Movie making software suggestions

[Sarath]

I am using the Sonys bundled PMB software to club the videos. In the end it seems to be the most efficient of all. It thus gives me a seamless .mts file.

Now I am looking forward to achieving just 2 goals.
1) Storing the videos without any loss. On HDDs owing to the size. Initially I wanted to add titles and maybe add subtitles with date and place information but I have decided to skip that. Now I am using the PMB to make one huge file of all the smaller files
For Eg: London is now a single 20GB file instead of the 70 smaller files before. Thats convenient for storing.

2) Making DVDs. I was confused between MPEG-4 and the AVC H.264 format before. MPEG4 seems to be better in compression.
The confusion is: I am working with AVC files as the source. I can output the files in the same AVC or MPG4. Is AVC to AVC better or AVC to MPEG4? I read they have similar container files or something but I am lost in the details.

I havent started on the DVDs so I will try it out. Also I am very happy with the feature set of PD9. I found the option for a 24mbps HQ output option but I no longer need that.

Are you telling me that Nero will burn DVDs better than PD9? Or are you talking about the actual processing of the videos?

Another way to ask is are you talking about the encoding features or the burning features of the said softwares?

 

[Anorion]

1) What is the file size of the 70 assorted files? it should be similar to 20GB. Archiving is just saving the footage, as a file or as many files. If you want to add subtitles, then it comes into editing, because you will have to render the entire timeline at least once. If you want to avoid this, just use subtitles as a seperate file. DVD supports subtitles, and so does .mts. This means that you will be able to cut the clips to remove extra footage, and add titles, without rendering the footage, but just using parts of the data as it is. Is there a titling option in the bundled software?
2) AVC to AVC is better than AVC to MPEG, but the difference is negligible, and there is will be a bit of data lost every time you put a timeline through the rendering process (processing as you call it). MPEG is more versatile in the sense that you can take the DVD to some other house and expect it to work there, on older players or DVD drives.

Nero burns better, am not talking about the processing at all here, strictly about just the burning features of the software.
Recod it as it has a filmstrip instead of a timeline, which is easier to work with than the pd9 timeline just so you can use clips of varying dimensions, but as you are no longer planning to do this, its not a prolem. Generally, software with filmstrips (vegas, movie maker etc), do a lot of the resizing work for you, but the timeline software (pd9, premiere) expect the users to resize the clips as necessary.

 

[Sarath]

Till now I have only used the PMB bundled software for all my needs. Here's what I have done and also answering your points:

1)The 70assorted files are 20GB and the end single file is again the same

2)I used the software to stitch all the files together. Now I have files ranging from 4.3GB to 51GB. I intend on preserving them and not working upon them.

3)I burnt a DVD finally today using PMB for testing.
It can create menus and hence I did one and burnt the smallest file I had.
Format used was AVCHD.
It plays on Blu-ray player.
The original file was 4.7GB but the end file was 3.8GB. From intial 28mbps to a lower bitrate.
I am guessing a DVD fits half hour of video.
I am happy with the software and the burn process. The video did not skip or show any distortion.

Its easier this way except that I cannot insert/create a title for each clip and hence a lot of information cannot be added.

Whole process took 4hours and rendering took 1.5 to 2hrs for a 21min clip. I have atleast 10hours of data or more.

Its seems that editing is going to be a tall order. I haven't started using any editing software yet so I can still choose which one to begin with.
I am using the PMB to stitch smaller files into bigger ones. I can work with these and add titles to them in the Video editing software of my choice.

3) To make universally playable DVDs should I choose the MPEG-2 format? I guess so and I was going to, but I do not have a DVD player, so I cannot test it.

 

[Anorion]

Regarding the subtitles, PMB unfortunately does not edit the metadata before burning, which means accessory files such as subtitles, although they are compatible with .mts. You can edit the data in Notepad if you wanna use PMB, and still burn it using another software (you will have to use ffmpeg or something) or just check out this one>>>> perfect for your needs multiAVCHD 4.1 build 770 - VideoHelp.com Downloads. Figured it out only on your last post, because I kept assuming that you needed some serious editing done. Its one of those software with no re-encoding, so its not time consuming, or complicated regarding the exporting options. You can add the titles wherever you want.
multiAVCHD is the one you need, it will work with all your files
3) Considering the HD vids, Id choose MPEG4.

 

[Sarath]

I am not sure if this is how it is, but I will tell you what I have observed and assume to be the situation.

All my files are AVCHD at 50fps and 28mbps bitrate. Even PMB doesnt burn disks directly but re encodes them into a smaller bitrate file even when choosing AVCHD for output.

The original files are very large and burning them directly without compression to a DVD is very inefficient.

Since I have the original files on my portable HDD I am concentrating on the DVD now. I had intended to edit these original files initially, add titles to them and then save them. But I gave up on that since the files are huge and making DVDs are my priority now.

