AVCHD for DV tapes

[jupita]

Hi

I have a load of DV tapes which I have converted to DVD. I'm having a Sony blu ray player for Christmas and hence am thinking I can re-convert my DV tapes to AVCHD (in std defn) and this will allow me to get much more content on a dvd-r.

What application is best for creating avchd from lossless DV. I normally extract timecode from the DV content which I turn into subtitles which are merged into the final mpeg video using vegas. Can I still do this with avchd?

My audio is normally converted into ac3 2.0, which I'm not sure why I did this, as the sound is mono. What can I do here. Can I leave it as 2.0 or do I need to encode it in another way for avchd?

So many questions... Please give me some advice.

Regards

Darren

[aedipuss]

why go to the effort and expense. dvavi is only 720x576 pal and the dvds you created are almost the same quality if you created them correctly. converting them again to blu-ray avchd will entail blowing them up to 1920x1080 at a higher bitrate. they will take up more space and look worse.

[poisondeathray]

why go to the effort and expense. dvavi is only 720x576 pal and the dvds you created are almost the same quality if you created them correctly. converting them again to blu-ray avchd will entail blowing them up to 1920x1080 at a higher bitrate. they will take up more space and look worse.

You don't have to upscale. 720x576 / 50i is a legit AVCHD and blu-ray spec. I haven't done a PAL version, but I've done an SD version with similar content playable on a NTSC blu-ray player before.



Your ac3 audio is fine for AVCHD. You could make "fake" stereo by duping channels in an audio editor if your source is single channel.

One way of doing this might be to use avisynth , DVInfo() for your timecodes "subtitles", and avchdcoder or another x264 front end that has a proper patched nal hrd, interlace build

Interlaced h.264 encoding using x264 without MBAFF (ie. standard PAFF interlacing) loses a lot of it's efficiency compared to that on progressive sources vs. MPEG2. It's only slightly more efficient in this scenario (but still holds a huge advantage at very low bitrates). It would be much simpler, faster and compliant to use MPEG2 and make a standard DVD as you have been doing. The advantages in this case of using x264 are minimal, and it takes more processing power - x264 hasn't been optimized for interlaced encoding. Using a payware h.264 solution which properly utilizes MBAFF will give you more interlaced encoding advantage. Proper MBAFF interlaced encoders very expensive.

[jupita]

Hi

Thanks for that. I took a look at support for AVC in vegas last night and it doesn't allow me to save a video stream as 720x576/50i. What software could I use to make compliant 720x576/50i. I'm just experimenting at the moment, but think that with the superb compression that avc should provide that I should be able to get more than an hour on a DVD at a decent bitrate.

Thanks

Darren

[aedipuss]

that little i is the problem. avchd/264 is a progressive format. if you have to use interlacing you are better off with mpeg-2. it can be done in some x264 guis like mediacoder, in the advanced options.

from mewiki

interlaced

Default: Not Set

Enable interlaced encoding. x264's interlaced encoding is inherently less efficient than its progressive encoding, so it is probably better to deinterlace an interlaced source before encoding rather than use interlaced mode.

[jupita]

that little i is the problem. avchd/264 is a progressive format. if you have to use interlacing you are better off with mpeg-2. it can be done in some x264 guis like mediacoder, in the advanced options.

from mewiki

interlaced

Default: Not Set

Enable interlaced encoding. x264's interlaced encoding is inherently less efficient than its progressive encoding, so it is probably better to de-interlace an interlaced source before encoding rather than use interlaced mode.

So I guess x264 isn't going to give me any more compression than I would have got from encoding in mpeg2 in the first place. I could always have saved it as progressive I guess, but that I think that's probably just going to add alot of noise. I think I'll experiment anyway just to see.

Thanks

Darren