Solved Rendering a mixed footage timeline for Blu-ray disc??

I would be interested in opinions on how best to render for Blu-ray storage a mixed timeline containing .mp4 & .mts both 1920x1080 50p footage.
The .mp4 is ex ProDrenalin and was xavcs when loaded into ProDrenalin. The .mts is from my video camera. I have tried rendering to the MSP14 Blu-ray 1920x1080 50i template, and been disappointed at the .mp4 footage detail and sharpness. I even tried my camera set to record 50i footage and left the .mp4 footage the same on the timeline, but similar results occurred. I next tried using a video converter and converting the .mp4 to Mpeg 2 that was not good either.
The only success was rendering to Internet 1080p and stored on an external HDD or flash drive, only then is the image sharp and detailed. I guess if ProDrenalin exported in .mts it may improve the chance of a good Blu-ray outcome?

Hi Eagle Eye

My suggestion is you render to the maximum frame rate available for a PAL based Blu-ray disc.
So in your situation, that would be 1280x720-50p.
50p is going to look a lot better than 50i.

If you open DVD Architect and go to File/New and then select Blu-ray disc, you will see that 50p and 60p are both available at 1280x720 frame size.
You also have a choice of using MPEG2 or AVC.

Sony doesn't actually have render templates for 1280x720-50p/60p, so you will have to customize and existing Blu-ray format/template.
I normally use MPEG2 for all discs production, but you can use Sony AVC if you like.

Go to Make Movie/Save to Hard Drive/Advanced
Select Mainconcept MPEG2 and Blu-ray 1920x1080-24p, 25Mbps Video Stream and then press Customize.
Now change Width and Height to 1280x720 and set Frame Rate to 50fps.
Everything else can be left as it is.
Remember to Save as a Custom Template for next time.

You may like to do the same with Sony AVC and do a comparison test.

Remember to also render the Audio Track separately.

For myself this is all theory, because my old Flat Screen TV did not support the higher frame rates of 50p and 60p.
However I am about to buy a new Samsung 4K TV this week and what I have just told you above is going to be one of my first experiments.
Some other Sony Vegas gurus on the Creative Cow Vegas Pro Forum, have always recommended rendering to 1280x720-50p/60p for Blu-ray if you are shooting with high frame rate video.

I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the first Ultra HD Blu-ray players, which will support 1920x1080-50p/60p and 3840x2160-50p/60p video.
I also hope that Sony will update DVD Architect and allow use to make Ultra HD Blu-ray discs.

Regards
Derek

Hi EE,

I cannot do an apples-for-apples test because I don't have the same cameras. However, I did do a side-by-side test using 2 mts samples, both run through ProDrenalin. On the same timeline, I put a HDV 1080i (mts, interlaced) event under the same clip run through ProDrenalin (mp4). I used Pan & Crop to display the events side-by-side. On the same timeline I placed another clip HDV 1080p (mts, progressive) under this clip after running it through ProDrenalin (mp4). Again using Pan & Crop to display them side-by-side.

The project settings were HD 1080-60i (1920x1080, 29.970 fps), Field Order: Upper field first, Full resolution rendering quality: Best, Interlace method: Blend fields. On each event I selected Disable resample.

I rendered out with MainConcept MPEG-2, with the Bluray 1920x1080-60i, 25 mbps video stream template. The only thing changed was in the Project tab, Video rendering quality was changed to Best.

I burned it to Bluray disc using DVDA5. There is a slight color shift (this would be expected), but I cannot detect any difference in detail or sharpness. There may be a difference in detection from your footage and what I selected for my test.

And, of course our original footage was from different cameras, and I did not do any correction in ProDrenalin, just load the clip and exported it out, but that should show a difference in the codec used by ProDrenalin for rendering the mp4 file. Your footage was 50i and 50p, was 60i and 30p (29.970).

