I'm trying to create BDs with 2 or more movies captured with a Hauppauge 1212 DVR. They are 1080i AVCHD, VBR, 13.5Mbps max, NTSC; (Audio is Dolby digital, 2ch, 48KHz, 384kbs). TAW5 demo detected them as VBR, 15Mbps max and it does not allow me to output them without re-encoding. Under the same circumstances, when authoring a DVD, TAW4 will allow me to just output the movies if I say "none" for the media size. Is it because the movies are interlaced? Is it because it's a demo? And if I can't avoid re-encoding, can I reduce the processing time in some other way/setting?

For example, I tried to author 2X 2hr6min movies, on per track, detected as 8.95Mpbs and 10.264Mbps average bitrate, respectively, with a non-frills, skeleton top menu. It took 6.5 hrs to transcode to the same bitrate as the sources. I set each track properties to exactly the bitrate of each source, and to "not allow for resizing" (without this last, it would have taken more than 9hrs). I tried both with "none" and "custom size" settings; it re-encodes not matter what. How do I prevent this to happen? Should I use some other program to deinterlace and re-encode them as 1080p beforehand? Anything will be faster than this!
(BTW, I don't have CUDA, my card it ATI. My rig is an I7-920 OC20% with 12GB memory; it's quite fast with any other software, including TAW4 and TE40.)
I'm happy with TAW4 for making DVDs and BDs in MPEG format. I'm evaluating the TAW5 trial version to see if I upgrade or buy it for AVCHD usage. I have about 800-900 AVCHD movies accumulated and I need the space. Any advice will be appreciated.

I tried about 10 different 'avc' files, with differing audio etc, and never got TAW5 to work with the file without re-encoding. As it stands it's TAW4 with supposedly x264 support. I regretted getting TAW4(same as TAW3 with mpeg2 blu ray) because of it's lack of x264 support, so I won't be upgrading this time.

Thank you Dave518 for you rapid response. I actually investigated a bit more and discovered that the AVC files that Hauppauge produces are not only interlaced, but also of "Main@L4.0" profile, whatever that is. I know they play on top-set BD players bcs I tried generating BD without menus (tsMuxeR + ImgBurn) and they worked. However, the standard for BD is "High@L...". This probably causes TAW5 to re-encode my files. Surely it would be good if more MP4 flavors were accepted w/o re-encoding.
However, I'm leaning to upgrade now, because I found a way to do it faster and at the same time deinterlacing to 1080p. In this final test, apart from changing from Interlace to Progressive, asking for re-encode (not smart rendering), and setting max and ave bitrates as the sources, I also changed from "somewhat fast" to "Fastest" in the general track tab. This made a lot of difference. It's now running a re-encode that should take less or about 3hrs. Considering that I'm de-interlacing 4.25 hrs of 1080i movie, it does not seem a bad deal. And the PC usage is the same as with "somewhat fast". As for the de-interlacing quality, I don't know. TAW5 does not give any choices here; the 3min test I did prior to this run does not reveal much of a difference in my 1080p pc monitor. I know the output is progressive only because Super says so.

In any case (and even if I'll upgrade now) I'll be waiting for Pegasys to review this issue and see if there is any bug lurking here. It should give us the choice of not re-encoding. It's troublesome that for none of your trials it let you do so. Would an already compliant file be accepted? Have you tried to run TAW5 twice? Like using the output of the first time as input for the second? It it doesn't, it's a bug. This will be my next test, and I'll report here the result.

In your case, I think the profile is the reason your file is being fully re-encoded. However, I think there is a bug with smart rendering certain h.264 files. For instance, I can't smart render a h.264 Blu-ray encoded with TAW5!

Also, the trial does not limit smart rendering; if your file can be smart rendered, that's how it will be handled by default. When it can be smart rendered, you have the option to fully re-encode it if you wish, but obviously, it won't work the other way around.

The Japanese version was updated recently, but I can't tell if it solved some of the smart rendering issues.

Thank you tkrave. You're right; it has to be the profile: I run TAW5 again using as input the movies in the BD I created before; with smart rendering, fastest, etc. and it took only 23min (Now it says: "Outputting lossless video" instead of "x264 renderer active"!!!). As I did not copy to HD, this is just the time for reading the 19GB directly from the BD. For one reason or another, after the first run, the first movie stull appeared Interlaced, while the 2nd is now Progressive. The second run took both without re-processing. So it doesn't matter whether it is i or p, as long as the profile is High.

I would still like to find a faster solution. 3.5hr of deinterlacing for a ~4.2hrs of 1080i movie is not bad, but it's not great either. I'll also have to count some time for creating decent looking menus, (background, sound, etc.), plus the actual recording time. Again it's good for one special movie, but not for the hundreds. Is there any other program which would de-interlace fast(er) this type of movies?

