Exporting AVCHD from Premiere Pro CS4

[jodal]

Hi!
I have a Canon HF100 (PAL) camcorder with wich I record 1920x1080@25p (although contained in a 50i format) AVCHD video with bitrate 17 Mbit/s in an m2ts-container. This footage I edit in Premiere Pro CS4 in a timeline with "AVCHD 1080i25 (50i)" preset.
Now I want to make an AVCHD disk (BD strucuture on a normal 4.7 GB DVD+r disk). The process of authoring the AVCHD disk when I have m2ts-files I know how to do (I make backups of my original m2ts files on DVD+r disks using multiAVCHD) BUT i do not know how to export my Premiere Pro timeline (i.e. sequence) so I get a compatible m2ts file.

So question is, what preset/settings should i use in the Adobe Media Encoder to get AVCHD compatible files (I want the output to be progressive)?

[minidv2dvd]

i haven't seen a 25p in 50i container m2ts, any chance you could post a test clip on a file sharing site? i could then check it out in pp cs4. when you import it into cs4 does it show as 25p or 50i in the resources bin?

in vegas you could change the file properties to progressive, but i don't know how you can in pp cs4.

[jodal]

Hi!
I have a 6 second long clip thats around 14 MB that I could upload if you tell me where and how (I have never used a filesharing site before).
For this clip it says "Movie, 1920 x 1080 (1,0)" new line "00:00:06:18, 25,00 fps" new line "48000 Hz - Compressed - Stereo"

I use the "AVCHD 1080i25 (50i)" preset since that does not give me a red renderbar on top of the timeline, which I get if I use the "AVCHD 1080p25" preset. To my understanding its does not matter if you use an interlaced preset as long as you specify the output as progressive.

[minidv2dvd]

if you have a hotmail account it has a 2gb file hosting "sky drive", if not there are a bunch of free ones. rapidshare, mediafire, or a quick search on google of file hosting brings up many, pick one that works for you.

[jodal]

Lets se if it worked. I copied this link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=2e535158d8147f7ec2b435915e8821d7e04e75f6e8ebb871

I´ll be gone for a couple of hours now but let me know if you could acess the file.

[poisondeathray]

Don't let the absence of the render bar fool you; it will re-encode everything even if you do simple cuts only. Pass through is NOT an option.

If your footage is truly 25p content in 25i wrapper, in CS4 you would right click the asset and use interpret footage setting (set to progressive). The wrapper wrongly conveys the message of interlaced content to Premiere. If you don't set this, Premiere will apply deinterlace when "progressive" is set in the Adobe Media Encoder, and the image quality will deteriorate even farther

There is no preset for BD5/9 media if you are using Adobe Media Encoder. It is intended for BD25/50. The major differences are in the max bitrate peak, and VBV buffer settings, none of which you can adjust. If the max bitrate and buffer settings are not correct, you will get jerky playback or no playback at all. If you want better control, you could export as lossless and use another encoder with more control (e.g. x264, or mainconcept reference, both which allow finer tuning and proper settings)

You can get around this by manually setting the max bitrate to 24Mb/s and the 2pass average bitrate to 17Mb/s and it should work on standalone units. Encore CS4 doesn't allow authoring of h.264 to BD5/9 media, so you would have to use Multiavchd (simple menus) or Tsmuxer (no menus), both free or DVD Architect 5+

If you are just doing simple edits (cuts) without fancy effects or transitions, a better idea might be to skip Premiere, and use h264ts_cutter or tsmuxer to cut. The cuts will not be frame accurate (cut on keyframes), but the benefit is both will not re-encode and degrade quality farther

Cheers

[minidv2dvd]

yes the download worked fine.

i checked the footage frame by frame and it does appear to be progressive, even though mediainfo reports interlaced tff. another fool the specs and abuse the rules format.

i'll check rendering it later.

[edDV]

If this is camcorder source, I'd leave it interlace and let the Blu-Ray player or HDTV hardware do the deinterlace.

[poisondeathray]

If this is camcorder source, I'd leave it interlace and let the Blu-Ray player or HDTV hardware do the deinterlace.

