Carol Steele

Well I done just that for you Lin Here's what I did: Downloaded the 25 fps file Brought it into Pinnacle Studio 14 for blu-ray authoring Output as a blu-ray disc structured folder (so that all the folder structures were correct for Blu-ray playback Created ISO image file Burnt ISO image to Blu-ray disk Played back to my 46"Panny G15 via my Panny BD60 Blu-ray player The animations were just as smooth and fluid as when it was played back on my computer (specs below) - but (there's always a 'but' isn't there ), the edges of the cube were showing 'jaggies' which were a lot more apparent than when the mp4 file was played back on the computer via Windows Media Player.

You might well be right in sticking with Nero, but from your message I thought you had switched to another AVCHD creation program. To clarify the file structure I have posted an attachment below. Once I have created the AVCHD from Pinnacle, it creates all the files with the necessary file structures in the folder I assign to it (in the case shown below this is the "Wedding Sampler AVCHD 2010 (AVCHD)" folder. I then point ImgBurn to this folder to create the ISO image file, which is subsequently used to burn the DVD from ImgBurn.

Hi Ronnie, The AVCHD files should be contained in a folder called 'BDMV' - and this should contain sub folders i.e. BDMV (main folder) ->Backup (sub folder) ->Clipinf (sub folder) ->Playlist (sub folder) ->Stream (sub folder) ->index.bdmv (file) ->MovieObject (file) You can use ImgBurn to create an ISO image file of these folders (point it to the BDMV main folder). Once you have created the ISO file you can use ImgBurn to write the ISO file to your DVD. Simples - as the meercat would say (Apologies to readers not in the UK - it refers to a rather quaint but charming set of TV commercials) Carol

The short answer is no, at the moment it cannot. When you talk about HD DVD, do you mean HD-DVD (the now defunct Toshiba standard i.e. do you have an HD-DVD player attached to your HD television - or do you have a Blu-ray player??). You can burn HD AVCHD format onto standard DVD's, but you would still need a Blu-ray player attached to your HD television in order to play them. Do you have an HD television?? If you don't, the SD televisions are only ever capable of 722x480 pixels (NTSC) or 768x576 pixels (PAL) and I won't go into square pixels or 'fat' pixels at this point(i.e for 4:3 ratio screens or 16:9 ratio screens). If you have an HD television, do you have a Blu-ray player?? If you don't you there is little point in trying to burn AVCHD DVD or Blu-ray disks. However, there are other options available for you such as:- streaming media player such as the Xtreamer or WD Media player or a television with a card slot (eg some Panasonic HD TV's accept SD cards directly to the TV and you can write your video file to the SD card) ability to connect a laptop directly to your TV (via an HDMI cable) If you want to author the shows (i.e. create menus etc), then you would need a have a Blu-ray player and you would need another program which can stitch together the mpeg4 files which P2E creates. Software which can do this has been discussed in other threads here.

Not sure where to go from here then Gary, I have attached a screen shot of my advanced settings (at the moment as a test I re-enabled those MS video/audio codecs and I'm cobbling 12 mp4 files together with no failures). Your advanced settings might differ. For Europe etc we are using a PAL system which defaults to 25fps and the original mp4 files which I made were done at this setting and I have therefore made sure my advanced settings reflect this. However it shouldn't matter as the program should re-encode the mp4 files to whatever you put in that box. I have also opted for Pan&Scan in the zoom box (I had letterbox as the default previously) and it is still converting without a problem. There is something on your system which is stopping the encoding, try temporarily turning off:- 1. Your firewall (do a check) ....... if it still doesn't work 2. Your anti-virus program ................. 3. Any resident anti-malware programs You're not running Norton by any chance are you???

Make sure they are both disabled - because it asked me if I wanted to disable them and I greed to this, when I went in to look, they were both unchecked (you have to read the text carefully - I think if they are both checked you need to uncheck them - I'm on a different computer at the moment)

Try turning Pan&Scan on and then I would try re-encoding with custom settings:- Resolution 1920x1080 2 pass -bitrate set at 12000Kbits/sec 25p Audio:256Kbits/sec and 48000 Also did you get a warning about incompatible codecs when you launched the new version of HDMM?? The incompatible codecs which were found on my system were the ones incorporated in Windows 7. If you didn't see this warning and have a look in the Options - this is where you can disable them.

Hmm, I've tried the newer version with mp4 files from both Pinnacle Studio and Pictures to Exe and haven't experienced any problems. The fact that this software and MultiAVCHD are giving you problems would tend to suggest that your mp4 files are 'odd'. If you double click on one of them, does it play back in Windows Media Player OK (I think you mentioned you were on Windows 7, so it should play back fine in the version of WMP which shipped with W7). Other than that, can you remember the parameters which you used when you created the mp4 file in P2E??

