Okay, I must admit I didn't know that.
I won't shoot the messenger. ;-)

thanks for the quick reply.

HDV is mpeg2. I wonder if you loaded the file into something like MPEG VCR from Womble and saved it as an mpeg2 file (which losslessly does the conversion just stripping off the extra m2t control data) if that would work.

I know I used to make HD DVDs with mpeg2 data right off my camera. That and that I could do it on regular DVD-Rs was why I was hoping that the HD DVD format would be the one that won.

Here is a quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDVthis Wikipedia HDV article[/link]:

For consumer use, HDV-sourced video can be delivered on a Blu-ray Disc without re-encoding, can be converted to AVCHD and delivered on an AVCHD disc, or can be downconverted to DVD-Video.

It seems like somebody must be able to do this even if we can't.

ugh...seeds of doubt sprouting....

I know you said 60i but are you sure your video is not 30p? The Blu-ray spec does not allow 30p or 25p... just 60i, 50i or 25p with 1440x1080 or 1920x1080 video. You can do 25p and 30p with 1280x720 video though.

Silly omission if you ask me!

Well the framerate in the Video tab of the "= Blu-ray 1440x1080-60i, 25 Mbps video stream" template shows 29.970 fps, which is the framerate of my HDV footage.

Both "HDV-1080-60i" and the "= Blu-ray 1440x1080-60i, 25 Mbps video stream" are 60i, so why does one recompress and not the other.

I don't get it...

When you right-click and choose 'properties' on a video clip in your timeline and go to 'media' or 'general' tabs, does it say progressive or interlaced?

"Video event properties" and "Project properties" are 2 different, unrelated things... if you haven't selected the right Project properties.

Keep in mind that 30p (29.97) is fine as long as it's flagged as 60i. 30p flagged as 60i looks like 30p. The fact that it visually doesn't make any difference is why they didn't bother adding 30p to the Blu-ray specification.

That is why when I shoot 30p, I set up my Z7 to record 30p as 60i. That way it will smartrender into a 30p file that is flagged as 60i. It also lets you mix 30p and 60 footage (which looks perfect played back as 60i). Yeah, I know it's confusing.

HDV is absolutely fine on Blu-ray. I've made several of them and sold them to a number of people around the world and I've never had a complaint. They play fine on typical Blu-ray players as well as PS3.

I could never get DVD Architect to accept an HDV file and not recompress it, and I've never heard of anyone else managing this. It sucks enormously and I wish SCS would fix it. In the meantime you can get the job done using TMPGEnc Authoring Works. You can drop an HDV file straight into it and it won't recompress. And it's a rock solid piece of software. The interface can be a little confusing at times, but that goes for other authoring software I've tried. The 2 disadvantages I've found with it are that it's limited to 2 subtitle tracks, and there is no way I could find to put a "resume" button in the menu.

If you're hell bent on authoring in DVDA there is a workaround to get your uncompressed HDV working in it, but you need to buy TMPGEnc Authoring Works first. It's in the 24th post on this thread. This is something I intend to do when I come around to a mass-produced project where I want more than 2 subtitle tracks. That thread is worth a read as it was about me going through the same as you are now.

Nick:

Just to be absolutely certain you are saying what I think you are saying, let me put it in my own words:

You shoot video with an HDV camera, you edit it with Vegas, smartrendering the final render into a finished master. You take this master and you author it on to a Blu-ray disc without recompression using TMPGEnc Authoring Works.

Is that correct? I'll buy that program tomorrow if it will let me do that.

Yes Laurence, that's correct.

I haven't actually done this for about a year. I guess there is a trial version that you can try to confirm it with your own setup.

Edit: This was 1080-60i HDV footage shot with a Sony Z1 and captured with HDVSplit, smart rendered in Vegas 8.0c.

Nick,
YOU ARE THE MAN!
I downloaded the trial version of TMPGEnc Authoring.
I does what you say it does: builds a BD-R folder structure without recompressing!!!!

Here were my steps:
- Rendered HDV footage from my Sony HDR-HC7 to "HDV 1080-60i" (no recompression as it had no effects, just different clips strung together)
When I render them in Vegas I selected "Save as separate elementary streams" in the System tab of the template options.
I also rendered a separate .ac3 file for the audio track.

I then brought the .m2v and .ac3 files into TMPGEnc Authoring and went through its wizard to created a folder structure for a BD-R. It creates and uses proxy files, which is interesting.

During the final folder creation NO RECOMPRESSION TOOK PLACE!!! It advises you that during the BD folder structure creation, it will only show clips that need re-rendering. (It only showed rendering of snippets from the chapter begin points; I assume it uses those for menu creation. I also did a test with no chapter markers, and no video was displayed for rendering, i.e., no recompression)

The only downside is that it does not recognize chapter markers from Vegas. However, there is a built-in editor that lets you (easily) insert chapter markers for use in the menus.
I have to say I am duly impressed!!!

