Burning AVCH Disks Please Help!!

[Jamie Lauzon]

Larry/Steve

Thanks for the tip on the audio. I will try the MP3 convesion and burn a new disk. By the way the burn for a 50 minute disk took approx 8 hours on my dual core 2gig laptop, is this normal?

I was also surprised that I could fit that much on a standard DVD. I noticed the quality was "good" in the burn screen but I could not find a way to change it to a better setting if there is one?

Sorry for the basic questions, but your help again would be appreciated.

Jamie

[Larry Horwitz]

Jamie,

Your settings sound wrong to me.

To begin with, a 50 min disk should NOT fit on a single layer disk, and should occupy roughly 6 Gbytes, thus requiring a dual layer disk. (I am assuming your video clips were recorded at the highest quslity 15 Mbit/sec speed of the SR1).

Second, your burning time should be much, much faster than 8 hours. A 'Smart Rendered' disk should maybe take very roughly 60-90 minutes on your laptop, and would be finished on my very fast desktop in maybe 25 minutes or so.


Be sure that you have Nero settings for your specific type of AVCHD. Since your camcorder was the first AVCHD camcorder to be introduced (around October of 2006) it uses 1440 by 1080 AVCHD, rather than the more common 1920 by 1080. Secondly, your camcorder uses Dolby 5 channel audio rather than the more commom stereo 2.0 Digital Dolby. Both of these are manual over-ride settings in Nero. I am guessing that your Nero is set for the defaults and is therefore re-rendering the entire 50 minute video from its original 1440 to 1920, and may also be re-rendering your audio as well.

Whwn you arrive at the final page of Nero called Burn Options, turn on the "Details" and it will show you whether it is going to do Smart Rendering or not. You should see both Audio and Video Smart Encoding Ratios of 100% or close to it (unless you have decided to add color correction or other effects to all of your clips).

If your ratios are lower, click the "More" button below, and this will reveal more choices. Select / push the "Video Options" button and you will then see 2 tabs. Select the tab called "AVCHD".

Under "Quality Settings" chose Custom and set the resolution to 1440 by 1080 (rather than the default 1920 by 1080). Set the default audio to Dolby 5.1 rather than Dolby 2.0.
Set the bit rate to 15,000 kbits/sec. Then hit OK


You should now see 100% (or close to 100%) Smart Encoding ratios for both video and audio, and your burn time should drop drastically.

If it were me, I would first try doing burns with a small file just to get all of these settings correct, and then set them as the default settings, rather than try to do the full length 50 minute disk each time. I would only do the 50 minute disk after I got all the other settings working properly to avoid a lot of wasted time re-rendering. Also note that you will need to use a dual layer disk to hold 15 Mbit/sec AVCHD for a 50 minute program. You don't want to waste a lot of these as they are still a dollar apiece or more.

Let us know how this all works out.

Larry

[Mike Burgess]

Originally Posted by Larry Horwitz

Jamie,

I did not receive your email, and first checked my gmail spam trap to see if it might be there. When I could not find it there, I sent myself an email via this forum, and again did not receive it. I guess the emaill system is not working entirely correctly. I believe I registered with the preference to allow receiving private email. And this forum does permit private email to me so I am guessing there is a bug somewhere.

In any event, I am really glad that Nero works well for you. Like the other 2 programs I use here, Corel VS X2 Pro and PowerDirector 7 Ultra, it is extremely quick, makes great looking disks, and is very inexpensive compared to the "pro" alternatives.

Steve is entirely correct that mp3 is unsupported, and Nero SHOULD issue a warning but does not when you insert the menu audio as an mp3 file. The solution is exactly as Steve stated.

Check out the audio editing and conversion program which comes with Nero called Wave Edit.

Not only will it do the mp3 conversion for you, but it, believe it or not, will open, edit, and save 5.1 channel Dolby Digital audio, and convert into and out of that format as well. All channels are discretely accesible.

Try doing that with Sony's $300 Sound Forge 9 program. You will quickly discover that you can't! Sony only allows export / render in 5.1 and then, believe it or not, cannot and will not open the very file it just created in 5.1 format.

Sony documentation makes it very clear that 5.1 support is "render output" only.

This is yet another reason why I totally love Nero 8. For $60 to $70 you get a very competent AVCHD disk creation Nero Vision app, an extremely competent BluRay and AVCHD player, a tremendous audio editing program, a full featured disk burning program, and a lot of other stuff.

Larry

Hi Larry. I have been using a demo of the Corel Video Studio Pro and have not been able to get any of my music files to burn on my DVD footage. On the Corel program, it says that the music is Microsoft WAV files with PCM compression. Is there a way I can use them for background music using this program?

Thanks.
Mike

[Larry Horwitz]

Mike,

I am, by no means, an expert on this program, but I did try a couple examples just now using .wav audio files in both the narration and background music tracks and they both worked fine. I only make AVCHD disks with this program, and it is remotely possible that there may be some bug which shows up when you make DVDs but disappears when I am making AVCHD disks, but I doubt it.

I suggest you go to the Corel forum with your question where there are a lot of experienced users who may be able to offer you better help on this issue. For whatever it is worth, I do not have your audio problem when using .wav audio files.

Larry

[Mike Burgess]

Hey Larry. Thanks for your response. I found the strangest solution to my problem. I merely switched to a different DVD burner and everything worked fine. Go figure! Anyways, all is fine now, and it works with burning a regular DVD. One other question for you: With this program, how can I fade the video out at the end of my program that I have created?

