up pulling hair, i changed gears and i did the following workflow in pre-pro, instead of encore. whole thing was done encoding in  under 2 hrs (this is a 9 hr video!) (and under 4 hrs for 2 pass vbr), and no transcoding at all happened in encore. it was quicker, more efficient, and saved money. (time is money)

                         

                        (click to open links in new tab/window to see better detail)

                        first pic (notice how the source material is in DV AVI, so its like 135 GB)

                         

                        second pic (this is standard mpeg blu-ray, so its PCM audio, notice the length of the project, and the overall file size.)

                         

                        third pic (this is after i switched to Dolby Digital codec, and tweaked a couple other things i think, notice still the video length, as well as the new size (to you all mathematically challenged, thats 19 GB) PLENTY room to fit on a BD-R, and the video quality is fine for my source material. this is just for me... now if i was doing this one for a client, i would probably do it at a higher bitrate, and burn to Dual Layer, but this being for me, with these being somewhat already warn out 8mm tapes, 5mbps video is plenty sufficient)

                         

                        so this works for me, and works great.

                        • 10. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                          Jeff Bellune CommunityMVP

                          I think the OP wants a smaller file size than what the MPEG2 Blu-ray preset offers.

                           

                          -Jeff

                          • 11. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                            JSS1138 CommunityMVP
                            i don't think you *need* to

                             

                            Need may not be the appropriate word.  "Should" is a better word.  If you want SD content on a Blu-ray disk, you should encode at SD specs.

                            • 12. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                              zorrocbr Community Member

                              Do I need to use Premiere Pro because Encore requires this to be encoded first by Premiere to work?  If I could bypass Premiere Pro and go straight to Encore without transcoding this is my preference.

                              1)     In Encore would the project setting be DVD or Blu-Ray?

                              2)     If it's DVD then I would need to make a custom disk size- 25 GB is this correct?

                              3)     Since it would not actually be Blu-ray I would simply lose the ability for pop up menus, and because it was burned on a Blu-ray disk, I would just need to play this back on a Blu-Ray player (also not a big deal)?

                              4)     Would this work?

                              5)     Regarding the post with the pics showing how to do this, you have native AVI format, my format is already DVD compliant.  I am not able to get the size to show 720 X 480 if I put the type to MPEG Blu-Ray.  I never get the option you show in your pics.  Is this due to the fact you are using AVI??  Or some other reason?

                              • 13. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                                Stan Jones CommunityMVP

                                The issue for me is why you are not getting "do not transcode" for an apparently valid DVD file, simply because you are making a Bluray disk.  I wonder if you are changing the frame size in the bluray transcoding properties.  I just got it to show "do not transcode" for an untranscoded avi and also a previously transcoded m2v.

                                 

                                Do I need to use Premiere Pro because Encore requires this to be encoded first by Premiere to work?  If I could bypass Premiere Pro and go straight to Encore without transcoding this is my preference.

                                 

                                Probably "no" if the file is ready to be transcoded or already transcoded properly, I think you can take it to EN.

                                1)     In Encore would the project setting be DVD or Blu-Ray?

                                 

                                The disk you are making is bluray; therefore the project type is bluray.

                                3)     Since it would not actually be Blu-ray I would simply lose the ability for pop up menus, and because it was burned on a Blu-ray disk, I would just need to play this back on a Blu-Ray player (also not a big deal)?

                                 

                                I assume popups, etc would work.  the only thing you are doing differently, is using a lower resolution asset for the movies.  Make all your menus, etc, bluray.  Yes, it needs to be played on a bluray player.

                                5)     Regarding the post with the pics showing how to do this, you have native AVI format, my format is already DVD compliant.  I am not able to get the size to show 720 X 480 if I put the type to MPEG Blu-Ray.  I never get the option you show in your pics.  Is this due to the fact you are using AVI??  Or some other reason?

                                I can't say I'm following this workflow.  The setting that you have been attempting to use is a regular SD, DVD mpeg2 from PR.  I think that is fine.  Your problem, I suspect, is that you have not been finding the place to change, in EN, the bluray disk transcoding to 720x480.

                                • 14. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                                  zorrocbr Community Member

                                  Now it is getting interesting:

