Basic blu-ray authoring - how to mesh 2 incompatible processes

[armyofquad]

On the one hand, you have video editing.

On the other hand, you have disc authoring.

Researching these 2 processes result in workflows that seem to completely ignore that the other exists!

Not sure how one is supposed to sort this out!



My VHS captures require some basic editing, which I've been doing in Vegas.
I then needed to research the video specs for blu-ray. So the choice was made to render my Vegas projects to H264 720 60p, which is a valid spec for blu-ray discs.

So now I should have content ready for blu-ray disc.

My experience in authoring DVD was to author to the file format ready for disc, then lay it out in a DVD authoring software.

My experience now in finding blu-ray authoring software is it all wants to take it upon itself to render.

But I do not want this! I've already rendered my video to the format I want it in on the disc!


Does there exist a proper blu-ray authoring software that won't muck up the work I already did by re-rendering video that is already properly rendered?

[poisondeathray]

I then needed to research the video specs for blu-ray. So the choice was made to render my Vegas projects to H264 720 60p, which is a valid spec for blu-ray discs.

Did you use blu-ray compatible encoding settings?

Basically, there are dozens other settings and variables required for BD compatibility. Any "regular" 1280x720p59.94 (60000/1001 exactly) is not compatible and will be re-encoded. For example 60fps (as in 60/1 fps) will get rejected, wrong GOP size will get rejected, wrong number of reference frames will get rejected, no buffer will get rejected, etc...

My experience in authoring DVD was to author to the file format ready for disc, then lay it out in a DVD authoring software.

For DVD, you had to use DVD compliant settings, or it would get rejected. A "vanilla" non DVD compliant MPEG2 will get rejected by the DVD authoring software. Well it's the same with BD.

Does there exist a proper blu-ray authoring software that won't muck up the work I already did by re-rendering video that is already properly rendered?

Probably you need to fix your work

[armyofquad]

Could you point me in the direction of properly encoding in Vegas?

Once I get to the point that the encodings are confirmed correct - the initial question still stands, which you haven't answered. I'm not seeing authoring software that is showing errors or giving me an unavailable option to not re-render, all authoring software in all the research I've done by default will only re-render whatever is in there. So I still need to know.

Does there exist a proper blu-ray authoring software that won't muck up the work I already did by re-rendering video that is already properly rendered?


Alternate question....


Is there a better rendering option for my edited content as a transport file, to then re-render to bluray with my desired specs of 720p 60fps?


I suppose essentially the question is - what is the best workflow from edited project in Vegas to blu-ray with those specs?

[Santiago]

TMPGEnc Authoring Works 7 has a free trial version that is good for 30 days. The program does re-render the video files. However, I have not noticed any loss of video quality.

[Sharc]

Does there exist a proper blu-ray authoring software that won't muck up the work I already did by re-rendering video that is already properly rendered?

Try tsMuxeR (tsMuxerGUI) for basic authoring (no menus)
https://www.videohelp.com/software/tsMuxeR

(assuming your encodes are blu-ray specs compliant)

[poisondeathray]

Does there exist a proper blu-ray authoring software that won't muck up the work I already did by re-rendering video that is already properly rendered?

Your assumption is that it's "properly rendered"

If the video is BD compliant, ALL BD authoring software should let it pass through, including DVDA

=> Therefore, your video is probably not BD compliant

Make sure you also have the Project settings in the authoring software setup correctly as well.

Alternate question....


Is there a better rendering option for my edited content as a transport file, to then re-render to bluray with my desired specs of 720p 60fps?


I suppose essentially the question is - what is the best workflow from edited project in Vegas to blu-ray with those specs?

The most compliant format for BD video authoring is elementary video - .264, h264 etc... This is what professional authoring tools use, because putting it into a container can change sequence headers and make it non compliant for strict (professional) authoring tools . Transport stream is 2nd best, because it can be demuxed without those header changes . Avoid things like MP4, MKV

I don't know about "best", but I use x264 for blu-ray (using blu ray settings). The AVC rendering quality for Vegas' Mainconcept and Sony is quite low. There were many comparisons done in the past

[poisondeathray]

Could you point me in the direction of properly encoding in Vegas?

