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I'm running a trial of TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4 and so far, am quite impressed.
Thanks to previous questions and answers, I was able to use the K-Lite Code Pack to import MKV files into my TMPGEnc authoring project. Now, of course, I want more! :-)
Some MKV files have Chapter or Menu time stamps built into them. What follows is a MediaInfo analysis of one such MKV file:
General
Complete name : M:\Videos\Movies\WALL-E.mkv
Format : Matroska
File size : 18.9 GiB
Duration : 1h 38mn
Overall bit rate : 27.6 Mbps
Encoded date : UTC 2010-12-28 01:53:33
Writing application : DVDFab
Writing library : libebml v0.7.8 + libmatroska v0.8.1
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=15
Muxing mode : Container profile=Unknown@4.1
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1h 38mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Nominal bit rate : 30.5 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.613
Color primaries : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
Transfer characteristics : BT.709-5, BT.1361
Matrix coefficients : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177
Audio
ID : 2
Format : DTS
Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems
Format profile : MA
Codec ID : A_DTS
Duration : 1h 38mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Language : English
There's no easy way to do it at this point...at least, not in terms of simply importing the timecode.
TAW4 lets you import a .keyframe file which can then be used as chapters. Unfortunately, the .keyframe file format doesn't use timecode, instead it uses the frame number. If you can convert the timestamps into frame numbers, then you'll be able to import a simple text file. In the file you'd simply list the frame number, one per line like so:
0
1347
2248
4016
Then save the file as "whateveryouwant.keyframe".
If you have no way of converting the timestamps to frame numbers then the easiest way might be to copy and paste each timestamp into the Chaptering tool one by one.
>TAW4 lets you import a .keyframe file which can then be used as chapters. Unfortunately, the .keyframe file format doesn't use timecode, instead it uses the frame number. If you can convert the timestamps into frame numbers, then you'll be able to import a simple text file. In the file you'd simply list the frame number, one per line like so:
>
>0
>1347
>2248
>4016
>
>Then save the file as "whateveryouwant.keyframe".
>
>If you have no way of converting the timestamps to frame numbers then the easiest way might be to copy and paste each timestamp into the Chaptering tool one by one.
Thanks for the reply! That gets me closer. If I can find a reasonable way to convert timestamps into a .keyframe format, then I think we have a winner (and a sale).
Column 1 contains the chapter time codes with a custom cell format of h:mm:ss. Column 2 contains the calculated keyframes with a cell format of Number with 0 decimal places. The formula in the second column is =A2*1440*60*23.976 where 23.976 is the FPS for this particular MKV file.
It'd be nice if there was a more programmatic way to do this (any Perl hacks out there???), especially if a program like mkvinfo can be used to derive the chapters directly.
I just had a crazy thought. Am I using the wrong TMPGEnc software for the job? If my goal is to convert Blu-ray -> MKV, then be able to convert MKV back to [near] original Blu-ray Disc format, would waiting for TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works 5 be a better fit:
Well that depends. If you need to create BD menus and burn to BD, then Authoring Works 4 is what you'll need. If all you want to do is make a BD-ready video file, then I think Video Mastering Works 5 will be good enough.
I am exporting MPEG-2 files from HDV edited in Avid Liquid for importing into TAW4 and creating Blu-ray.
Within Liquid, I can raise the bitrate up to 60mbps. However I have in my head that HDV material 'is 25mbps' [not an expert on bitrates]. Therefore, is there anything to be gained by increasing the export bitrate in Liquid from the standard 25mbps up to 60mbps? Will there be any improvement in picture quality whatsoever?
More importantly, will raising the bitrate above 25mbps in Liquid cause any issues with Blu-ray creation/compatibility when ive encoded and burned through TAW4?
