potwnc
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Posts posted by potwnc
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Forum members interested in burning Blu-ray discs might be interested in this product:
http://www.buy.com/prod/buffalo-mediastati.../207684395.html.
Note that I just came across this and haven't researched it so this is just pointing it out. Do your own research before buying! I'll let you kow if I decide to buy one.
Ray
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Steve,
Yes I still do it the way I wrote about in my HD Appendix - but, of course, that's not the only way to do it. (That appendix is kind of out of date now and, if people want me to, I'm willing to update it. I think the full "unofficial" guide is no longer being updated now that WnSoft have an official guide.)
The Wikipedia article shows just how much and how fast this technology changes. We should all be aware that what is a "standard" today may have been revised or not even be available tomorrow and that your mileage may even vary depending on whose hardware and software and firmware version you have. Unfortunately that is the nature of HD video technology and I don't see this evolution coming to a halt any time soon.
Ray
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Daniel
Please upload the files somewhere if they are not too large and PM me with a message where I can download them.
Two questions - do you want your output video to be 1440x1080 or 1920x1080? And which version of the 5.6 beta are you using?
Ray
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Lin,
"Anyway, I will hopefully find someone who has a current Sony BluRay player to test user burned BluRay discs before I buy one, but by that time probably many of the forum members will already have tried it."
I don't have a Blu-ray burner (I plan to get one this year) but I have burnt 1080p content in AVCHD format to standard DVD +R discs and played them back in many different set-top Blu-ray players connected to 1080p televisions. I had no problems, the quality was excellent and I would expect the same experience buning to BD discs (but with even better quality).
Dave,
"what you will be getting (when it happens) it would be interesting to to know"
In the US some TV signals have been digital on cable, satellite and "over-the-air" for some time. The only thing that's changing next month is that all such signals will be digital. Broadcasters have been using the term "High Definition" for some time as a marketing tool, without stating what they mean by that. Nor do they have to - in theory they could broadcast a 320x240 signal and still be allowed to call it "High Definition." In practice most of the broadcasts they claim to be "High Definition" are either 720p or 1080i.
"the ULTIMATE quality is achieved by playing a PTE EXE file via a HDMI connection to an LCD TV where the resolution of the PTE EXE equals the resolution of the TV."
While I don't disagree with this (although plasma TVs tend to give better quality than LCD TVs - all other things being equal) there comes a point - depending on the number and size of images used and how powerful the PC is - where the .exe file will just be too big to make this option possible. I'm already at that point with a 10-minute show having about 100 very large images. I have a PC with 2 quad-core CPUs and 786MB video card and it can't play back the .exe (over 1GB in size) in real time. When I render the same show to .mp4 the same PC can play it back in real time and the quality is pretty close to that of the .exe.
Ray
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Jeff,
I cover this to some extent in the HD appendix of the unofficial guide. I believe that what you need is to burn an "AVC HD DVD" - which is a standard DVD (+R, -R, +RW or -RW), single- or dual-layer, burned with a file structure that most modern Blu-ray players can read and playback in the original resolution it was burned at (e.g., 1080p). I'm not sure about other devices such as yours but the manual should say whether it does.
Lin is correct - Pinnacle Studio Plus and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate version 11 and later can burn these. So can other video editing/rendering/burning software such as Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. Unfortunately the ability to import MP4 format is not as simple as "it can or it can't" - if you search for posts with my discussion with Igor in PTE 5.6 betas threads you'll see that Igor changed the format of the output MP4 files in a later beta version (maybe around beta number 9 and I think it had to do with including I-franes or B-frames) and Sony Vegas Pro 8 could no longer import the MP4 file. I don't know if Pinnacle Studio will have the same problem with the latest beta (and with what will presumably be the final version).
Ray
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I have about a dozen pieces of software which create HD video and "none" of them can make it look remotely like the executable.
Lin,
I can produce 1080p video, from PTE, using Vegas Pro 8 that comes reasonably close - in my opinion and experience - to the equivalent .exe file.
As for "professional" tools, I'm talking about tools used by the movie industry which cost many thousands of dollars not tools readily available to the consumer.Vegas Pro 8 (about $1000) is one of those tools that the movie industry uses. It's the only pro-sumer software I have used.