I'm waiting on delivery of my Pioneer 205 Blu-ray burner to actually burn the disc. I'll report back with those findings. (the trial period is 14 days)

I would encourage others to experiment with the trial version and let me know if I'm missing something.
Otherwise, it looks like we have a product that lets you create a BD-R from HDV with no recompression along the way.

Thanks,
Dan

You can also use Adobe Encore, if it still has that capability. Last time I used HDV was three years ago, and with Encore CS3 I was able to do a Blu-Ray that way, without recompression. It wouldn't work as an AVCHD DVD without re-encoding, because HDV is 25 Mbps, which is about 5 too high for DVD media.

This is very helpful. I was just bemoaning the fact that I could not use tapes made on my FX-1 to make blu-ray discs. I have new found enthusiasm now.

Just found this video on their site that confirms their use of smart rendering:

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/taw4_feature_smart.html

From reading the features it seems that I can bypass Vegas altogether.

or for those who would rather just click on a link:

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/taw4_feature_smart.html

> From reading the features it seems that I can bypass Vegas altogether except the capturing of the video.

If all you want to do is put your tapes on Blu-ray, you don't even need Vegas for capturing. A bunch of us use a free HDV capture utility called HDV Split:

http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm

Vegas is an editor and useful to those of us who want to do a little more than copy raw footage to Blu-ray.

What this thread is about is those of us who want to edit then smart-render the footage before writing to Blu-ray. Smart-rendering is where even after the edit, any frames that are unchanged are just bit copied rather than re-rendered. In other words, video with titles, transitions, reframing or added effects are rerendered, but everything else is just recopied exactly as it is but in a new location in a final edit. This is very good in some cases because it is extremely fast and the quality is exactly the same as the original in the smart-rendered parts.

Many people thumb their noses at this because they like to add color correction and other niceties to the entire project. Sometimes I do this as well, but lately I'm finding that if I'm careful when I shoot, use the picture profiles on my camera, and just shoot the way I want it to look, I can do a project that is extremely good quality on a final Bluray, and yet use an average laptop and drive and do the project really quickly. The busier I get, the more attractive this approach gets.

Glad to be of assistance :)

As for getting markers into it as chapters, what appears to be required is a script that outputs Vegas markers as frame numbers that can be imported to TAW as a ".keyframe" list (see the "edit menu" at the bottom right of TAW's "cut-edit" screen). If you export a keyframe list from there and open it in a text editor it looks like it's just going to be a simple list of frame numbers.

It looks like Scorpiopod has such a script (take a look at the 3rd post in this thread), but he hasn't been around for a while and his email link is disabled. Does anyone still know him? Or could anyone write a script that outputs Vegas markers as a text file of frame numbers? Edit: See later post for the required script

Any of you folk going down this route might also consider adding this script to your armory, which lets you export Vegas regions as SRT subtitles which TMPGEnc Authoring Works can accept (as well as, apparently, YouTube).

For me the problem was just making blu-ray discs with menus from tapes recorded on my HDV camera. If I can perform the entire process in this program that will be great. I will still use Vegas to do other things.

I have some recordings of bands done with 1 camera that I wanted to re-author to play on a blu-ray player, in the past I down converted to DV and authored DVDs. With the drop in price of burners and media I want to see these recordings in HD on my 42" 1080p TV.

Exactly. I just wanted a way to "archive" my full HDV tapes on Blu-ray discs with menus showing sequential chapter points, without having to recompress the footage.
Tapes are ~63 minutes long, and the full render never fit on 4.7 GB DVDs.
Now that prices for Blu-ray burners and media are low, and I've been pointed to TMPGEnc Authoring, I'm in the game!

OK, so I hacked this script by Will Liu and ScottW on www.vasst.com to export Vegas markers to a .keyframe file that can be imported in TMPGEnc Authoring Works as chapter points. You can download it from my server here. Put it in your Script Menu folder.

There are a couple of limitations. Here are the self-explanatory notes I wrote in the script:

1) Modify the desDir variable in line 95 to a directory on your system.
2) Chapter labels cannot be imported to TMPGEnc Authoring Works. Only positions.
3) In TMPGEnc Authoring Works, import the keyframe file from the "edit menu" at the bottom right of the "cut-edit" screen.
4) The chapters will not necessarily fall on I-frames. It may be a good idea to create
new chapter points in TMPGEnc Authoring Works next to the imported ones, and to
delete the imported ones. Chapters created in TMPGEnc Authoring Works fall
automatically on I-frames.

The process is not ideal but it can save hunting around in the cut-edit window for your chapter positions. I don't know how big a problem it is for chapter points not to be exactly on I-frames. It might not be a problem at all. If anyone tests that please report back here with results. Personally I think I will tend to recreate them on I-frames just to make sure, and use the imported ones just as a guide.

I'm no programmer so if anyone finds bugs in this script please let me know or feel free to correct them.