If you're using vegas to render, use a blu-ray preset e.g. Mainconcept AVC and edit it to 720p54.94 . I don't think old "Sony" vegas versions came with 720p profiles, only 1920x1080 presets

I have Vegas Pro 13 on one of my computers - I just tested it and verified it works for passthrough in DVDA (recompress "no")

[armyofquad]

If you're using vegas to render, use a blu-ray preset e.g. Mainconcept AVC and edit it to 720p54.94 . I don't think old "Sony" vegas versions came with 720p profiles, only 1920x1080 presets

I have Vegas Pro 13 on one of my computers - I just tested it and verified it works for passthrough in DVDA (recompress "no")

Do you have recommended settings on the profile for VHS to Bluray? Perhaps a screenshot? Also - I'll want it to be widescreen, the camcorder had a letterbox option that was used on some of the recordings, which I've cropped to be proper widescreen, so that modern TVs won't display with a full border around the entire video.

[poisondeathray]

I'm not clear on what you did for the camcorder, and I have zero suggestions for VHS to bluray (except maybe don't do it ... it's VHS... ) but for 1280x720p59.94 make sure the project properties settings (1280x720, 59.94, progressive, square pixel) match the render settings

I took Mainconcept AVC Blu-ray 1920x1080-60i video stream preset, edited it to 1280x720, frame rate 59.94 (enter it) , field order progressive. You can change the bitrate to whatever, but do not change the maximum bitrate

Also make sure the DVDA project properties settings match - blu ray disc, video format AVC, 16:9 , 1280x720, 59.94 progressive.

[armyofquad]

Cool, thanks. Will play around with that.

Just for the record - 2 good reasons to do VHS to bluray

- conversion for someone that might appreciate the simplicity of putting a disc in a player and pressing play rather than mucking about with modern technology to get files to play on the screen

- bluray can hold more content than DVD, so that's less discs to hand over

Also - even if the number of discs wasn't an issue, deinterlacing camcorder footage to 60p offers improvement over keeping it 30i, and I don't think DVD will support 60p.

So I guess that's 3.

[poisondeathray]

- bluray can hold more content than DVD, so that's less discs to hand over

In that case, SD blu-ray makes more sense. Why upscale , why deinterlace ?

Both upscaling and "60p" will require more bitrate for a certain level of quality than SD interlaced BD, so you can fit less content on a fixed capacity disc

1280x720p59.94 might be a better option if the display chain the end user is using lower quality processing in terms of deinterlacing and scaling than what you are using. But Sony vegas's deinterlacing and scaling options are near the lower end of the spectrum in terms of quality. Today's TV are much(!) better deinterlacers and upscalers than what old Sony vegas uses, and your disc is actually going to look worse on those setups, and fit less material

And if it was an older hardware setup, it's still going to be similar to what Sony is doing in terms of deinterlacing and upscaling, except you can fit less on the disc if you go 1280x720p60 with adequate bitrate

But if you used some 3rd party tools for higher quality deinterlacing and upscaling , then you might be able to argue a 1280x720p59.94 path, otherwise results are going to be worse in terms of quality and capacity on disc

[cibo]

I then needed to research the video specs for blu-ray. So the choice was made to render my Vegas projects to H264 720 60p, which is a valid spec for blu-ray discs.

You are right that VHS on Blu-ray is better than DVD, especially with high quality VHS captures (due to sheer amount of noise that can be difficult to remove) but you would be much better using 480i59.94 for your export.
- Your VHS is captured as 480i59.94 (hopefully). Your 480i59.94 BD encode would contain all of the data.
- You don't have to filter your video (deinterlace + upscale)
- You distribute the bitrate more efficiently.

[armyofquad]

I did initially start with the mindset of SD blu-ray for delivery.

But then I also had 2 workflows going, because some may prefer to have files, and some may prefer to just plop a disc in their player and watch the TV.

