Convert from 1080@30p to 24p or 60i for Blu-Ray

[Greg Voevodsky]

I love shooting 1080@30p for a hi-bred video/film look.

My stock agency also wants 30p.

However, Blu-Ray does NOT support 30p. So what do I do?

How do I convert and what will look better to go to 60i or 24p?

What are my best options and choices?

What do you recommend? (Except shooting 24p - which I do not like)

What are the best compressors outside of apple?

I like Bitvice for DV over compressor but thats a few years ago.

[Thomas Smet]

Since 30p is very close to 60i in terms of file size and raw data can't you just encode the video as 60i? It will still look like 30p but to the blu-ray player it will think it is 60i. This will of course mean it will display differently then if it was native progressive scan but at you could get it done and on disc.

Your choices would be a true 30p DVD that would be SD or a 30p played back as 60i blu-ray that would be HD. Sure the video may get bobbed or however your HDTV deals with interlaced video but in the end it should still be much better then a SD DVD.

Personally I find it very lame that blu-ray may not support 30p. But hey it's the format everybody wanted right?

[George Kroonder]

Not having written a BR disc yet I'm at a disadvantage but I was convinced both BR and HD DVD supported 24p, 25p, 30p as wel as 50i and 60i.

Wikipedia seems to agree...

George/

[Barry J. Anwender]

Adobe's Encore CS3 makes no provision for 30p in either NTSC or PAL Blu-ray disc creation. NTSC Blu-ray frame rate options are 23.976p / 29.97i / 59.94p. PAL Blu-ray frame rate options are 25i / 50p. Both NTSC and PAL settings provide the option for MPEG-2 or H.264 encoding. Both settings also support dimensions for 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1440x1080 / 1920x180.

As for wikipedia's take on all this. Here is how they explain the 30P domain.

24p compared to 30p:
It has been suggested to record shows for television at 30p rate instead of 24p, because 25% higher frame of 30p allows representing motion better.
As Charles Poynton explains, the 24 frame/s rate is not just a cinema standard, it is also "uniquely suited to conversion to both 50 Hz systems (through 2:2 pulldown, 4% fast) and 59.94 Hz systems (through 2:3 pulldown, 0.1% slow). Choosing a rate other than 24 frame/s would compromise this widely accepted method of conversion, and make it difficult for film producers to access international markets".

And a little further on, wikipedia explains:

24p in high definition disc formats:
Both HD DVD and Blu-ray support the 24p frame rate, but technical implementations of this mode are different among the two formats. Blu-ray supports 24p with its native timing, while HD DVD uses 60i timing for 24p (replacing missing frames with "repeat field flags").


Obviously, the HD-DVD implementations are no longer relevant. So at the end of the day, we the end users have to work with the options that Blu-ray disc creation vendors provide us with. That being said, Blu-ray is still an emerging technology. Happy hunting for Blu-ray disc creation vendors who will support 30p.

[Chris Medico]

Even though you are saying the video is 30p it should technically be 29.97p which is supported by blueray. That is how video on my V1U is at least. It comes in as 60i but then I deinterlace it it is called 30p but is actually 29.97p. On the camera its also called 30p.

[Tom Roper]

I got 30p to play on the PS3 from a BDMV authoring.

Vegas Pro 8.0b does not have a 1080 30p template, although I think it's possible to do with a custom template.

So how did I do it? I used the Snell and Wilcox utility to remove the MXF wrapper from the native 35 mbps VBR file, and authored it onto a DVD/RW disk with TSMuxeR.

The XDCAM-EX native bit rate is too high to play for more than a minute on the PS3 before the onset of severe stuttering. The pause-play trick gets it going again for another minute, and it switches to 1080i output.

Interesting experiment. I'm sticking with 24p or 60i.

[Patrick Williams]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

I got 30p to play on the PS3 from a BDMV authoring.

Vegas Pro 8.0b does not have a 1080 30p template, although I think it's possible to do with a custom template.

So how did I do it? I used the Snell and Wilcox utility to remove the MXF wrapper from the native 35 mbps VBR file, and authored it onto a DVD/RW disk with TSMuxeR.

The XDCAM-EX native bit rate is too high to play for more than a minute on the PS3 before the onset of severe stuttering. The pause-play trick gets it going again for another minute, and it switches to 1080i output.

Interesting experiment. I'm sticking with 24p or 60i.

I thought that Blu-ray was supposed to handle up to 54mps.

[Barry J. Anwender]

Originally Posted by Patrick Williams

I thought that Blu-ray was supposed to handle up to 54mps.

Blu-ray Standards are:

Drive speed 2x Data Rate 72Mbit/s 9MB/s
Drive speed 4x Data Rate 144Mbit/s 18MB/s

Drive speed 12x Theoretical Data Rate 432Mbit/s 54MB/s

As you know today's Blu-ray burners are either 2x or 4x.
Today's Blu-ray media is either 2x or 4x.
Ergo playback is 2x or 4x.

[Tom Roper]

Yes, but I played the 35 mbps VBR native video stream from DVD+RW, not BD media. Perhaps the media was the bottleneck. At 25-30 mbps, the PS3 had no problem.

As an observation, the native HQ VBR bit rate doesn't seem to have much of a variable behavior, some yes...but it hovers around 34 to 36 mbps overall.

[Barry J. Anwender]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

Yes, but I played the 35 mbps VBR native video stream from DVD+RW, not BD media.

DVD playback and media is more mature and so it follows that playback data rates are going to be higher.

I responded above to the Blu-ray situation because the poster started this thread off with a Blu-ray query.

[Tom Roper]

Authoring BDMV even onto red laser media, *is* blu-ray, with chapters and autoplay. This was not a "data disk."

So my point in replying to the blu-ray query was to answer the question by the thread starter who likes the look of 30p, whose stock agency wants it, but who stated blu-ray does not support it. Empirically, is 30p a supported format? I don't think the question is answered definitively, yet because the PS3 will play 30p BDMV it demonstrates the possibility that 30p is supported.

[Barry J. Anwender]

Well I wasn't totally correct with the DVD read speeds being higher. Here is Pioneer's read specs for their BDR-202 Blu-ray drive which also reads red laser DVD's and CD's.

Read Speed BD-ROM Single Layer 5x CAV (22.50 MB/sec)
Read Speed BD-ROM Dual Layer 2x CLV (9.00 MB/sec)
Read Speed BD-R/RE Single Layer 5x CAV (22.50 MB/sec)
Read Speed BD-ROM (BD9) 8x CAV (11.08 MB/sec)
Read Speed DVD-ROM (Single Layer) 12x CAV (16.62 MB/sec)
Read Speed DVD-ROM (Dual Layer) 8x CAV (16.62 MB/sec)
Read Speed DVD-Video (with CSS, Single / Dual Layer) 5x CAV (6.92 MB/s)
Read Speed DVD-R/+R 12x CAV (16.62 MB/sec)
Read Speed DVD-R DL / +R DL (Dual/Double Layer) 8x CAV (11.08 MB/sec)
Read Speed DVD-RW / +RW 8x CAV (11.08 MB/sec)

As for the red laser DVD burnt with HD content. What is happening there is that the file structures are formated to comply with the Blu-ray standard. The actual red laser DVD reading and writing data transfers do not change, but only the file structures and the data within those structures.

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Barry J. Anwender

As for the red laser DVD burnt with HD content. What is happening there is that the file structures are formated to comply with the Blu-ray standard. The actual red laser DVD reading and writing data transfers do not change, but only the file structures and the data within those structures.

Then the read speeds of the drive are far above the bitrates that were choking the PS3 on XDCAM-EX 35mbps HQ playback.

[Barry J. Anwender]

Yesterday, I finally took delivery of Vortex Media's EX1 Workflow Test Drive. It has a full range of EX1 clips in an authentic BPAV folders. At total of 48 clips at various HD sizes and frame rates, among them 1080p30 (more on this below).

First thing I did was try the 1080p24 EX1 clips out with FCP and Encore Blu-ray. In Encore when you open a new project you get to also choose the "Maximum Audio/Video Bitrate" for the disc build. The bitrate seclections range from 15.0 Mbps to 40.0 Mbps, in 5 Mbps increments. So Encore is recognizing my internal Sony BWU-200S 4x Blu-ray burner. I selected the 40.0 Mbps datarate to see how well it would handle the EX1's 1080p24 clips recorded at 35 Mbps. Burnt the original untouched clips to a Blu-ray BD-RE disc and then moved the disc over to my home theatre, Sony BDP-S300 player and Pioneer 1080p Kuro PDP-5010FD. I was blown away by the EX1 footage--just absolutely stunning detail and deep vibrant colors:-)) My Apple Cinema HD computer monitor does not come close to rendering what I am seeing on the Pioneer plasma.

So now I have a couple of months to work with these EX1 clips to refine workflows as I wait to take delivery of the EX3. I can hardly wait.

Secondly, the 30p clips. It turns out that the Vortex EX1 Workflow Test Drive comes with a 10-page pdf tutorial document which can be downloaded with the unique 7-digit code located inside the test drive DVD case. In this tutorial, is a FCP & Compressor workflow for obtaining high quality SD-DVD's from the EX1's 30p clips/footage. This tutorial is copyrighted, therefore I cannot share any more details. Sufficient to say this test drive package and the workflow tutorial is $35 well spent.

So, too the original poster of this thread. I hope this provides you with some Blu-ray encouragement, as well as direction on how to make use of your 30p clips. Cheers!