AVCHD Disc (DVD) from Camcorder Home Movies

[Xesdeeni]

I am pulling out (what's left of) my hair here. I want to burn an AVCHD disc of highlights of my daughter's softball team. But I've tried a bunch of software and all of it stinks in one way or another.

I'm starting with 261 clips in individual MTS files from a Canon HD camcorder. These are supposed to already be AVCHD compliant, so I expect that unless I trim them, they should not be re-encoded. Their total size will fit onto a DVD9.

I believe the most reasonable way to organize them is by games, and there are 18 of those. So ideally, I'd like to have one (or possibly two) menus with links from there to each game.

But I want each clip to be its own chapter. (I originally wanted menus to link to each of these chapters, but I'm OK with just having the chapters.) The idea is that when the parents of my daughter's teammates wants to share specific highlights with their friends/family, they can get there quickly, without having to wait through all the other highlights from a game.

Anyway, I know multiAVCHD is the fallback here on VideoHelp, but this seems to be a mess. It looks like I would have to join the clips into 18 files outside of this. Then I'd have to manually go back and create all 261 chapter points by hand. I'm not particularly interested in that. Is there no way to automate that?

Anyway, I've now tried trial versions of Pinnacle, CyberLink, Corel, Sony, Adobe, and Magix. Each one stinks for different reasons, including re-encoding, lack of menu customization (it's softball for goodness sake, is it too much to ask to have a softball menu?), inability to merge the clips, lack of AVCHD disc support, manual chapter creation, etc.

I purchased Nero's latest suite, and although the editor is about what I need, it has serious issues, from extremely poor performance (10's of minutes between screens, on the same machine that those other programs worked fine), bugs (I've found many and reported 4), re-encoding in spite of Smart Encode enabled, menus with a limit of only 15 buttons (18 games, remember?), failures on burning for reasons I can't figure out, etc.

I've successfully authored very nice DVDs using a variety of tools, and always been able to work out such issues. I'm asking here, hoping someone can help me find a workflow and associated apps that will work for this type of AVCHD disc. (I'd like to make personal highlights of my kids using the same process for the grandparents as well.) I've already spent countless hours with nothing to show for it. I'd very much appreciate some help.

Xesdeeni

[p_l]

I agree with you about multiAVCHD not being the most well-organized or user-friendly app, and I've also eschewed it. I've also made AVCHD discs with Cyberlink PowerDirector and PowerProducer, Nero Vision 10 (which was a pleasant rediscovery for me) and Corel DVD MovieFactory 7. In your case, I'd recommend you start with the latter. Its interface is relatively straightforward, it doesn't re-encode my AVCHD camcorder files, it can join or split your clips quite easily, set chapter points automatically or manually and author/burn a nice AVCHD disc with a pretty customizable menu. Give it another shot.

[Xesdeeni]

Well, that last point is interesting. Corel's online chat thinks the menus are not customizable at all. They say I must buy another, old piece of software if I want that option.

Given my experience with the other canned menus I saw in these trials (and Nero, which I bought, although those are customizable), I wasn't really satisfied with the thought that I'd have to keep buying more apps if (as seemed likely) the menus didn't meet my needs. So I gave up on Corel.

However, if you think this is worth a re-look, maybe you can help me out with my questions their own tech support can't answer. I apologize for forgetting a lot of the details of that specific app, given that I've tried out at least half a dozen since then:

1. Can I import 261 clips (MTS files) into the app? (preferably without having them be copied as if they were being imported from a camera--as one trial did)
2. Can I organize the clips into groups (titles?) that I can further treat as a unit? (this so I don't have to join them in another app)
3. Can the app automatically assign chapters to each clip? (so I don't have to manually place 261 chapter marks)
4. Can the clips be trimmed as they are grouped in the app? (this so I don't have to edit them in another app)
5. Can I change menu backgrounds and buttons? (so I can create a softball-specific menu)
6. Can I have 18 buttons on a menu? (in case I just want to link to each game)
7. Can I use a single frame from each group of clips as the menu button? (Motion buttons are OK, but I just want something that isn't a stock bitmap.)
8. Can I create multi-tiered menus? For example, if I want the pre-season, season, and post-season games to be separated, can I create four menus in a tree like that?