I also rendered the side-by-side test to Sony AVC/MVC template 1920x1080-30p and MainConcept AVC/AAC template internet HD 1080p. Playing the results on my computer and Sony flat screen, there was no quality difference between them and/or the Bluray disc.

So, there are differences between the media you are using and the test media I used, but I didn't experience any noticeable difference of footage rendered from ProDrenalin compared to the original footage.

I used MediaInfo to compare the original clips with the rendered version from ProDrenalin. They were pretty much the same specs.

To conclude, I'm not saying there isn't any difference in my side-by-side test. Only that the difference is difficult to detect. And the difference I do detect is a slight color/contrast shift, but no detail or sharpness loss I can detect on my 60" screen. This doesn't shine a light on your issue, but maybe it will be of some small help.

Thanks for your comprehensive reply Derek, I will study closely your methods and try them out. I have no experience with 1280x720 50p todate so will look forward to the results. My impression will be not to expect too much picture detail like that achieved in 1920x1080 but that will be interesting to see. Like you I can't wait for the industry to give us products that enable us to display to the full capability of our cameras and TV's. First though MSP14 will need to come up to the mark and then UHD Blu-ray disks and finally UHD read & writer drives. Then I will I guess be forced to upgrade the computer (more money).

Wow 'Eagle'Six' I didn't mean to put you to all that trouble. However it is interesting that you had better results with a mix .MP4 and 60i footage burned to Blu-ray than I did. I have to say though the process of de-fisheye in Prodrenalin could affect the result a bit I think. I mainly use my NX70p camera to produce 1920x1080 50i and in the past has produced very acceptable picture quality burned with Mainconcept MPEG2 to Blu-ray. The complication came along when I saw what I could achieve with the NX70p's 50p output. Now with the AS200v giving XAVCS 50p quality images I wanted to see how I could come up a notch in the full project timeline. However as Derek points out, all will be consigned to history when the next generation of MSP comes out with hardware to match. Thanks for your extensive help with my query, cheers.

Eagle eye. wrote: Wow 'Eagle'Six' I didn't mean to put you to all that trouble.~~

Hi Eagle eye,

You did not put me to any trouble. I like to learn, so any time I spend on someone else's problem, is the same time spent on the same problem, I may have in the future. Yes, I agree their are to many differences between your original video and mine to have any hard meaningful comparison. At the same time it's interesting to also see the differences.

I took some GoPro Hero 3+ wide footage I had stored away and run that through ProDrenalin and applied the de-fisher. I exported in both mp4 and mov. There was virtually no difference between the original or the 2 renders mp4 and mov, other than the fisheye correction. Colors were the same, detail and sharpness were the same, both as viewed on my computer and on a Bluray disc. However, again this isn't apples for apples because the original GoPro footage is mp4! But, just another test!

Hi Dereck & ‘Eagle Six’, first I have to admit I had forgotten to disable resampling, dumb but true. This afternoon I shot two short sample movies of my wife & granddaughter. One with the NX70p at 1920x1080 50p (PS) and one with very similar content of the same subjects with the AV200v at 1920x1080 50p XAVCS. I used Prodrenalin to defisheye the AS200v footage. I then combined them on MSP13 timeline into one project. I then rendered the first movie to 1280x720 50p and the second movie to 1920x 1080 50i using Main concept MPEG2 with resample disabled. I set the video quality on the 50i render to 25. It is worthy of note that both rendered methods made a file size within 1MB. Subsequently I burnt them to BD-RW disks. On viewing them on my 4K TV the 1280x720 50p had the cleanest picture by a narrow margin, the NX70p content having a little better WB & colour control but AS200v content still looking good. Thanks guys for your suggestions it helped a lot. Looking forward though to the UHD disks and MSP14!

I hope that was just a typo in your latest reply :side:

1480x720 is not a regular Frame Size, it should be 1280x720.

Red faced and covered in egg, sorry now corrected, cheers.

:woohoo:
I was just making sure you hadn't actually rendered the video to the wrong Frame Size :sick: