DVD Architect 5.0 Bit Rate Settings Don't Seem to Stick

[tbg]

I'm having mixed results trying to get AVCHD 1080-60i footage from my video camera onto a DVD that will play in my Blu Ray player in high definition.

In VMS10, I am rendering as Sony AVC, BluRay template, 1920x1080-60i Bit rate 16
In DVDA, I am setting Disc Properties to BluRay, Target Media size 4.7, Video format AVC

The burned disc that I am getting has a much higher bit rate and playing on my BluRay player it studders after 5 seconds and audio drops out. So first quetsion: If my Vegas Movie Studio render is at bit rate 16, why is DVDA increasing it when burning, or is it?

Changing the default video bit rate slider in "Optimize" in DVDA down to 15 Mbps does not have any effect on the resultant bit rate. I do see that under the Video 1 tab of Optimize Disc that "Recompress" is automatically set to "no". I have found that when I set this to "yes", DVDA does burn a disc at a lower bit rate (around 18), but not at the 15Mbps that I had specified using the default bit rate slider. At the 18Mbps bit rate, I do end up with a BD5 formatted DVD-R that will play in my Blu Ray player with no studdering or any issues. But I would like to understand what is happening with DVDA and why I can't get the bit rate down to 15Mbps.

So second question: Is there some backround control that DVDA has when it comes to burning blu ray files that sets the bit rate to specific levels regardless of what is selected in Optimize Disk?

Any other thoughts?

Thanks in advance,
Todd

[Chuck Engels]

Hi Todd,
I don't know much about DVD Architect at all and I'm sure someone that does will be along soon.
While you wait it might be worth a few minutes to check out this topic
viewtopic.php?p=77641#p77641
Seems like it might be related to yours.

[RJ Johnston]

If DVD-AS 5 shows "Recompress: No" for your video in the optimize settings dialog, you won't be able to change the bitrate until you change "Recompress" from "No" to "Yes." Then the default bitrate slider can be used to control the destination bitrate of the video and the menu as well. Otherwise you will just be changing the bitrate of the menu only.

You probably won't want to change the bitrate of the menu necessarily, so there is another setting under "Recompress Settings" named "Use Default Bit Rate" that you change from "Yes" to "No" and change the bit rate setting below that. That will affect only that video and not the menu.

If the AVC file you produced in SVMS 10 has a bitrate of 16, then that is what you get in DVDAS 5 if the Optimize setting "Recompress" is "No."

But it's a mistake to change the bit rate setting in DVD-AS 5 when you could change it in SVMS 10. Changing the bitrate of the movie in DVDAS 5 will cause compression of the movie again causing degradation of video and a waste of time.

The problem you are having playing the DVD in your player may be due to a bad burning session, or the disc or player has problems. You should be able to play back up to 28 Mbps (includes audio bit rate) on your DVD-R in your Blu-ray player.

[tbg]

Thanks so much for the reply and explanation. This is very helpful and clears some confusion I was having.

So I did some more testing, and noticed the following:
When I import my 16bit AVC file into DVDA, and have the audio file (SonyWave64 PCM) with the same name, the audio file gets imported automatically, as one would expect. DVDA says no audio recompression is required. And then when I burn to an iso image, the resultant bitrate for the video is 18!

When I then try and import the same video and audio files separately into DVDA by giving them different names, DVDA says audio recompression is required, and this time the iso image I get as a result has a bit rate of 16 for the video, which is what I expect.

Any additional thoughts.

Thanks again,
-Todd

[RJ Johnston]

You may be looking at the overall bitrate of the stream 18, and not just the video elementary stream portion ,16. Are you using MediaInfo to check the statistics?

Changing names won't have any effect on the bitrates.

[tbg]

I just checked, this time with mediainfo, and sure enough, the video elementary portion is 16. I was interpreting the information in explorer incorrectly. Thanks again for clearing this up.