Converting 1080i video for archiving/Blu-ray from HDC-TM90 camera

[gene0915]

I have a Panasonic TMC-90K (built in 16 gigs of RAM) and Vegas 10e. I shot video using the default settings on the camera (1920x1080i and the bit rate was variable and ranges from 12-15 megs on all my clips). I shoot into 1080i because 1080p eats the memory for breakfast and allows for (I think) less than an hour of shooting. Plus, since I don't have a super computer, (Quad core 9450), I figured it would be easier to work with and not as CPU intensive as progressive files. The video is just standard stuff around the house with my wife and child. Days at the zoo, swimming out back, bike riding, etc. In the old days, I'd just take the video from my standard def. camera, digitize it with Vegas as an AVI, feed it into CCE and take the resulting MPEG2 file into DVDA and author it to a DVD and be done.

Since this is my first HD camera, I need a little guidance.

All of our TV's in the house are HD TV's. Ranging in size from 32" to 55". I have 2.5 hours of 1080i video I need to dump off the camera and do something with. First, I thought I would just encode it to the AVCHD Blu-ray 1080i template in Vegas and bring it into DVDA and just create a Blu-ray ISO and burn it. But, I don't have a Blu-ray burner. A friend of mine questioned me as to why even bother burning it. In this day and age, just encode it as an MP4 (using Vegas and set the bit rate at a constant 10 megs) and just toss it on a NAS or portable hard drive. (Yes, it will be backed up to another drive for redundancy since I don't want to lose all our movies because of a hard drive failure). The more I think about it, the more I believe this is the best way forward. Forget physical discs (which can also develop read errors) and just keep everything on a share or portable drive.

I have multiple boxes hooked up to my TVs that can play MP4 files and going forward, I'm certain that nearly every device we hook to our TVs (or heck, my TV I have now can play MP4 files from a USB drive) will be able to handle them.

Since I think I'm just going to render to MP4, should I render to MP4 (with a 10 meg bit rate) at 1080i res or should I bump the resolution down to 720P? Speaking of that, I hear that using the x264 codec is the best game in town for getting MP4 files. I tried using it with MeGUI but MeGUI wanted to download AVISynth and a crap load of support files. Is there a frontend for x264 that is totally self-contained and doesn't need to download/install what seems like 20 programs just to use a single file (x264.exe) to convert raw MTS files (from my camera) into a single MP4 file? Or maybe I should just go old school, open up a DOS box and feed x264.exe tons of command line switches?

BTW, how fast is x264.exe compared to the built in MainConcept/Sony AVCHD encoders in Vegas 10?

[edDV]

I have a Panasonic TMC-90K ...

Since I think I'm just going to render to MP4, should I render to MP4 (with a 10 meg bit rate) at 1080i res or should I bump the resolution down to 720P? Speaking of that, I hear that using the x264 codec is the best game in town for getting MP4 files. I tried using it with MeGUI but MeGUI wanted to download AVISynth and a crap load of support files. Is there a frontend for x264 that is totally self-contained and doesn't need to download/install what seems like 20 programs just to use a single file (x264.exe) to convert raw MTS files (from my camera) into a single MP4 file? Or maybe I should just go old school, open up a DOS box and feed x264.exe tons of command line switches?

BTW, how fast is x264.exe compared to the built in MainConcept/Sony AVCHD encoders in Vegas 10?

First, for hand shot home videos at 1920x1080i, I question first shooting at low 12-15 Mb/s instead of 24 Mb/s. You must be seeing compression artifacts. Also these won't recode as well. If flash memory cost is a critical issue, shoot 1440x1080i instead.

Second, save the camera originals (full folder) as backup.

Third, unless you must edit, you can avoid recompression entirely by keeping the original camera AVCHD h.264 files. These can be re- wrapped to mp4 but Blu-Ray players are going to want m2ts. Most media players will play either.

If you must edit, best quality will be maintained outputting to an interlace h.264 (Sony) or MPeg2 (Mainconcept) codec if using Vegas. Deinterlace will have obvious artifacts on a large HDTV unless you go the AVISynth route. Keep the bit rate at camcorder rate or above for interlace video. The Sony AVC codec can output with mp4 or M2ts wrapper. It is possible to frame serve to CCE.

If You-tube upload is a concern, best to deinterlace before uploading to You-tube because they won't. They also prefer an mp4 wrapper. You-tube will accept high bit rates (limited by file size) but will recode them to a much lower rate.