Thanks.
Mike

[Larry Horwitz]

Hi Mike,

I can't explain why switching burners should effect the recording of .wav file audio. Very odd.

As regards the fade method in X2, I use the following approach. There are probably other methods as well.

In the Storyboard mode (not the Timeline mode) I insert a solid color in the last placeholder at the end of the movie / clip. These solid colors can be selected and inserted in the Effects Tab under the Color subtab. I place a black solid color clip into this placeholder and optionally adjust the duration of the clip to make the black screen on the file either longer or shorter. I then apply a transition called "Fade to Black" which can be found in the F/X transitions as the transition from the prior movie clip to the final solid color clip. This makes a smooth transition from your ending of the video clip to the black background.

Some other NLEs make this fade process with fewer steps, and there may be a way in X2 to do it in a simpler manner. Again, I urge you to pose questions of this type on the Ulead / Corel forum since I am not a master of each of the dozen or more programs I use and each has special tricks which I may not know about.

Good luck,

Larry

[Mike Burgess]

Thanks Larry, I will give it a shot.

Mike

[Mike Gunter]

Hi Mike,

Larry has it pretty much right. I drag a "Black" from the color bin and "Fade to Black" from the Favorites in the Effects, you could use Cross Fade, too.

VideoStudio is a great way to make DVDs with HD content for Bluray players, too.

My best,

Mike

[Mike Burgess]

Thanks. Well, my trial period ran out, so I will have to wait until I purchase the Corel program to try the fade. Overall, I do like the program, but I miss some of the things that Pinnacle 12 can do, or should I say, how they do certain things. But, the final PQ is what I am after, so Pinnacle will be put on the back burner, so to speak. Christmas is coming so I will not have to wait too long.
One thing I never did figure out was how to make the titles a different color than white.

Respectfully,
Mike

[Larry Horwitz]

Hi Mike,

I played with Corel VS X2 Pro for a while tonight and could also not find a way to change title font color. I am almost positive this feature used to exist in the prior Video Studio 11.5 but I can't find it anyplace now.

Maybe a quesion posted on the Corel Ulead forum would answer your question.

Larry

[Mike Burgess]

Thanks Larry. Yeah, I probably ought to wander over to their forum site and take a look-see. My preview period expired, so I will have to wait until Christmas before working with it anymore. Meantime, I will continue my research.

By the way, does Nero have a download for me to try their program?

Mike

[Mike Gunter]

Originally Posted by Mike Burgess

One thing I never did figure out was how to make the titles a different color than white.

Hi Mike,

Any application can be troublesome if you don't use it often. VideoStudio is no exception.

In the Title options, next to font size, is the color options. Select it for color you wish.

It's worth noting that you can have more than one font and color in the same title - a cool option for such an inexpensive NLE.

BTW, you can make your own custom titles, too, and add them to the titles menu for later repeated use.

My best.

Mike

[Larry Horwitz]

Thanks Mike Gunter for finding this and helping Mike Burgess.

I see that Video Studio X2 Pro has a small icon which hides or shows the Options Control Panel, and I had mine set for "Hide". Mike Burgess may have had the same problem, since for both of us the various font options were hidden.

I therefore wanted to warn Mike Burgess to be sure the icon is properly selected to reveal the Optional Control Panel.

See attached.


Larry

[Tom O'Farrell]

Larry;
It's a litle early for me to butt in here with my comments on Corel's Videostudio X2 Pro, but it seems relevant in this thread. I took your advice and downloaded the trial version a week ago.
Good advice Larry and I thank you.
I use a 64 bit system version of Vista Home Premium on a quad core computer and it all seems to work well.
I have a HF-10 also just newly acquired so I'm learning both at the same time.
By and large I am quite surprised with Corel's VideoStudio X2Pro compared with Adobe 6.5 which I have been using for years. VS is much more advanced than I thought it would be, better than Adobe and has several advanced features that I think even later versions of Adobe still don't have.
All for US$99.00. Very surprisingly low.
So I am going to buy into Corel, really I can't go wrong.
There is no device driver for the HF-10 that I can find from Corel, Canon, or Windows. I thought this would be a real problem but I find that windows immediately recognizes the HF-10 as a drive as soon as I plug in the USB from the camera and I can drill down into the camera's memory and drag n'drop any shots I choose to a new folder on my desktop almost in real time. Very fast. Then I can import into VS easily for editing.
I can edit full AVCHD 1920X1080 at full resolution in Corel with few issues. Adding transitions, other effects, and titles and credits is childs play. But it slows down the system a bit, not much though. I save the final show to the same folder as I imported to, in full AVCHD 1920X1080.
I can easily make SD DVD's on either + or - disks taking about 3X real time from AVCHD 1920X1080 input. With a AVCHD burner I suspect it will be just as easy.
In all a good experience, so far.
May I suggest to readers that going to a pen and tablet input instead of a mouse is a great speed improvement, but only with practice of course. I learnt this years ago from the kings of NLE systems the British firm Quantel, who had only pen and tablet input (with a keyboard) and never had a mouse, but then just to confuse me completely they introduced a mouse in later versions and now I'm not sure they even use a tablet any more. But the speed improvement for me was huge.
In my early days of editing I was completely enamoured by Quantel, so much so that I enquired about costs, to my amazement a fellow called me, from England, to enquire if I would want them to also supply (as apparently was not un-common) a new building as part of the quote for a system.

[Mike Gunter]

Hi Tom,

You can also have a menu-ed AVCHD DVD disc that plays in some Bluray players in HD with VideoStudio Pro X2. It's a remarkable bargain for the price.

My best,

Mike