I can't thank you enough for taking the time to help me out here. This has been an exceedingly frustrating, time-consuming, but so far fruitless process.

Xesdeeni

[p_l]

Well, that last point is interesting. Corel's online chat thinks the menus are not customizable at all. They say I must buy another, old piece of software if I want that option.

Given my experience with the other canned menus I saw in these trials (and Nero, which I bought, although those are customizable), I wasn't really satisfied with the thought that I'd have to keep buying more apps if (as seemed likely) the menus didn't meet my needs. So I gave up on Corel.

However, if you think this is worth a re-look, maybe you can help me out with my questions their own tech support can't answer. I apologize for forgetting a lot of the details of that specific app, given that I've tried out at least half a dozen since then:

1. Can I import 261 clips (MTS files) into the app? (preferably without having them be copied as if they were being imported from a camera--as one trial did)

I've never gone that high, but I know any app has to analyse the files, which takes some time depending on the speed of your machine, but I don't think it actually copies them.

2. Can I organize the clips into groups (titles?) that I can further treat as a unit? (this so I don't have to join them in another app)

You can join them in MF.

3. Can the app automatically assign chapters to each clip? (so I don't have to manually place 261 chapter marks)

MF does have an automatic scan to insert chapter points, but it can be quite slow and I've preferred to set mine manually. There are options for "Insert scenes as chapters" and "Auto scene detection."

4. Can the clips be trimmed as they are grouped in the app? (this so I don't have to edit them in another app)

Yes.

5. Can I change menu backgrounds and buttons? (so I can create a softball-specific menu)

Yes (image, video and audio).
No, you're stucK with the buttons from the template you choose.

6. Can I have 18 buttons on a menu? (in case I just want to link to each game)

Yes, over a few pages, depending on the menu template you start with.

7. Can I use a single frame from each group of clips as the menu button? (Motion buttons are OK, but I just want something that isn't a stock bitmap.)

Yes, depending on the menu template you choose.

8. Can I create multi-tiered menus? For example, if I want the pre-season, season, and post-season games to be separated, can I create four menus in a tree like that?

You can create title menus and then chapter menus. The number of titles on each menu page depends on the menu template you choose (there are usually 3 or 4), so space your titles out in numbers divisible by the number of thumbnails per page. You can name every page individually.

I can't thank you enough for taking the time to help me out here. This has been an exceedingly frustrating, time-consuming, but so far fruitless process.

Xesdeeni

Try playing around with the program (Corel DVD MovieFactory 7 Pro) and get to know it (including the edit tab on the menu page) and experiment with the possibilities. It isn't as flexible as its old big brother DVD Workshop 2 or some other more complex AVCHD authoring programs, but it is a little easier and you can author some pretty nice AVCHD discs with it.

If it all sometimes gets to be too much, take a break, invert the letters of your moniker, find someone and have at it!

[Xesdeeni]

I started playing with DVD MovieFactory again, and in general I had more luck with your suggestions, but it is still quite lethargic. However, I had also downloaded VideoStudio Pro X4 (only $10 more on their web site), so I thought I'd try that again as well. Again, thanks to your assurances, I ignored some of the issues that stopped me before (like menu customization), and forged ahead. It was a much smoother experience than DMF, being more responsive and quicker to move from window to window.

VSP works differently than DMF, but I eventually found if I loaded each group of clips (called scenes in VSP) and created a project with them, I could later load this as a sub-project under a new project and create the game hierarchy I was looking for when I created the disc. I even found out how to automatically add chapter points for each clip (scene).

I didn't have time to create the entire project yet, but I did 6 games. The single menu template forced me to two menus (I disabled the chapter menus).

Anyway, then I decided to do a test burn. I didn't burn the disc yet, but I just created the directory tree. However, when I started it, it said it was converting the video and audio. I tried a bunch of things, but it seemed to almost always want to convert. I was able to accidentally get it to convert just the audio on the first game/project once, but I couldn't figure out what I did to repeat that.

