Premiere Pro, Vegas or other?

[Maloku]

I am nearly fed up with PSP. I've spent over a month trying to create a top quality Blu-ray DVD for sale but have had terrible quality issues. No one on this forum has had any ideas for how to overcome the problems and attempts by the Photodex support dept. has yet to figure out how to improve the output quality. You can see my post about this under "Troubleshooting"

Anyway, I'm investigating alternatives and am looking at Adobe Premiere Pro and the Sony Vegas software. I know that they are not cheap, but I have so many people signed up to purchase my DVD that I need to get on with it ASAP. Can you guys give me any advice on which software can help me produce the highest resolution show for 1080p LCD TVs using Blu-ray?

Thanks!

Malok

[beachside]

try to buy sony vegas studio version 10. it is less than $100 and will create bluray discs. I have not yet created a bluray with content from psp but you should be able to save as hd video. then that will create a hd mpg file which may or may not be of same quality as avc4. But sony will create a single play blue ray from the time line. use create bluray disc. this is the simpleist way but if you want a menu and more file you will need to use dvd which comes with sony studio procucts. I have produced blu ray disc this way and they look stunning compared to standard dvd

[Maloku]

Thanks Beachside! That's helpful!

[yellowstone Profile Private message]

Give Cyberlink PowerDirector a try - like others, they have a trial version available for downloading.
I output from PSP as uncompressed AVI to have no loss of quality for further processing.
I also tried Sony Vegas, which did produce BluRays alright but definitely comes with a much steeper learning curve (I personally dislike the user interface which shows a long history), is slower and doesn't do menus unless you have the more expensive versions.

Regards
Robert

[Luke_Miller Profile Private messageWebsite]

I am nearly fed up with PSP. I've spent over a month trying to create a top quality Blu-ray DVD for sale but have had terrible quality issues. No one on this forum has had any ideas for how to overcome the problems and attempts by the Photodex support dept. has yet to figure out how to improve the output quality.

So far I've had good luck getting high quality Blu-Ray output from Producer. I've done three or four Blu-Ray productions. Most of the time I use Premiere Pro and Encore for the final production because I use features they have and Producer does not, but not because of any quality issues with Producer's output. If you can't get the Blu-Ray quality you need by rendering out of Producer I don't think any other program can help. I believe you must first resolve whatever is causing the quality issue within the Producer workflow. I'm presently producing a 53 minute video which includes footage from my HD camcorder. The Blu-Ray I burned from the Producer generated ISO file is very nice on my 67" HDTV.

Now getting high quality high definition Producer output that you can import into Premiere Pro or other NLE program is another matter. I am still struggling with that for long videos. I use uncompressed AVI files for standard definition productions, but my current project would generate (an estimated) 528 gigabyte uncompressed AVI file. The compressed AVI codecs I've tried seem to choke on files this large.

[Maloku]

Thanks for your comments Luke. I'm continuing to try to figure out what is causing the extreme sharpening in PSP. My guess is that it has something to do with the compression prior to the burn process. Right now I am finding significant improvement by outputting a mpg2 and then using another program to burn it to Blu-ray. Unfortunately, then I can't use the nice PSP startup screens or offer looping but it is a step in the right direction. Any advice you can give, as you have experience with this, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Luke!

Erik

[Luke_Miller Profile Private messageWebsite]

I don't use Proshow to burn my Blu-Ray disks. I generate an ISO file from Producer and then use Nero 8 Burning ROM to burn the disk. That is just my normal workflow and I don't know if the results would be different burning directly from Producer. I use an LG eSATA burner and the Verbatim BD-RE media also so that should not be a factor.

I create my shows using full resolution jpegs from my D300/D700/D3 and make sure I have the Producer show settings at the resolution I will output. Currently I am using 1280x720P since that gives me 60 (59.94) frames per second. This gives me much smoother motion in my pans and zooms than the 24P option. There is a slight reduction in crispness from the 1920x1080 setting.

If I am going directly to Blu-Ray disk I produce an ISO file using the Blu-Ray 1280x720 Progressive preset. Other settings are 59.94 FPS and high Quality. For 1920x1080 I use the 1920x1080 Progressive preset with 24 FPS and the Super High Quality setting. Both setups produce great image quality. I prefer the 1280x720P format if I have much motion in my production.

[Maloku]

Thanks for the ideas Luke. I'm going to try the smaller file size and faster frame rate to see if that works any better. I'll let you know how it goes.