Ray
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Lin,
I'm afraid I have to disagree. I too have had to experiment and there have been times when I have had to make the P/Z (I don't use R) longer than I had originally planned or to P/Z covering a smaller area of the original image than I had originally planned - because although it looks great in the PTE preview it looks choppy when rendered to 1080p and played back in a media player (and I have a very powerful PC). But in the end that was just because of the framerate requirements imposed by the (HD) video I was rendering and not because of any PTE limitation.
I don't think the "professional" tools to do this use any technology that Igor isn't aware of. In fact, PTE is one of the few tools available to the "masses" that is priced so reasonably considering the professional software technology that it uses.
Ray
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Ken,
I recovered it from my tmp int folder and, yes, it is 1280x720, 30 progressive fps.
I can't believe that Youtube is killing themselves by embedding it at a lower resolution. It's almost like their tech. people don't understand the basics of video - and how weird and ironic would that be for a company like Youtube?
Anyway, you should probably kill that upload as I'm sure his sponsors claim copyright to the video.
Thanks for following up on my posts in this thread.
Ray
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RAY
the hi def is mp4 75.3 mb
1280/720 - 16:9
30,000 fps
the hi def defintely sharp
ken
Ken, I'm not disputing that it's sharp... the high quality version at the url is sharp for me too - and much sharper than the low quality version. And the original .mp4 file may well be 1280x720. (Is there some Youtube hack I don't know about to confirm this?) But when I click on the link, and maximize my browser to my monitor resolution (1920x1080), the embedded video is nowhere close to 1280x720 pixels. What am I doing wrong? If you look on the right hand side, it actually says "<object width="425" height="344">..." Why would Youtube intentionally embed it this small if the source is 1280x720? That's just a waste of bandwidth that they have to pay for and, judging by the 13 million views (granted not all would have been in high quality mode), this is one of the most popular videos on Youtube.
If you follow the link to his web site and then the downloadable "HD" versions, the file Dancing2008_TV.mov is 720x486, 30 progressive fps.
Can you post a screendump of what it looks like in your browser as I must be doing something wrong!
Thanks
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Ken,
It "works" for me too in that I can see the video. Does it display at 1280x720 pixels for you? It doesn't for me.
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I don't get it... the Youtube url they link to,
, is not 720p. Am I missing something? -
Ralph, Igor,
I can confirm the same behavior on my PC that Ralph is seeing. On the second run both shows run twice before returning.
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I'm assuming from the original post that sequoia017 is trying to play the DVD in a set-top DVD player and not on a computer. If the burned DVD is region-free it's possible the player is refusing to play it for that very reason. There are some players that will not play region-free DVDs.
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I think that we're seeing in this thread the need for a 64-bit version of PTE itself. I would love to see that because it is the most memory- and CPU-intensive application that I use. (I use XP x64.)
Igor, are there any pans for a 64-bit version of PTE?
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Igor,
I just created an avi file using Beta 7 and the x264 encoder/codec with H264 FourCC and B-frames. Vegas opened it and processed it with no problem. So I don't think your B-frames answer is correct. The only difference here is the container.
Vegas is a high-end, professional video production package. If this was really a problem with Vegas I think Vegas users would be screaming already about it.
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Ray,
We discussed this problem and probably the problem in Sony Vegas 8. The key feature of H.264 video so called "B frames" which gives better quality at same bitrate. Blu-Ray profile should support MP4 video with B-Frames. But it seems that Sony Vegas 8 has not this support.
But please couldn't you tell for what you use Sony Vegas? As I know this program re-encode H.264 video file and you loss quality. Probably better use AVI file for your purpose?
Igor,
I was only trying to open the .mp4 file in Vegas. It can see the audio component but not the video so it can't even open it.
I use Vegas for overlaying multiple video tracks and rendering credit sequences at the end of a show because it is very good at that. I've never had this problem with any other mp4 file.
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See Beta 7.
Igor,
I've downloaded Beta 7. None of the .mp4 files I've created are recognized as valid video files by Sony Vegas Pro 8. When created with Beta 6 from the same .pte project Sony Vegas Pro 8 recognizes all of them.
You must be doing something very different (and maybe non-standard?) in the output with Beta 7.