So the pursuit of best practices for VHS to file workflow led me to things like figuring out best deinterlacing practices, which led me to figuring out QTGMC.

Which now leads me to the assumption I'm working on for TV delivery - a 60p blu-ray may do better than a 30i blu-ray relying on the user's home setup to deinterlace to a modern TV. Of course that calls into question all those fun variables of the home user's setup and how it's configured - but I figure if I'm going to go to the trouble to get the best deinterlacing I can out of the video, why should I trust an unknown setup to do it for the blu-ray end.

Which is what led me to researching blu-ray specs, and has led me to rendering to a higher resolution to be within those specs, to have a deinterlaced 60p disc.


Anyways - that's the line of logic that led me here, but I'm open to suggestions or points I haven't considered in this line of logic.

[armyofquad]

You are right that VHS on Blu-ray is better than DVD, especially with high quality VHS captures (due to sheer amount of noise that can be difficult to remove) but you would be much better using 480i59.94 for your export.
- Your VHS is captured as 480i59.94 (hopefully). Your 480i59.94 BD encode would contain all of the data.
- You don't have to filter your video (deinterlace + upscale)
- You distribute the bitrate more efficiently.

I'm a bit confused by this. Isn't VHS 29.97i? Why would I capture to 59.94i? Is that even possible, given that the signal isn't 59.94i to begin with?

[poisondeathray]

OK - If you were going QTGMC route - then I would do the same 1280x720p59.94

I'm a bit confused by this. Isn't VHS 29.97i? Why would I capture to 59.94i? Is that even possible, given that the signal isn't 59.94i to begin with?

It's just different naming conventions. It means the same thing. One is expressed as fields/s , the other frames/s interlaced

[armyofquad]

If you were going QTGMC route - then I would do the same 1280x720p59.94

Excellent! As always, you're the best.

[cibo]

"why should I trust an unknown setup to do it for the blu-ray end."

If you think that way, you should not even trust the customer Blu-ray player to even be in-spec. Make a product that target mid-high tier equipement. People with potato players likely do not care about quality and are just happy to see the content. You are messing up with your main customer base by thinking that way.

Mid-Higher tier players can deinterlace content just fine. Do 480i59.94, there are still SDBD in 2024 for a good reason, it's the best way to convey and display a show without negatively altering it.

I'm a bit confused by this. Isn't VHS 29.97i? Why would I capture to 59.94i? Is that even possible, given that the signal isn't 59.94i to begin with?

VHS records an analog signal (NTSC, PAL or SECAM (-L)). For NTSC, it has a framerate of 29.97 (480i/29.97), which is equivalent to a fieldrate of 59.94 (480i59.94). For TV broadcast and shows, the content would be real 59.94, while movies would have a 2:3 pulldown, and most field would repeat.

[armyofquad]

"People with potato players likely do not care about quality and are just happy to see the content." - the motto of all those send us your crap in a box services.

Sadly - it's also true much of the time.

[Sharc]

I'm a bit confused by this. Isn't VHS 29.97i? Why would I capture to 59.94i? Is that even possible, given that the signal isn't 59.94i to begin with?

NTSC VHS is 59.94 fields per second. Nothing else. It is only with digitization that these fields are getting organized (stored) as 29.97 interlaced frames per second.
It's just unfortunate that 29.97i, 59.94i, 480i30 and 480i60 etc. are used interchangeably for the same which causes confusion.

[armyofquad]

Ok - so now I see what I was missing at the start of this thread.

I can't speak for other software I briefly tinkered around with - I do have DVD Architect installed, and had used it in the past, but that was long ago and with sources that I wanted re-rendered.

For your convenience, DVD-Architect will automatically re-render content that it recognizes but isn't to spec. For your convenience, it will not re-render material that is in spec. So yes....my initial H264 renderings that were meeting my requirements and within the parameters I was reading about, weren't within spec, and following poison death ray's recommendations has resulted in having in spec files that are automatically not re-rendered when using them in DVD Architect.