If I were to leave the movies interlaced, or just de-interlace in some other way, apparently changing the profile is not impossible, with a binary editor. For what wikipedia says, Main is the base for all the other profiles. So it will be like creating a very inefficient High profile movie, which only uses Main profile functions. Would TAW5 smart-render a "doctored" file like this?

I'll research my two questions and write back the results here. If anybody knows or have done this, please let me know.

wtf? creating first a bluray from recording, then import to cut?
I've tried out this way - doesn't match again. allways I got "FR" thanks....
PLEASE work ON your Smart Rendering routines!!!!

I've occasionally d/l-ed subtitles (srt) from internet to add to an avi file, creating a playable DVD.

For the most part this works fine by using subtitle|import.

Is there any way to get this pgm to recognize the italic symbol <i> and </i> in a subtitle rather than displaying it? I now do a search & replace using a word processor to eliminate them prior to import. It'd be better if the pgm either ignored them or actually implemented the italics. Is this possible?

PLZ HELP ME I WNAT UNIQUE PAGE FOR ALL TRACKS AND TRACK MENU,pl tel me how it can be possible

any one can tell me when i to add 3 track or more than 3,then i go to custom menu over there the language menu pages are separate not one page for all tracks,can it possible that one subtitle page for all track menus,then tell me how?

Not possible since each track can have it's own set of subtitles/audio. For example, Track 1 can have 2 audio tracks and 2 subtitles, but Track 2 might only have 1 audio and 1 subtitle. Therefore, each track has its own subtitle and audio pages.

Hello, is it possible to create a menu in DVD Works 4 with own pictures. i can`t find an option

Yes. This would probably be a custom menu, not a template.

Hello. Does anyone know if the DVD authored with Authoring Works 5 is Region Free or if this can be set via a menu? Thanks!

It's region free.

Hi there, I am trying to convert my massive dvd collection to blurays, so that I can watch them without having to swap dvds, and I am unsure of what type of subtitle formats this new one supports. I have tried vobsub subs and they do not render properly, but srt does. As well, Substation alpha, and advanced sub station alpha files do not appear to be working. I have over 400 dvd's that I want to convert over, many of them are anime series that I own and others are tv shows. Do I have to manually covert all the substreams to srt files? And how does it manage the dual audio on these, does the first track become track 1, and the second track 2? When I import the mkv files I have made, since mp4 does not play nice with dual audio, I do not get to hear the dual audio in preview, and most times it just crashes (my main concern is that sometimes the audio streams switch on the source dvds so english is first then on another it might be second). I have the demo right now, and I want to buy this product as I am sick of making AVCHD's with multiavchd, except that program works perfect, but not every player you buy supports AVCHD. I have rendered a few of my english only tv series, and it works AWESOME, but I really want to make sure in regards to the dual audio aspect, and your support of them and the massive substreams.

I think .srt files are your best bet. I would search the web and see if someone has already created an .srt for your movies/shows. The other supported formats are proprietary to TMPGEnc software, I think. There is support for XML subtitles (.xsubtitle) but I have no experience with that format.

As for audio, if the source is DVD-Video, you can use the Source Wizard to import from a DVD and it will let you select which audio tracks you want to import. You can then set which audio track is the default and assign a language label to the audio track if necessary.

well that totally sucks. I would like to use other programs to master the files. I did try importing the dvd directly, and you have no control over anything. Once it is imported the amount of work to create the links and chapters is astounding. Specially in multi pgc discs. At least when I rip something to mkv I can grab the chapter names and embed them, and when I move it to multiavchd it sees these properly (along with all subtitle and audio tracks). Kinda sad that a FREE program was 2 years ahead of this, and is still a tonne better.

I do appreciate that the team has finally added h264 codec for bluray, but you need more subtitle and audio support guys. What is the point of having mkv input if it can not see more than one audio track in that mkv properly, and can only handle one type of subtitle format? If I can not manually master my files and import them properly, I sadly see no point in buying this :(

Hold on. Are these actual DVD-Video DVDs or just data DVD with a bunch of video files on them?

Personally, I find the DVD-Video importer to be pretty good, and I can easily import subtitles, audio tracks and chapters, even with importing multiple PGCs...so I'm not sure what you mean when you say "you have no control over anything".

Basically, any MPEG transport stream is easy to import (Blu-ray, DVD, AVCHD, etc.). The only tedious part is renaming the chapters.

Yes these are actual store bought dvds. As I said I want to move my entire anime collection over to bluray, along with my tv and movie dvds. I started doing it to avchd, but found it a pain as a lot of players in the beginning did not support them, so when a player would die, I had to take a disc with me and test and test. Yes my ps3 will play them, but I do not want to have my laser burn out and have to spend another 250 or so to buy a new one ha. Streaming them over the network was my old option, but as hard drives have increased in price drastically, it is more economically viable to port them to bluray.