I've created an MPEG-2 of a 45 minute video at 25mbps from Liquid which is 8gb, and the same video at 60mbps which is 20gb. Both import into TAW4 just fine - they want to 'full render', but from research so far it seems Liquid's MPEG-2 exports are not 100 percent ideal for TAW4 to allow 'smart rendering' anyway.
Raising the bitrate probably won't improve the video quality unless you're applying some filters or doing something to the video to change it from the original source.
So if you're not doing anything to the video (upscaling/applying filters/changing formats) then just leave it at the same bitrate.
In any case, 60Mbps is a little too high. The max video bitrate is 40Mbps, 48Mbps for audio and video.
Well, there are certainly filters applied to the work during editing in Avid Liquid if that is what you mean (colour effects, time-stretching, other effects etc) so Liquid has rendered that work to its own HDV codec before exporting.
I'm in the process of creating test Blu-rays in TAW4, and have burned my first attempt from the 60mbps file as exported from Liquid. I notice that in the Video Settings in TAW4, when I select CBR (usually I always choose CBR for encoding my DVDs within Liquid) the bitrate numbers grey out at 30mbps for bitrate, min and max. So does this mean the Blu-ray has been created by TAW4 at 30mbps, based upon my source material which was imported at 60mbps?
In my next test, I am burning the same video but this time exported from Liquid at only 25mbps to see if I can spot any difference. Again, I have TAW4 set to CBR (greyed out at 30mbps). Also for the same Blu-ray disc, I am including the same video as a second track, but this time with VBR 2 pass encoding selected in TAW4. I notice the bitrate and max bitrate counters are now active, and default at 25mbps bitrate and 30mbps max.
In your experienced opinion, what is the best method of encoding here (besides the time factor - I have a fast PC so even VBR is only a few hours at most)? CBR which I presume TAW4 alocates a constant 30mbps for Blu-ray output (from either my 60mbps or 25mbps original files) or the 2 pass VBR? Should I raise the VBR bitrate/max bitrate at all?
Video content is event coverage with comination of indoor & outdoor, and crowds of people so there is a fair degree of movement.
2-pass VBR is the way to go if you have the time. It ensures that each scene has the appropriate bitrate to keep details at the highest quality while lowering the bitrate for scenes that don't need a high bitrate, thus making the output file as small as possible while maintaining video quality.
For CBR, the bitrate will be the same no matter how complex or simple the scene is, thus potentially wasting disk space on scenes that don't require a high bitrate. The advantage to CBR is that it is faster than VBR.
As for the 30Mbps limit in TAW4, the limit it sets might depend on the source file. I'm actually not sure how it gets its numbers because it's given me different max bitrates (VBR) each time i try and max it out (just type in 9999999). What is the resolution and framerate of your video?
In any case try and max out the VBR max bitrate (it should be able to get close to 40Mbps) and the bitrate can be set at 30Mbps. If you don't have the disc space at this bitrate, then you'll have to lower them accordingly.
I am making a Blu-ray from HDV material. In TAW4 I see I can import an .M2V [which is video only] or an MPEG-2 [which contains embedded audio].
At the moment, I am going down the MPEG-2 route ['full rendering' as opposed to 'smart rendering' with the M2V, but that is another matter]. My question is, how best should I import the audio for this MPEG-2?
The MPEG-2 has been created within Avid Liquid, and according to Liquid's export settings has 'MP2' audio. I believe there were issues some years ago with MP2 audio not working on some standalone DVD players - what is the situation now with MP2 audio? I have the option of changing the embedded audio from MP2 to 'PCM' within Liquid prior to export if that is the better option.
Also, is it best to keep the audio as 'embedded' within my MPEG-2 from Liquid, or to instead import the audio as seperate streams? If I import separately, I can additionally use MP3 or WAV formats.
What's the best way to go here for best Blu-ray audio? Any compatibility issues on standalone players is my only real concern.
The audio will be outputted as Dolby Digital (.ac3) or Linear PCM (.wav) for Blu-ray projects. I'd prefer Dolby Digital because it won't take as much disc space, but if your video isn't that long, disc space might not be an issue.