[gene0915]

First, for hand shot home videos at 1920x1080i, I question first shooting at low 12-15 Mb/s instead of 24 Mb/s. You must be seeing compression artifacts. Also these won't recode as well. If flash memory cost is a critical issue, shoot 1440x1080i instead.

Second, save the camera originals (full folder) as backup.

Third, unless you must edit, you can avoid recompression entirely by keeping the original camera AVCHD h.264 files. These can be re- wrapped to mp4 but Blu-Ray players are going to want m2ts. Most media players will play either.

If you must edit, best quality will be maintained outputting to an interlace h.264 (Sony) or MPeg2 (Mainconcept) codec if using Vegas. Deinterlace will have obvious artifacts on a large HDTV unless you go the AVISynth route. Keep the bit rate at camcorder rate or above for interlace video. The Sony AVC codec can output with mp4 or M2ts wrapper. It is possible to frame serve to CCE.

If You-tube upload is a concern, best to deinterlace before uploading to You-tube because they won't. They also prefer an mp4 wrapper. You-tube will accept high bit rates (limited by file size) but will recode them to a much lower rate.

According to the manual for my camera, when recording at 1920x1080i mode, it says VBR - 17 meg bit rate. Since I can't find a bit rate analyzer for MTS files, I'm just right clicking on them in Windows 7 and going to the details button and getting the bit rate that way. Maybe Windows is under reporting the bit rate? In any case, believe it or not, when playing these back on my 55" HD TV, I see no compression artifacts. If I force it to record in 1080p, the bit rate appears to be 28 meg VBR and recording time will be (using the built in 16 gig memory), 1h and 20 minutes. When I was doing some testing a while back, I took the video from Vegas and rendered it out with MC or Sony AVCHD (forget which one I used) but used CBR and locked it at 10 megs and I was happy with the results. (Not going for Industrial Light and Magic quality) I also don't remember seeing any compression artifacts.

You mention saving the camera originals...... I have mixed feelings on that. As with my tapes, once I have them digitized/edited, I don't care to keep the originals as this would eventually lead to consuming hundreds of gigs over time and having to worry about having some sort of RAID backup. Sure, I'd love to keep the originals forever but the price of that would add up I think. Using 1080i, my 2 hours and 45 minutes of video ate up about 14 gigs of space. A 2 TB drive would hold hundreds of hours of videos for a few years I'm sure but I don't want to pull a George Lucas and go back and re-edit things 10 times. Once I bring in my MTS files and do my minimal editing, I just want to have the finished Blu-ray ISO or MP4 stand-alone file and nuke it all and start clean again.

Speaking of editing, the only editing I do is insert a video track into my project and overlay the date on the video. I realize this is looked down upon in some circles but my wife and I like seeing the date on the video since memory fades over time and it's nice to know when something was shot. Can you recommend a program that will take the meta data from inside the MTS file and just slap it on the bottom right? If so, I could maybe stop using Vegas and just process the files like that and put them into a MP4 container. You mentioned something like that above, how the original MTS files can be re-wrapped into MP4 without re-compression...... if there's a utility that could insert time codes into the mix (don't want to use sub-titles), this could be a good route for me to pursue.

I've never had any luck with frame serving to anything out of Vegas. Non-stop problems with all that so I'd like to avoid it if at all possible.

Eh, I'm not a perfectionist and not looking to win an editing award from Hollyweird .......... just want to take home videos from my little HD camera and keep the quality as high as possible (and keep everything as easy as possible) and put the video into a universal container that can be viewed from time to time for the next 50 years or until I've moved onto other things, like chasing the nurses around in the retirement home with my hover-chair.

PS, Uploading to YouTube is not in the equation.

[edDV]

Eh, I'm not a perfectionist and not looking to win an editing award from Hollyweird .......... just want to take home videos from my little HD camera and keep the quality as high as possible (and keep everything as easy as possible) and put the video into a universal container that can be viewed from time to time for the next 50 years or until I've moved onto other things, like chasing the nurses around in the retirement home with my hover-chair.

Before I spend the time to respond point by point...

No way anything you do on that cam will impress Hollywood. It is a low end consumer cam.

... just want to take home videos from my little HD camera and keep the quality as high as possible

Then save it as shot.

and put the video into a universal container that can be viewed from time to time for the next 50 years or until I've moved onto other things

That would be ATSC/DVB, DVD, Blu-Ray or maybe AVCHD folder not likely other.

For immediate viewing, encode for the best display you are likely to own in the next decade.

Granted, flash RAM is expensive now but hard drives are dirt cheap.