                                  Demon, I was able to re-create what you were doing.  My problem was that in Premiere Pro I hadn't changed the new project to DV Widescreen mode, so it was still viewing it as AVCHD.  When I changed this now I was able to go to the Export settings and make them Blu-Ray, Match Source Attributes High, etc. and it was in 720 X 480 and the file size was what I was looking for.  When I exported a test file like this and then brought it into Encore, Encore gave me the Don't Transcode option for Blu-Ray.  The only problem is that Premiere Pro did transcode the file.  So now I tried to figure out how to get Encore not to transcode without using Premiere Pro.  My original asset was created in Womble and saved as a .VOB file.  Encore did not like this and wanted to transcode it.  With prior experience I found that sometimes this could be that the asset itself had issues such as bit rate spikes etc. to make it non-compliant.  I tried several different assets as a test and it didn't work for any of them- so I ruled out the asset itself being a "problem."  So I decided to just re-name the file and change the file extension to .m2ts (the file extension created in Premiere Pro).  Still no luck.  Then I imported the Womble asset into TMP and exported this without transcoding.  The new file was VTS_01_1      Encore still did not like this.  Next I took the same Womble asset and imported it into TMP with TMP set to Blu-Ray.  Then I exported this with the option set to Automatic (smart rendering prioritized) which doesn't re-encode the asset.  This was now saved to a BDMV blu-ray folder.  When I imported the asset (0000.m2ts) into Encore the "Don't Transcode" option was the default for Blu-Ray (which is what I want).  So my conclusion is that Encore needs another program to convert the asset into a blu-ray compliant standard def file, or else it will do it but transcode the asset (with whatever setting I choose-example NTSC SD Mpeg-2 High Quality, Automatic, etc.) in the process.  The same .VOB file has the Don't Transcode option for DVD but not Blu-Ray.  Am I correct in my assumptions?

                                  • 15. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                                    Stan Jones CommunityMVP

                                    My problem was that in Premiere Pro I hadn't changed the new project to DV Widescreen mode, so it was still viewing it as AVCHD.  When I changed this now I was able to go to the Export settings and make them Blu-Ray, Match Source Attributes High, etc. and it was in 720 X 480 and the file size was what I was looking for.

                                    I think your main problem all along has been that you were not using the right settings.

                                     

                                    My original asset was created in Womble and saved as a .VOB file.

                                    PR CS5 will take a vob; EN does not.  I have not played with these options yet.

                                     

                                    Your better option would have been to export an mpg from Womble, not a vob.  (vob's, in addition to having muxed video and audio can have other info.  No idea what womble might be adding.)  but I don't think that is your problem, except that that is what prevents you bringing your DVD captures as assets straight to EN.

                                    • 16. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                                      Keith_Clark Community Member

                                      Stan Jones wrote:

                                       

                                      The issue for me is why you are not getting "do not transcode" for an apparently valid DVD file, simply because you are making a Bluray disk.  I wonder if you are changing the frame size in the bluray transcoding properties.  I just got it to show "do not transcode" for an untranscoded avi and also a previously transcoded m2v.

                                      all my videos that i have encoded for this and the last project all had a black frame around them. for some reason the capture did not quite entirely fill out the whole box. not a BIG issue, but in the video effect>motion>scale i changed them all to 103 to 105, and i think THATS why with my workflow En wanted to transcode it. so i just skipped the middle man and did it in premiere, as mpeg to preserve all chapter stops and chapter names.

                                      • 17. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                                        zorrocbr Community Member

                                        BINGO Stan.  I demuxed the streams in womble and voila, that did the trick!  So I can edit in Womble to avoid transcoding, then demux (or demux prior to beginning editing, either works) and then bring in the video (VTS_02_1.mpv   in my project) and audio (VTS_02_1.ac3) to Encore and I have the "Don't Transcode" option with Blu-Ray 720 X 480 resolution and a file size of 885.1 MB for a 26 minute video so I should get at least 8 or 9 hours on my 25GB disk.     :-)

                                        Thanks everyone for your suggestions and help.  :-)

                                        • 18. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                                          Stan Jones CommunityMVP

                                          Excellent!  I'm sure there are others wanting to take several DVDs and put them on a Bluray for convenience.  There are pros and cons to the Womble method, but so far I like it for avoiding transcoding any more than you need to.  I haven't cranked my VideoReDo up for ages.

                                          • 19. Re: Making blu-ray discs with standard dvd content in Encore CS5
                                            zorrocbr Community Member

                                            I spoke a bit prematurely.  Demuxing OCCASSIONALLY fixes the issue so that the asset can be brought into Encore without transcoding.  More often than not I am finding that Encore still wants to transcode the Blu-Ray Standard Definition asset.  To avoid the hit and miss nature of this I am finding it much better to go the extra step:

                                            1)      Edit in womble and then export as MPEG Program.

                                            2)     Bring the assets into TMP with the project set at Blu-Ray.  No editing here but have the track set to "Do Not adjust file size" and Smart rendering set.  This then saves the work as a Blu-Ray format with standard definition content.

                                            3)     Import into Encore as a new project with Authoring Mode set for Blu-Ray and Transcode settings at 720 X 480 MPEG-2.  Encore has been told that the DVD asset even though it is in 720 X 480 is a blu-ray file and now doesn't seek to transcode.

                                             

                                            This creates two extra steps (having to bring the asset into TMP and then exporting) but it is far better than having to guess which assets are going to work and which ones won't.  It would be ideal if I could edit in Premiere Pro CS5 without it transcoding and then bring this into Encore, but I guess that's pie in the sky at this point.