Renaming the chapters is a huge pain. Seriously. Specially when I have some discs that have 8 episodes and then some special features. Then I have to move the chapters around, to have the special features at the end, etc. I do prefer to use vidcoder or handbrake to master my files as they will actually use all 6 of the cores on my i7 970, where as tmpeg does not even come close to pushing it. Plus all the other tweaks I can do with x264 to get the best out of the least amount of bitrate. When you are trying to fit 2-3 seasons of a series on one bluray, it can be torture, specially when there are 24-26 episodes per season. I am also finding with the demo that it does not always encode the files to ac3, even if it is set in the master options. I have done some tests with divx rips of my own content where the mp3 soundtrack was converted to LPCM. Yes these are ancient haha.

I have been transcoding my own stuff for over 10 years, moving dvd to vcd, svcd, then divx and xvid, and even have older stuff that is in OGM format haha. Yes I still have the originals of EVERYTHING, but I know I am not the only one in this boat of wanting to use external apps to master their files before authoring them. I have yet to see if CCCP will allow this program to master a DTS file in an mkv from some of my personal bluray rips. I own everything I am trying to convert and master to different formats. Call me lazy, but I do not want to have to swap discs when I want to to a TNG or Urusei Yatsura marathon.

If I use vidcoder, it will grab the episode, add the subs, add the chapter breaks and name those breaks properly in the mkv file. Authoring works will grab the episodes, grab the audio and subs, but does not grab any chapter names, or episode names, it all has to be done manually. What is the point of having mkv input, if you are not using all the information that is stored in the mkv?

btw thanks for the input tkrave.

When loading a Blu-ray from the harddrive (BDMV) I get the following error:

The selected disc contains titles with audio that cannot be decoded. Sinds audio that can not be decoded does not display in the selector, some titles may not have a selectable audio.

The audio problem is with te main movie.

I bet it has DTS Audio? TMPGEnc only supports dolby digital..so you need to recode audio to dolby.

Dunno why TMPGEnc doesennt have passtru for all those things..audio or video

How do I recode to Dolby Digital?

you can use eac3to

Maybe there is a work around for AW5: Haali Media Splitter and latest version of FFDSHOW, who i use now due to a decoding problem i had with some .ts files.
Download them and install, do NOT change any settings, just install with pre-set settings.
Haali Media Splitter and FFDSHOW can be located on videohelp.com

Suggested by tkrave to me:
Options-->Preferences-->Input/output format list-->File input plug-in
Here i removed every marker, EXEPT for the one at DirectShow file reader.

I have just given an MKV file i have with standard DTS a try and found out that i was actually able to open the file and also the DTS audio within with out problems. AW5 can how ever not encode with DTS audio only Dolby Digital, the DTS will be converted to Dolby Digital 5.1

Note: Blu-ray's with DTS does not come with standard DTS, they have DTS-HD Master.
But you can give it a try, since i was able to open an MKV with standard DTS.

I also have the problem, that DVB recordings (h264 / ts) doesn't use SmartRendering. For deeper details: recordings are done by using KNC-One DVB-C card, as software for recording come DVB-viewer (www.dvbviewer.com). The recordes file is transport stream (ts) conform to h264 standard.

Each recorded file will be full encoded. I hope for fix of this problem. In this condition it is unuseable for me - and sure - for other's too.

If there a way to force SmartRendering?

Thx for help and hope for you to become another satisfied customer.

What are the actual characteristics of the video file? Use MediaInfo and post the info here.

there is an issue smart rendering h264/avc/mp4.

I tested the situation creating a blu ray with an h264 video only file with no audio. the file outputed had a much different size and the bit rates did not match.

I am still using Authoringworks 4 (the latest version). The disk writer recognizes my BD ROM and my BD writer properly. When I am authoring a disk, howeveer, the output stage only recognizes my BD ROM as a writer and does not recognize my BD writer at all. How do I correct this?
Thank, gordoncanda

Please disregard. I was mixed up, not the program!
Thanks, gordoncanada

Anyone know whether TAW5 will successfully open TAW4 projects? Can't test this in TAW5 trial.

Yes, it will. So far, I haven't noticed any problems.

I have tried many different fonts/sizes for Subtitles in TAW4 but no matter which, they all come out on final DVD with jaggy edges. I have white letters with black outline at 5%. Varying font size does not seem to help. I have also turned the "higher bitrate for subtitles" setting to ON, with no help. Any suggestions what combo is best and whether this is normal?

I don't think it can be helped. DVD subtitles aren't anti-aliased, and the lower resolution of DVD (versus Blu-ray) makes the pixels/jagged-edges more apparent. I've never seen smooth DVD subtitles on any commercial DVD so I think it's normal and just a limitation of the format.