Ray
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It's necessary if you want to get predictable size of created video file.
OK, we'll add new FPS presets: 24p, 50, 60.
Can you add 23.976 fps?
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Ray,
We always encode H.264 (MP4) video with variable bitrate.
The peak/maximum bitrate now about 40 mbit.
There are many and many settings of H.264 video. You can look at mp4presets.dat file to see how many settings it includes. I'm afraid we will not change it more. In fact quality of created MP4 video already high. In next Beta 7 we even improved it more.
Igor,
If you always encode MP4 with variable bitrate why is there the possibility to choose constant bit rate?
Also, do you think it is good design to allow a user to type their own value, for example 23.976, for the fps when in fact the output will not be 23.976 fps? If you want to limit MP4 output to only 25 or 29.97 fps that is your decision, but in that case the user interface would normally be designed so that the user can only select one of these two values in the drop-down box and not type in their own value. Because VideoBuilder cannot yet burn to Blu-ray I would think some users (including me) would want 23.976 because many movies on Blu-ray disc are now encoded at this frame rate. It is one thing to decide not to support that frame rate but it is another to let the user believe they can type this (or some other) value when the output will not be what they typed.
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Ray,
Of course.
First an observation on 2-pass encoding: Every other program I've used that supports variable bit rate allows the user to specify the minimum, maximum and average bit rates. When I choose 2-pass encoding with PTE 5.6, what does bit rate mean - minimum, maximum or average?
Next I think there are bugs here. When I choose 1-pass encoding then repeat with the same setting from the same project with 2-pass encoding the output mp4 files are exactly the same size. Usually variable bit rate leads to smaller files when everything else is the same. Are you sure 2-pass encoding is rendering with variable bit rate? Also, it does not matter what I type into fps the output is still 29.97 fps (or 25 fps if I choose 25 from the dropdown).
Ray
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===============
Ray...
I uninstalled all 5.6 Betas, including Beta 4. Reinstalled Beta4. I reduced a slideshow that worked before down to 10 slides and no music. I tried an SD 800x600 low. Same result. I got all four 'Done' indications; there was no 'Time to end' displayed. Got nothing.
Gary
Gary,
Sorry this didn't work for you. It's worked for me with the last 2 betas when I had exactly the same problem. When I suggested it I assumed you'd be able to re-install any of the previous betas if you needed to.
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Greetings,
I have been successful in making an HD file with one of the previous 5.6Beta versions. I just tried to make an HD file with a new slideshow with Beta4 and I am not sure if it is working as it should.
Gary
Gary,
First uninstall all versions of 5.6 Betas (including Beta 4) that you currently have installed. Then re-install Beta 4. I'm quite sure you will then be able to make HD videos again without any problem.
I haven't reported this as a bug before but it now seems common enough to be confirmed as some kind of problem/bug with the installation introduced, I think, with Beta 2.
Ray
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potwnc,
In next Beta 5 you will able use 2-pass encoding of H.264 video.
And variable bit-rate, yes?
This is wonderful news. Thank you very much!
Ray
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I'll try again with Beta 3 tomorrow but tonight with Beta 2 I just had my first experience of "Create HD Video for PC and Mac" not working - meaning it just stopped and produced no .mp4 file. I'm using Windows XP 64-bit edition (SP 2) and the only difference from when I had no problems creating .mp4 files is that I did a Wndows update yesterday.
Article about aspect ratio in PicturesToExe and Video Builder
in General Discussion
Posted
Daniel,
I just e-mailed you a 1920x1080 .mp4 file that I produced from your project. I think this is what you want based on these replies, and I think you now know how to do this, but I'm writing this comment here because others may also be interested in this.
It is very unusual to use 1440x1080 (4:3) images and produce a 16:9 video from them. The video file is larger than it needs to be because the 2 vertical bands at each side are part of the video file itself. If you produce a 4:3 video file instead the player should create these 2 vertical bands when the video is played and the video file size will be only as large as it needs to be.
It is common to use 16:9 images (e.g. 1920x1080 pixels) and produce a 1440x1080 video with a pixel aspect ratio of 1:1.33. Then the player will play the 4:3 video with a 16:9 appearance, which will preserve the aspect ratio of the original images so that it will look just as you intended.
Ray