What I find unintuitive about the process, is that the project properties have specifications for bitrate. For me, it was intuitive enough to set the resolution and framerates to match my imported material...but having to set a bitrate, and having it automatically render to that bitrate, didn't make it clear to me that it was automatically rendering due to video not being in spec, or that it was possible for that value to become irrelevant in the case that you do import content that is within spec. It implied to me that the software was always going to re-render, because it has an always active field that is relevant to re-rendering, and didn't display something to me that there was an unavailable option to me to not re-render.

Anyways....just an explanation of what led me to this journey, and drunk ramblings about another example of how software is unintuitive and things that could be improved upon. Although given that I'm using a 16 year old piece of software, criticism isn't exactly relevant anymore.

Now....back to re-rendering my material.

And another big thanks to my favorite death ray, poisondeathray. I owe you another coke.

[Sharc]

In my past experience with the "picky" DVDA for BD authoring of seemingly compliant x264 sources it was almost always VBV (buffer management) issues which made the authoring process to fail and/or triggered the re-encoding, and it was almost impossible to produce compliant streams with HW accelerated encodes.

[armyofquad]

I've yet to find any working method of blu-ray authoring. DVD Architect keeps crashing when trying to add an 8th video segment, I've found things online claiming some sort of bullshit 2.5 hour limitation to avc video content on a dvd architect product, and others claiming to haven't had that problem.

I can't make anything work as usual. No one makes working software anymore.

Why is no one able to come up with any working method to author a blu ray disc?

[Alwyn]

Magix Movie Studio and Magix Video Pro X have DVD, BD and AVCHD authoring (as well as full prior editing capability if needed). Works well. Menu system design is a bit clunky/corny but customisable and effective.

It normally re-encodes any videos when authoring (there is a smart-copy function for BD-compliant files but I haven't investigated that).

[cibo]

Please kindly define authoring. Nowhere on your link there are any mentions of Blu-ray authoring. At best this is just using tsMuxer under the hood. So much respect for jcdr and physic past work.

[_Al_]

AI says yes: https://www.google.com/search?q=can+magix+movie+studio+author+blu-ray+disk

[Alwyn]

Please kindly define authoring. Nowhere on your link there are any mentions of Blu-ray authoring. At best this is just using tsMuxer under the hood.

Calm down tiger.

Have a look at this, from the online Help:

https://help.magix-hub.com/video/videodlx/2025/en/content/topics/burn.htm?skinName=Dar...ovies%7C_____4

PS: I've sent a rocket to Magix to suggest it adds disk authoring to the features list.

[cibo]

I stand corrected, apologies. I do wonder which library or software they use under the hood, menu creation and editing is not trivial and there's a plethora of editing software with some HDMV support while not being Blu-ray Disc licensees. Yet only open source solution is essentially multiAVCHD.

[Sharc]

I stand corrected, apologies. I do wonder which library or software they use under the hood, menu creation and editing is not trivial and there's a plethora of editing software with some HDMV support while not being Blu-ray Disc licensees. Yet only open source solution is essentially multiAVCHD.

Few more, some as trialware (just for info, not as a recommendation):
https://www.videohelp.com/software/sections/authoring-bd-hd-dvd

[cibo]

I know, but all the free software in there (not from Nero, DVD-Logic or Adobe), plus all new chinese authoring software not listed, are most certainly all based on the same open source code base from early 2010

[armyofquad]

I've spent hours and hours and hours of time converting VHS-C tapes for family members, trying to do a nice deed, and the thanks I get for my good deed is a dead end with no way to actually deliver the content.

Why?

Because no one seems to have a damn clue how to author a damn disc anymore.

When did this knowledge get lost?

At this point, best I can figure.....it has been a huge mistake to encode to AVC. It crashes DVD Architect, and is a well known and documented bug that no one has bothered to consider fixing, or even put up a useful error to clue one in as to why the program is crashing. And no other authoring software I've tested will even touch the format.

Not sure how I got here.

So what I need an answer to for once and for all.....

How in the heck do I encode my material to a compatible format that is blu-ray compliant and blu-ray authoring software will recognize and not re-encode?

Does anyone know?