Your input can actually be any of the formats you mentioned; TAW4 will simply convert it to one of the above formats depending on your settings. You can go with either the muxed (audio + video) file or the separate files; I don't think it'll matter too much.
I do this often with Liquid, typically with 5.1 surround sound, and my export
of choice is first the fused (M2V) video, and then I export 5.1 wma which TWA4 appears to be very happy with. Liquid also has a stereo wma export, if stereo is your preference.
I use DVD Author 3 on Windows 7 64 bit. When authoring and burning the firstplay action should be to show the main menu (autostart. However when inserted in a standalone DVD player nothing happens - until you push the "play" button, then the menu shows (and the DVD plays as it should). Would be incredibly grateful for a solution! Would upgrading to DVD Author 4 help? I'd be happy to, if I only knew that it would solve the problem!
I want to incorporate a pop-up menu, but don't want it to
pause the video when it comes up. Is this possible? Every time
I add a pop-up to my Blu-Ray project, and then simulate, the pop-up
pauses the running video.
I've noticed this too. Currently there doesn't seem to be any way around it, but while the popup menu is active, you can press play to continue playing the video with the popup menu still there.
Indeed you can get it to run with the pop-up by pushing play, which leads me to
believe that it could easily be changed to work correctly. It sort of defeats
the purpose of having a pop-up menu, if your video stops when it comes up.
You might as well just hit the menu button. Maybe the code could just push it's own play button?
Thanks for the quick response, is there any potential for a continuous play during pop-up "feature" to be added in the future?
I fussed too soon! It turns out that dispite the fact that the simulation stalls the video on pop-up, a blu-ray disk burned from the project does not.
It all works just as expected, so I'm a happy camper.
I guess the moral is don't always believe the simulation will work just like a disk.
>Good to know! I don't have a blu-ray burner so I've never actually burned a BD project before to test the real thing.
What I've done on the systems without a BD burner is to install SlySoft's free Virtual CloneDrive and "mount" a BD ISO. Then you can use PowerDVD to play your creation.
Note that Windows Vista and 7 have native High Def (UDF 2.5) support. You have to jump through a few hoops to play Blu-ray Discs.
I fianally gave up waiting for ATI Hardware acceleration, as I was tired of waiting hours to encode HD video, when OTHER products could do the same job many,many times faster. Your product is now outdated, NO ati hardware support, NO 64 bit version. I am going to spend my money on another product
I want to create a DVD in which I put many short clips.
In order to categorize them I created different tracks and put the clips into them.
But now all the clips in one track are being played successively when I start playing one of them...can I avoid this somehow??
I would like to get back to the track menu or the main menu after one clip was played.
I hope you understand what I mean =)
You have to put each individual clip into its own track if you want it to go back to the menu after playing a clip. When you put multiple clips into one track, they are treated like chapters, so they will play one after the other.
Unfortunately, this means your organization of your clips will have to be a little different in your menus.
I upgraded to 4.0 Express.. long time TMPEG user. I have an i7 HP laptop with NVDIA Quadro FX1800M GPU. When I start the program, it says that "need GeForce 190.38 or newer" and CUDA is disabled when I check under preferences. I do not have a GeForce card and so I don't know what to make of this? I checked NVIDIA website and they have the Quadro I have seems to be Quadro compatible. What should I do? Is there something I need to download and instaled from NVDIA CUDA developers' website?
BTW, Xpress 4.0 is doing a fine job with 1080p video from my Panasonic AVCHD camcorder and converting into BlueRay compatible Mpeg.. takes about 40 min. for 20 min. of video and that is what I am trying to speed up.
