Why does it take so long to generate a blu-ray folder?

yvon-robert wrote on 12/7/2011, 10:09 PM

Hi,

To compile a project to Blu-Ray disk creation this use about double time than high quality DVD. More transition, effets, chapter or movement the video contains more time. Normally the same project use the same time from one software compare to another software. When you compile a project close all unnecessary software running in the background. I run a computer close to your setup and have 16 gig memory. If you use in your video 6 or 7 video tracks this help. That means on the same computer all software run about the same speed to generate the same project and the picture quality.

Regards,

YR

Paul5 wrote on 12/7/2011, 10:24 PM

Hi yvon-robert,

Thanks for your response. I will try to run the program without any other background programs running as you suggested. You mention that the process should take about twice as long as authoring a DVD. Authoring DVDs never took me more than 30-40 minutes each.

I think that the issue here is that Movie Edit Pro MX Plus re-encodes the entire video, whereas this is rarely necessary, especially in my video which has many chapters, but no transitions or special effects. As I mentioned, AVS Video takes 60-70 minutes to create the blu-ray folder with the same programs running in the background (firewall, anti-virus, anti-spamware, etc.),

I wish there was a "do not re-encode" option in Movie Edit Pro - then the program would be perfect! :-)

Merci encore!

Scenestealer wrote on 12/8/2011, 4:14 AM

Hi Paul5

15hrs sounds unreasonably long for a movie that is only (I assume) 1 to 2 hours long, especially with the processing power you have available. How much % usage of the processor does Task manager report?

What are you generating the MPEGHD files from? If it is the same MPEG2 format then make sure you choose identical encoder settings for the export as are present in the original footage. In the advanced encoder settings choose "From File" and then navigate to the originally imported material and select a file you are using in the project ie. your captured file(s). This will copy all the encoder setting parameters into the export encoding window meaning that unchanged footage will not have to be re encoded. Finally select Smart rendering (smart encoding) in the export / encoding window - this is basically the "do not re encode" scenario.

This should speed things up although I suspect there is still something wrong with your PC's configuration as I would not expect any more than 2 or 3 times the time of your movie with a machine of your spec even when encoding everything.

Best

Ss

Paul5 wrote on 12/8/2011, 10:16 AM

Hi Ss

Thanks for the detailed response!

The file I am using is an m2ts one that I captured from my fairly new Panasonic videocamera. When I follow your instructions using the "From file" under advanced encoder settings, I only have an option to import settings from MPEG-2 files, not M2TS ones. Is that the problem? I had previously selected the Smart Rendering option, but that didn't help.

One program says that my file is M2TS, MPEG-2 transport stream, 1920 x 1080, 29.97 frames/sec

Another says that the file type is AVCHD. H.264 (advanced), interlaced.

Needless to say, I'm confused! :-)

johnebaker wrote on 12/8/2011, 12:25 PM

Hi

Your Panasonic and Sony have standardised on AVCHD H264 file format for HD - check that your camera is set to this.

Set your BD disc format to H264 and turn on Smart Rendering. This will give you the fastest burn for your source material.

John

Scenestealer wrote on 12/8/2011, 2:45 PM

Hi Paul

That explains a lot and why it is important when asking this type of question that you supply as much information as possible about your material and computer.

A little confusing even still, but what these cameras record is basically an MPEG4 AVCHD H264 format in an MPEG2 Transport stream so my suggestion will not work as you have found. Johns tip explains why the MPEG2 HD export could take a long time and why Smart Render wouldn't work because you are transcoding your original footage to an entirely different format.

The good news is that by going into the MPEG4 AVCHD advanced encoder settings in MEP MXyou can use smart rendering and Cuda / Open CL (which will use your graphics card to accelerate the encoding process).

Paul5 wrote on 12/8/2011, 5:43 PM

Thanks Scenestealer & Johnebaker!

First question: Will the final product be of the same level of quality whether I choose MPEG4 AVCHD or MPEG-2? I was under the impressions that MPEG-2 uses less compression and therefore is a superior format. I notice that by choosing H.264 my audio options are AC3 only and not lossless audio. Are there any other downsides to H.264?

Thanks again for all of your help!

Paul

Scenestealer wrote on 12/8/2011, 10:04 PM

Hi Paul

It does not matter what format you choose to encode it to it will never be any better than the original and would generally be worse because of the transcoding of formats / compression involved.

Just because a format is less compressed than another does not mean it is better and MPEG4 is a case in point.While it was designed to allow much higher compression at the same quality the spin off is that it is a much more advanced codec (AVC = Advanced Video Codec) and has lots of stuff built into it to retain the maximum amount of important frame information, while dispensing with the maximum redundant data, and a few other tricks to boot for making artifacts less obvious.

The default encoder settings should give you pretty good results but (not knowing the statistics of the material you are using) there may be some gains from making sure they match the camera footage specs ie. the bitrate and GOP length, etc. You can compare these in the MPEG4 encoder> advanced settings > advanced tab, against the camera material which you can analyse with free tools like Media Info.

You are right also that there does not appear to be an encode to MPEG4 with PCM sound.

Cheers

Paul5 wrote on 12/9/2011, 12:33 PM

Hi SS,

I realize, of course, that the final product will not be as good quality as the original. I simply wanted your opinion on which encoding process would result in a better quality final product - MPEG-2 or AVCHD.