The OP would have to re-shoot the footage as interlaced then. The content of that clip is 25p in 25i wrapper. A lot of Canon cameras do this PsF wrapping, both AVCHD and HDV. Most editors and programs misread the content as interlaced, when it is in fact progressive.

[edDV]

If this is camcorder source, I'd leave it interlace and let the Blu-Ray player or HDTV hardware do the deinterlace.

The OP would have to re-shoot the footage as interlaced then. The content of that clip is 25p in 25i wrapper. A lot of Canon cameras do this PsF wrapping, both AVCHD and HDV. Most editors and programs misread the content as interlaced, when it is in fact progressive.

If shooting progressive true but most AVCHD is shot interlace.

[minidv2dvd]

it appears it's just like the 30p HV30 footage. canon has the camera shoot and record progressive, but the file header says interlaced. bending the format rules.

pp cs4 will "interpret" the footage as 25p and use it in a 1920x1080p workspace, but there is no way to encode it back out as blu-ray progressive. only interlaced tff or bff.

[minidv2dvd]

vegas pro doesn't allow avchd high profile in anything other than interlaced tff. the only way to get avchd to render to progressive is to use the main profile, not high, as far as i can tell.

[poisondeathray]

Well technically 1080p25 isn't "legal" for blu-ray (or AVCHD). 1080p24, 1080p23.976 are both "legal", so Adobe doesn't give this option. No problems if you have a camera from North America that has a 24p mode (e.g. most recent Canon AVCHD models do)

IIRC, some SAP's will have no difficulty playing 1080p25 authored as AVCHD (eg. using x264 and multiavchd and the lossless export method), but this is player specific. e.g. PS3 definitely plays 1080p25 in AVCHD structure, but it's more powerful than other units. However, they all seem to choke on 1080p30 which is definitely not legal for blu-ray .

[jodal]

Hi all and thanks for taking the time to help out.
I do a little bit more than simple cuts so I prefer to stay with Premiere Pro and I am aware that there will be reencoding of all material (I did check out some other options with "smart rendering" but decided to go for PPro).

If I understand poisondeathray correct, I should set the "interpret footage" to "no fields" and use the "AVCHD 1080p25" preset during editing! Correct?
If this is the case it really makes sense to me (but I know thats is not really a reason for doing it) and doing so the red bars are gone (but I know there will still be reencoding). The reason I used the other preset was that I asked a question about this in the creative cow forum and got the answer to use the preset that did not show red renderbars. I trusted them but was a bit suspicious because when I added material from after effects that I knew where progressive, motion in these effects showed interlace lines. This info from poisondeathray was maybe not my primary question but maybe even more valuable for me so I really appreciate it.

Onto the rendering.
I was going for the “render to lossless and then encode” variant but after waiting a few hours while my 40 min edit rendered out with the lagarith codec, only to find that the only non-black video frames where those that had the red renderbar on top in the PPro sequence (i.e. all frames that had no renderbar where black, I could not believe the file size was only 10 GB but that was the reason), I got a little discouraged and I am now experimenting with the AME (Adobe Media Encoder) again. Since I cant choose progressive output among the Blu-ray H264 presets I decided to try a custom H264 preset for video only (since I cant choose ac3 coding for audio) with the following settings: (I do not have the american 24p option on my camcorder)
PAL, 1920x1080, fps=25, fieldorder=none, Aspect Ratio=square pixels, Profile=main, Level=4.1, VBR 2pass, target=17Mbps, max=24Mbps. This will give an m4v video file and I will separately output an 256kbps ac3 audio file.
Does this sound correct so far? (can I lower the target to e.g. 15Mbps to fit onto a single layer DVDr?)
If so, How do I get the m4v and ac3 files into an m2ts container so I can use multiAVCHD?

[minidv2dvd]

for the render, i'd try profile main @ level 4.0, as more equipment can deal with it. and the bitrate needs to be under 17mbps for main profile. 15mbps would be fine. mkvmerge GUI should be able to mux them into a .mkv that multiavchd can use.