I'm trying to put together a Blu-ray with DVD Architect 5.
I rendered out a short test video and audio file (both have identical file names).

The video was rendered with Main Concept AVC, Max Bitrate 38 MBit, Avg Bitrate 32 MBit.
If I go to Optimize Disc, it says in order to avoid recompression I need to "use a compliant MPEG-2 video file". I've set the project to AVC, and the recompression settings also say AVC, so what's that all about?

I rendered the audio file from Vegas as an AC3 Studio file .ac3.
Same thing, DVD Architect wants to recompress the audio, and to avoid recompression I need to "use a compliant PCM wave or an AC-3 audio file". Well I've got an AC-3 audio file, so what the hell?

I don't know anything about DVD Architect, but one thing jumps out at me. It is asking you for a compliant MPEG2 file and you keep giving it AVC. AVC isn't MPEG2, it's MPEG4, also known as h.264. Both the format and codec are different.

I'm trying to put together a Blu-ray with DVD Architect 5.
I rendered out a short test video and audio file (both have identical file names).

The video was rendered with Main Concept AVC, Max Bitrate 38 MBit, Avg Bitrate 32 MBit.
If I go to Optimize Disc, it says in order to avoid recompression I need to "use a compliant MPEG-2 video file". I've set the project to AVC, and the recompression settings also say AVC, so what's that all about?

I rendered the audio file from Vegas as an AC3 Studio file .ac3.
Same thing, DVD Architect wants to recompress the audio, and to avoid recompression I need to "use a compliant PCM wave or an AC-3 audio file". Well I've got an AC-3 audio file, so what the hell?

You have a couple of choices.

You cannot just use any old AVCHD file to burn to BluRay. It has to be in a specific format, just like Mpeg2 files being prepped for DVD burning. So, instead of using Mainconcept's encoder, choose the Sony AVC encoder, and choose one of the bre-built templates.

Or, you can use the Mainconcept Mpeg2 encoder and choose one of the BluRay templates. Either will work just fine in DVD Architect, and you won't have to recompress. But you cannot burn a high bitrate AVCHD BluRay from Vegas or from any other home burning application that I know of.

The audio does want to recompress for some reason. Not sure why.

So, instead of using Mainconcept's encoder, choose the Sony AVC encoder, and choose one of the bre-built templates.
Well, that's a problem. Sony AVC crashes Vegas every time I try to render. Ever other codec works flawlessly :/

Now, I really didn't want to use MPEG2, is the maximum bitrate 48 MBit/sec? I have a feeling this will not suffice for the grainy material I need to encode but I guess I can try.

It's been a while since I used DVDA5, but as I recall, I was able to have it not re-encode the 5.1 audio by rendering out the audio in Vegas separately. Then when the movie file with audio was imported into DVDA5, I would point the selection of the audio track over to the separate audio file. It would thereafter smart render it without re-encoding.

I also found through trial and error, that the DVDA5 AVC video rendering although painfully slow and with not too many parameters to choose from, actually rendered with incredible quality, better than the encoders in Vegas, either the Mainconcept or Sony AVC. Although it is slow, and not too many adjustable parameters, there is one parameter that it does give you control over, the bit rate! It lets you choose whatever rate you want! I eventually settled for 18mbps, which meant AVCHD disks could play from regular DVD media in quite a few standalone blu-ray players.

With the Sony EX1 generated .mxf files, Vegas will smart render these very quickly, thus a blu-ray authored disk would go through only one re-encode, from mxf to AVC, by DVDA5. The quality of those disks were very high.

This was the best quality AVCHD method, better than mpeg-2, and better quality than the faster but poor quality low bitrate encoders in Vegas, (Mainconcept and Sony AVC).

Hope that helps. It's slow, but if you have the time for quality renders, it's better.

Tom,
thanks for the input. I think DVD Architect uses Sony AVC as well, but maybe it's a newer implementation?

Either way, I did a test render yesterday with MPEG-2 and 39 Mbit/sec constant video bit rate, and the results look great. And what's more, DVD Architect does not want to recompress, woohoo! At 39 MBit, the film will fit on a 25GB Blu-ray and fill it out almost all the way.

Even the audio works without recompression now. I had split it up into a separate .ac3 file before as well, so I'm not sure why it works now. But it does, so that's great.

The only problem that remains as of now are the black and white levels. As suggested in the other thread I started, I kept everything within 0 and 100 IRE. But once the video is rendered and played back, I get washed out colors with no proper white and black. Mainconcept MPEG-2 was set to 709.

I think DVD Architect uses Sony AVC as well, but maybe it's a newer implementation?

It seems to be a 'different' implementation. I don't believe you can choose 18mbps AVC with the Sony AVC encoder in Vegas (as I recall), at the least it won't smart render in DVDA5 at anything other than the template settings.

And yes, 39mbps mpeg-2 is going to look great on 25GB Blu-ray media for sure, but 18mbps AVC (from DVDA5 encodes) is about nearly as good, a lot more efficient, and you can put it on AVCHD (regular DVD blank media) and because of the low bit rate plays back on a lot of Blu-ray standalones, with full menu functionality, 24p, chapters etc.

For proof of concept, I actually just use TSMuxer and AVCHD-ME to put native .mxf onto a USB flash drive, or DVDA5 and AVCHD-Patcher to play from a PS3 with full menus, even 24p playback, from a USB flashdrive. It's so much faster than burning rewritable BD for small projects, and at any bitrate you want from the flash drive. The native .mxf plays back at 30-40 mbps VBR on the PS3. That's just another subject, there are so many playback options now, but unless it is required due to project size, the one I avoid is BD media due to expense and slow burns.