Hi Ron, Did you see my PM?? Which version are you using??

Hi Davy, No luck with menus to date, so I have another support request in to their Technical Support about this. I just hope that they reply soon because officially they are closed for the Chinese Spring Holiday (I think it is a Hong Kong based outfit).

I'll try and help you out in the other thread Gary.

Hi guys, I initially had a problem, but it only ever occurred when using more than one file (it would say 'Failed'), if I then cancelled and retried it it generally worked. However using the new version which they sent me a link to, this never showed the problem. Gary - I've sent you a PM.

I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I received a reply back from their Technical Support people - despite the fact that their business was shut down for the Chinese Spring Holdays. Great credit is due to them for this and the very friendly and helpful nature of the email which I got. They sent me a link to a different version of the software, which after uninstalling the previous version and then installing the new one solved the audio problem completely. The problem was due to incompatibility with some of the Microsoft installed codecs in Windows 7 x64 Professional. On launch the program sensibly asked me if I wanted to temporarily disable the incompatible codecs, which I allowed, and this solved the problem. The really nice thing about the program is that it will allow me to go back and re-enable those codecs should I have problems with other programs which depend on them. This program is neat and elegant in the way it works with a simple interface which takes a lot of the burden of deciding what options to choose out of the loop. For instance, if you opt for output onto a DVD it will automatically create the correct AVCHD format files for burning to disk and will again automatically decide the correct bitrate so that all the video which you have elected put on the disk will fit on the disk. It has options for burning to standard DVD (DVD-5), DL DVD (DVD-9), BD 25GB and BD 50GB. During the encoding phase, the program will use as many cores as your cpu has - so will encode up to 8 mp4 files simultaneously, but you can override this in the options panel should you so wish and tell it how many cores you want the program to use (I have attached a screen grab of the program in use). If you have a blank disk in your drive it will automatically write the files to the disk and once finished, it asks you if you wish to burn another disk- if you don't want it too, it automatically cleans up after itself and deletes the files it created. If you decide you want to write the disk yourself, simply don't put a disk in the drive, the program then creates the files needed to burn to the disk and can using something like ImgBurn to create your ISO image file which you can then burn to disk when you want to. The AVCHD DVD disks which the program creates works extremely well with the mp4 files from Pictures to Exe generated slideshows and so I would really recommend out to try it out as you can do so with their 30 day free trial. During the trial the only caveat is that each video included in the final will be limited to just 5 minutes duration.

Although I am using Pinnacle to author my disks, I realise that many people will not wish to go to the expense of something like Pinnacle Studio 14, so I have been trying out various other software. The one that I like, Sothink HD Movie Maker, is available on a 30 day free trial and if you like it, it is fairly cheap at just $35 (around £22.50). It is incredibly easy to use and the video quality is excellent. Unfortunately I have been experiencing glitches with the audio and I have contacted their technical support team about this. Unfortunately at the time of writing, their offices are closed until February 22 due to national holidays, so I don't expect an answer very soon. However, it is certainly worth downloading the trial version to test it out for a month.

I had a few problems getting it to work initially Gary, but I noticed a note in the log about if I was experiencing problems to update the x264.exe file in the MulitAVCHD Tool's folder. I did this - but I also noticed it kept referring to NTSC rather than PAL in the log. Make sure that you go into the 'Author' tab and switch to PAL Sorry, wipe that comment, I see you are in the States and will therefore be using an NTSC setup for your television/BD player. I noticed a comment in there about avisynth - I had to manually install this separately from another source (do a google search on avisynth version 2.5.8, download the file and install it into a separate folder). Once you have installed it, please run a malware sweep of your system - the malware and virus program which I found on my system possibly didn't come from that source (I am more and more convinced it was something on the SkyMedia site), but for your own peace of mind and it would help us all here to eliminate that as a possible source of my infection.

Thanks for checking it out Davy. I am beginning to suspect it didn't come from those files. The 8 problems found by Malwarebyte's scan all pointed to a SkyMedia source. I was on their web site yesterday afternoon and I suppose some of the streaming ads which they show on their site could have been hacked/hijacked and infected. Obviously even just viewing the screen, things like that are downloaded onto the system. Avira is running a scan on the system and has found one virus (html/Crypted.Gen) I will have to wait for the full scan to finish before I can find out more though. Later: The file which Avira found - 'C:\Users\xxxxxxxxxxx\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\gs88arbx.default\Cache\69185632d01' contained a virus or unwanted program 'HTML/Crypted.Gen' [virus] Action(s) taken: The file was moved to '4ba9389e.qua'! I have now deleted it from the system. The fact that it was from Mozilla could mean it was from either the Sky web site which I visited yesterday, or could have piggy backed from one of the other sites where I downloaded the other files. For now I would be very cautious about visiting the Avisynth site, but the MultiAVCHD would not appear to be implicated.