>I upgraded to 4.0 Express.. long time TMPEG user. I have an i7 HP laptop with NVDIA Quadro FX1800M GPU. When I start the program, it says that "need GeForce 190.38 or newer" and CUDA is disabled when I check under preferences. I do not have a GeForce card and so I don't know what to make of this? I checked NVIDIA website and they have the Quadro I have seems to be CUDA compatible. What should I do? Is there something I need to download and instaled from NVDIA CUDA developers' website?
>
>BTW, Xpress 4.0 is doing a fine job with 1080p video from my Panasonic AVCHD camcorder and converting into BlueRay compatible Mpeg.. takes about 40 min. for 20 min. of video and that is what I am trying to speed up.
>
>Thanks for your help.
I upgraded to 4.0 Express.. long time TMPEG user. I have an i7 HP laptop with NVDIA Quadro FX1800M GPU. When I start the program, it says that "need GeForce 190.38 or newer" and CUDA is disabled when I check under preferences. I do not have a GeForce card and so I don't know what to make of this? I checked NVIDIA website and they have the Quadro I have seems to be CUDA compatible. What should I do? Is there something I need to download and instaled from NVDIA CUDA developers' website?
BTW, Xpress 4.0 is doing a fine job with 1080p video from my Panasonic AVCHD camcorder and converting into BlueRay compatible Mpeg.. takes about 40 min. for 20 min. of video and that is what I am trying to speed up.
I love the Tmpgenc Authoring Works, however my main problem is creating BDMV DVD9 disks that are compatible on all Blu Ray Players.
I have to use AVCHD-Patcher_1.05 to enable the disks to play on PS3.
Other problems:
Can only play DVD9 disk on Samsung Blu Ray Player.
Will not play on Panasonic or Sony
Can you please fix the problem and make the software more compatible
I am having a problem with my first authoring. The software reaches 14% completetion during a BD creation output then gives an invalid sample format error with the code 0x80048002. This video is from unedited clips recorded from a Panasonic HS300. All of the video is the same which is why I can't see why it randomly stops. I used a template for the menus and I do have BGM playing on the title page. I can go and look at the video that it has created and it stopped in a random area during my movie. After trying twice, it looks like it stopped at the same spot during the main movie creation but there is nothing special about this point in the movie. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am new to this and I don't really know where to start looking for a solution. Computer should be sufficient, i7 3.2, 6GB, TB's of space...
I wanted to add that I can create a BD project using the same area of the video that causes the crash in my larger project with no problems. It seems that even if I rearrange my clips so that what I thought the problem area is at a different location it still gives the error at the same place in time. It happens at 14% everytime.
I wanted to update that I have found a solution for the problem. I increased the size of my paga file to 10GB / 20GB first. This made the process work up to 17% instead of 14% and gave the (Not enough storage available to complete this operation error code 0x8007000e). DIfferent from my original problem. I found this strange since I have 1.5TB of free space on the working drive (also the drive that my page file lives on. It is a raid array. I also have 6GB of memory with nothing starting on startup (windows 7 64). My last attempt was to run the authoring in batch mode. The batch mode with no preview worked to full completetion!!! Sucess at last. I don't know why just increasing the page file size didn't fix the problem but it seems that using batch mode along with increasing the virtual memory (page file) worked fine. It took this machine (i7 3.2 quad, 6gb ram, raid 0) about 2 and a half hours to render about 21GB of BD movie... I hope this info can help someone else.
Ed, Don't know if you still check this site since the end of 2010, but I just used the Batch method to author a BD file, and (so far) it's working great!! I, too, received the "Not enough storage available..." error, even though I have 500Gb of space on the drive to which the BD files are being created.
I never would have thought of trying the Batch process (especially since this is a batch of one!). I'm not sure how to increase/decrease the size of my "Page File." Need to research that to even find out what that is. If you read this, I wouldn't mind knowing more about it.
Although I've made standard def DVD-Rs for years now, I'm just starting out with making HD DVR-s and Blu-Ray discs. MUCH easier the second time around (in spite of weird PC error messages!).
Hope you have a great 4th of July weekend!