The input files are MTS files from a Canon HD camcorder. They are 1920x1080 @ 17 Mbps with 2-ch 48kHz AC3 audio. They should be perfectly compliant with AVCHD.

However, I'm not 100% that the conversion was actually a re-render. I viewed the files, and unless the encoder is much better than the other trials, my (extremely discerning) eye didn't see any difference between the originals and the resulting files. However, it took a very long time to do the conversion, if all it was doing was re-packaging the streams. Admittedly, this is to and from the same drive, which I've found in the past can be extremely slow. I may see if I can get one of the two on a different drive and test this again, but the CPU use was pretty high, while the hard drive light didn't stay on constantly as I would expect if it was a simple remux.

MediaInfo doesn't give exactly the same info for the two files, so I'm still not sure. Is there a log file that indicates whether conversion is being done, and more importantly, why?

Xesdeeni

[p_l]

Glad to hear you're making headway.

In MF, when you import your first AVCHD or other file into the project, it will ask you if you want to change the default project settings to match your video, so it can perform SmartRender, which means it shouldn't re-encode your files thereafter if they fit in the disc size you've selected. Always choose yes; otherwise it will uselessly re-encode your files.




Now, of course the program needs to render all your menus and their content, so that takes a while, and the MF encoding engine is on the slow side, but unless the encoding takes several, several hours, it's probably not re-encoding your videos, just checking them, re-encoding any edits you've made (like cuts, splices, transitions, etc.), writing the disc structure and producing an image of it for burning, then burning. So it does take a while, but if your videos look pretty much identical to the originals and it doesn't take overnight for the whole process, you're OK.

[p_l]

By the way, here's a little present. I've converted one of the old Ulead MF 4:3 menu templates to 16:9. UnRar and copy the .UFO into the Corel folder indicated in my screen shot. I've also included just a .jpg in case you want to use it as a background for another template. Of course, you can use any of your own images as menu backgrounds. One nice thing about the menu template I'm giving you is the buttons look a little like bases.

[Xesdeeni]

Wow, thank you very much. I've used this menu and completed the 18 sub-projects. 9 menus is a bit much, but for now, I just want to see what I get on an actual full disc, to decide if I want to buy the full app. I'll leave it to compile and burn overnight and see what I get tomorrow.

Why does it tell me I have enough space (barely), and then warn me that it might not have enough space? I guess I'll find out tomorrow whether I burned a dual-layer coaster or not.

Thanks again,
Xesdeeni

[Xesdeeni]

Uh oh, it also says it's converting 1 of 13 titles. But of course there are 18. Hmmm...

Xesdeeni

[p_l]

Did you make any edit in MF? Not sure if it re-encodes the whole file after an edit or if it re-encodes just the edit itself. I would hope the latter.

Even once you've imported your files, you can go into the Project Settings and change them manually to match your file properties. After steps 1 and 2 here, click on Change MPEG Settings, then make sure your frame size matches your file properties and your bitrate matches or exceeds your file properties. (I had to bump mine up from 15 Mb/s to 16 Mb/s.) It may also be re-encoding just the audio if they don't match.




Anyway, for now maybe just let it complete and see if the result is OK.

[Xesdeeni]

The good news is that it compiled and burned successfully. But the resulting AVCHD disc has some problems. At least two of the clips have what looks like out of sync fields. Then in the middle of the disc, some A/V sync issues.

Xesdeeni

[p_l]

Did you do any of your editing within MF? I'm not saying that's necessarily the culprit; in fact I do it all the time without any problems so far, but you may want to eliminate variables by preparing all your clips outside MF, checking in MediaInfo they all have identical properties, then matching MF's Project Settings to your file properties.

[Xesdeeni]

I'm not sure what to use to edit the files outside VideoStudio Pro X4. I had edited a few with the trial of Final Mate, and I need to check to see whether these are the ones that had issues. But I've since uninstalled that, and I'm not sure what other app to use. And I don't really like the idea of going back and re-editing 261 clips again.

The clips all came from the same camcorder with the same settings.

So far this one has been close, but no cigar.

Xesdeeni

[p_l]

Yes, can you identify which clips were edited where?