Thanks Ron I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only did it fix the problem with the audio dropouts that I was getting, the quality of the video did not degrade by a huge amount - it was visible when I replayed the one done at a higher bitrate, but was not substantial enough to warrant me discarding it. If I hadn't seen the one done at the higher bitrate, d certainly have been impressed with the one done at 12000Kbits/sec - plus there was the added bonus that the whole project (all 38mins of it) was able to be burnt to a plain 4.7GB DVD disk instead of having to use a DL DVD disk. I used MultiAVCHD to burn the project - but please note my malware warning in the above post. Hopefully Davy will run a scan on his system so that between the two of us we will be able to narrow down which download was responsible for the malware.

******************** BEWARE OF MALWARE******************************* Last night/early this morning I downloaded 3 programs from the Internet:- MultiAVCHD A file (x264) which MultiAVCHD recommended me to upgrade to in its log Avisynth version 2.58 During my routine daily scan with Spybot S&D it picked up several hijacking trojans (yesterdays scan was clean). I have cleaned the system with Spybot and I am now running a 2nd check with Malwarebyte's Anti-malware program. This has picked up a further 8 infected objects. I will finish after the Malwarebyte's scan with a full sweep with my anti-virus program (but I checked the files on download and nothing showed up with this) So, if you have downloaded any of these files, please run a check on your system.

That I wondered about too Davy and I'm in the middle to rerendering all the PTE shows out at a bitrate of 12000Kbits/sec instead of the 24000Kbits/sec which I tried earlier (I'm a nut for getting the absolute best quality that I can). This has resulted in mp4 files which are just a fraction over half the previous file sizes, so hopefully the whole 12 slideshows will fit together on a standard 4.7GB DVD. If it does, I might try to see if those files will then be acceptable in Pinnacle without the problems which I ran into previously. If it does, I will upload an amended version of the tutorial to the MediaFire site. I'll keep you informed as to my progress with all this.

I tried it this morning Davy with my Wedding Sampler mp4 files from PTE - but unfortunately the file size was far too large to fit onto a standard 4.7GB DVD and so I used a DL 8.5GB DVD. The video quality was really excellent but it suffered from breakup of the sound (it stuttered in many different places). I was also not very keen on menu it generated. However, on the brighter side, it would be ideal as a starter for people to be able to jump in and test the water as it is free so they can create their HD shows without a financial penalty. I will probably try again later and output my mp4 from PTE using a lower bitrate to see if this helps with respect to the audio stutter. If anybody else wants to try this, I found I had to download and install another program (Avisynth version 2.58 which I installed into its own folder, then I could get the menu produced, but like I said, it wasn't anywhere near as good as the menus which can be made in Pinnacle Studio. Also, when you make the video, make sure you go into the 'Author' tab and switch it from NTSC to PAL otherwise the generation of the requisite files will fail.

OK Ken, the file has been uploaded to MediaFire and I have created a new topic in theTutorials sub forum with a link to the finished article.

That's completely unfair, but it doesn't bother me at all these days (I'm glad to say) I just picture myself as I was at the beginning of last year and it's enough to dispel any yearnings for those types of food . Does anybody know if there Is there any way to get round the 2Mb file attachment limit as I fear that the final version will come in at around 4 or 5Mb, .........moderators?? .......Igor??

Let's try adding that attachment again The draft version has now been removed and you can find the finished tutorial in the Tutorials sub forum

Ok folks, I have completed the first part of the tutorial - it is in draft mode at the moment. Sorry it has taken me longer than I first anticipated, will add to it later on this evening with details of how to go about authoring the content and writing the HD disk, once I have had time to relax a bit and get a bite to eat. I hope it's at least semi intelligible. Mmmm - for some reason it won't let me upload the file as an attachment - I have reduced the size down to 1.75Mb to fit in with the forum requirements, but it still doesn't upload. I'll try again in another message.

Please, everybody note, it is Carol (i.e. without the 'e' at the end) I'm just about to leave home for the gym - too many hours sat at the computer over the years sure did pile the weight on, but since last year I've managed to slim down from a size 22 back down to a size 10 and there's no way I'm going back there. I will post a PDF tutorial of how I go about things when I get back - it will be later on this afternoon before it gets published though, so hopefully you can hang on until then