As for the editing part I will clear out my exact intentions:

~I start with adding titles to each clip. Now since each clip has already been created by the PMB from smaller clips, that has made work easy for me. I will be adding titles between each clip adding a small description(just the place &/ date). These will appear individually in the menu.

~I would then create the menu or maybe use the default one

~There is no trimming of videos involved as of now but I am not sure. But chances are very less that I will trim all videos but surely one or two.

~Transitions between clips. Fade mostly (only).

~Initially I though of adding subtitles in some parts, again for example to describe different places in the city. Not important though. Might skip it due to the immense length of videos; very likely.

Whether anything more is added later on or removed two things are going to be done for sure. One is add titles to each clip and second is the mandatory menu creation.

I too feel I should create MPEG-4 DVDs but will they play in a normal DVD player? If not I will make two sets with one playable in Blu-Rays and another in DVD players for sharing with others(little loss of quality not a problem here).

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I was just thinking; came to my mind after typing it all:

What if I create small videos that I can use as titles (PD9 or Sony Vpro) for the clips. I have only 2-4 clips for each city so I will have to make that many in the same format. Then I would use the PMB to stitch them to their respective files. I can then burn them with PMB again. I will have my titles and my menu, but no transitions.

The problem I have encountered in PMB is (and also might when I shift to the other editors) that the output file is too big to fit onto a DVD. What happens when I try to burn say a 7GB file. Will it be continued on to the 2nd DVD or will the burn process fail for the 1st DVD itself citing shortage of space.

Anticipating this very reason I have been pondering over getting a BD RW drive. Its prohibitive cost is a let down but I can just about manage to get one despite media at 300 a piece. However I would like to see if DVDs can do the job and look at BDs as the last ditch effort.

And thanks for all help Anorion

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P.S.: I DLed that SW but will read into it tomorrow morning.

 

[Sarath]

Hey thats a wonderful SW you gave me. Just what I was looking for. Thanks Anorion.

 

[SlashDK]

Sony Vegas Pro gets another recommendation from me. Its better NOT to render in blue-ray quality (like you thought) since the difference in it and DVD quality's is negligible and rendering them is . Even the file size is huge. My 4 minute video rendered as blue ray took up 25GB of space . So you get the idea of space taken. Also, Sony Vegas Pro is a very easy to learn software and can be used for great video editing. I made my first video with just a few hours of browsing though it and a few tips from a friend.

 

[Sarath]

Like I said I made a sample video. The initial file was 4.8GB and 21:30mins long. I burned it using the PMB onto a DVD in AVCHD format at 18mbps (i guess) BD quality and it came down to 3.8GB after encoding [part of burn process].

^^^I did not understand about the bluray quality and DVD quality you talked about. Can you be more specific as to the formats you are refering to and/or video settings (viz bitrate, resolution, frame rate...)

 

[SlashDK]

It was MainConcept(.mpg i think) with quality as blue ray 1920*1080 50i 25mbps. Then we rendered the same video in DVD Widescreen in avi and we got a few hundred MBs. There was no visible difference in the quality on a 22" monitor and a approx 50" output projector(perhaps an hdtv might have shown the difference). The source files were a few HD videos ad pics.

 

[Sarath]

I have a 40" HDTV which is not sympathetic to less than true HD videos.

I have 1080 50p 26mbps videos. Twice your videos frame rate and it consumes one DVD for every half hour of video at 1080 24p 18mbps in AVCHD format.

I have a DVDRW disk so I will check it myself and get back to you.

 

[SlashDK]

Nope it wasn't mainconcept. Found the video today it was avi. I'm posting the screenshot.
*img194.imageshack.us/img194/1231/french23gb.jpg

 

[Sarath]

Why is your bitrate so high? 800mbps+ Isnt that insane?

What was the original source of the video? And the original bitrate? [I am not so sure you have them]

My camera shot at a max of 26mbps so anything I output at a lower bitrate also lowers the file size, unsurprisingly.

 

[SlashDK]

Yeah I know its insane . It was kept for rendering on a Pentium 4 in our school by a teammate (it literally took hours). I told him to go for 720p since most of our videos were 720p (a couple were 1080p) but he didn't listen. Nope i don't have a majority of the original videos (you can see some in the screenshot) so i'm not sure about the bitrate actually.

 

[Sarath]

Unless you have a RED camera or run a soy satellite such high bitrate is not possible in our day to day use cameras. I don't even know how you guys came upon such a setting in the software you are using. And here I was thinking 26mbps is insane when the default for BD seems to be around 18mbps and DVD at 8-10mbps.

 

[SlashDK]

I know its insane (it wasn't done by me) .The max bitrate of the sources that i came across was around 15mbps i think.