I just finished encoding the video again using your recommended settings and it took even longer this time - 20 hours! My video is 4 hours and 13 minutes long, so the encoding should theoretically have taken no more than 8-12 hours, even if I had re-encoded the entire M2TS file. The one advantage of using AVCHD is that the resultant folder contain 33GB of data, whereas the MPEG-2 encoding resulted in an overly large 58GB set of files. My settings were as follows:

AVCHD

Preset - 1920 x 1080i - this disappeared after I selected Smart Rendering

Bitrate - 18000

Smart rendering

Standard 2D

Info: MPEG4 Export (M2TS):
Video: 1920x1080i; 25.00 Frames/s; H.264 18000 kbit/s
Audio: 48000 Hz; Stereo; AC3

When I click on Smartr-Render Info, it tells me that none of the video can be smart-rendered with the current encoder settings!

Now I am even more confused than previously

Paul5 wrote on 12/9/2011, 1:04 PM

Here's the data on my M2TS file from Media Info (thanks for the tip!):

General
ID                               : 0 (0x0)
Complete name            Europe 2011.m2ts
Format                           : BDAV
Format/Info                      : Blu-ray Video
File size                        : 25.2 GiB
Duration                         : 4h 17mn
Overall bit rate mode            : Variable
Overall bit rate                 : 14.0 Mbps

Video
ID                               : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID                          : 1 (0x1)
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP             : M=3, N=15
Codec ID                         : 27
Duration                         : 4h 17mn
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 11.9 Mbps
Maximum bit rate                 : 16.8 Mbps
Width                            : 1 920 pixels
Height                           : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate                       : 29.970 fps
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Interlaced
Scan order                       : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.192
Stream size                      : 21.4 GiB (85%)

Audio
ID                               : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID                          : 1 (0x1)
Format                           : PCM
Format settings, Endianness      : Big
Format settings, Sign            : Signed
Muxing mode                      : Blu-ray
Codec ID                         : 128
Duration                         : 4h 17mn
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 2 channels
Channel positions                : Front: L R
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                        : 16 bits
Stream size                      : 2.76 GiB (11%)

johnebaker wrote on 12/9/2011, 3:28 PM

Hi

You are not the only who is puzzled!! Something is not right somewhere!

I must say at 4h17m long that is one big clip!

Your computer is considerably more powerful than mine, yet I can smart render and create a BD in almost real time if there are only cross cut transitions or approx 2 - 2.5x the length of the video if there are a lot of edits and complex transitions etc.

My Sony camera mts files are close enough to your Panasonic not to make any significant difference other than - the frame rate.

John

Scenestealer wrote on 12/9/2011, 6:55 PM

Hi Paul

If the Media info is from your camera original then it will not smart render if you are trying to output it to a 25fps (PAL) export preset because your original footage is 29.97 which is an NTSC frame rate. The trick with SR is that the export file characteristics need to be identical to the imported footage which is where the "From File" function was useful in MPEG2 export. No easy answer with MPEG4 however except finding the right export preset that matches the original footage closest and /or setting the parameters to match in the advanced export settings.

Ss

Paul5 wrote on 12/10/2011, 8:14 AM

I selected NTSC and not the default, PAL

Paul5 wrote on 12/11/2011, 9:24 PM

Does anyone have any suggested settings that will allow the software to create blu-ray folders without (much) re-encoding? As much as I like the softwae, waiting 20 hours for the output folder to be created is a bit much. Secondly, which should provide higher quality output, choosing MPEG2 or H.264?

Thanks

Scenestealer wrote on 12/13/2011, 5:58 PM

Hi Paul

I did get your PM but will answer here.

As I said in my earlier post - where there is transcoding of formats, be it MPEG4 to MPEG2 or vice versa there will always be a quality hit although how noticeable this is will depend on how critically you are viewing it. Exporting to to exactly the same format with identical Advanced encoder parameters should be more or less lossless. Smart rendering MPEG4 to MPEG4 (or MPEG2 to MPEG2) if sucessfull should retain all the quality of the original, also.

"I selected NTSC and not the default, PAL" - I do not understand why then, you reported this:-

Info: MPEG4 Export (M2TS):
Video: 1920x1080i; 25.00 Frames/s; H.264 18000 kbit/s
Audio: 48000 Hz; Stereo; AC3

Something is really screwed up if this is the resultant file from an NTSC export preset of 29.97 frames/sec. Please check that that preset you used indicates that it is 29.97fps and has not been altered somehow. Try resetting the program setting to default ie. File > Settings > Reset program settings to default. If the NTSC presets still create 25fps movies after this, then I would notify Magix support that there is a bug.

Paul5 wrote on 12/14/2011, 10:15 PM

Hi Scenestealer,

In the AVCHD video export screen, I selected:

Presets: AVCHD 1920 x 1080i NTSC

Other: Smart Rendering

Standard (2D)

Info: MPEG4 Export (M2TS):
Video: 1920x1080i; 29.97 Frames/s; H.264 18000 kbit/s
Audio: 48000 Hz; Stereo; AC3

When I click on SmartRender Info, the movies show as 0:00:00-(end) planned: Render

The export settings in the lower right corner of the screen show: Resolution 1920 x 1080, Frame rate 30 FPS, Aspect ratio 16:9

Are there any settings in the Advanced page that would enable the SmartRendering process?

Scenestealer wrote on 12/15/2011, 4:59 AM

Hi Paul

So was the 25fps reported in the earlier post what the export produced or was that a typo? Please try to explain what you have earlier reported as it helps in the process of working out what has happened. And you still have not answered what processor percentage usage Windows Task manager reports during encoding (Ctrl, Alt, Del > Performance Tab). Also did you try resetting the program defaults?

Are your File > Movie settings identical to your imported file specs. ie did you agree to let MEP modify the movie settings to match your import?

I must confess I not sure why and how MEP decides whether it can smart render an export other than to say try matching as close as possible the specs of your import file with the export encoder settings - in particular:- Resolution, frame rate, interlaced or progressive, bitrate, GOP max length (in your case N=15) and number of B frames (2) between next P frame (M=3 ie. 3 frames including the next P), audio format and bitrate.