Hello to eveyone, I think it's time to share the "perfect" settings to use with x264, to obtain a BD compliant file; what you will get is a .264 file that could be used with any authoring software - I use MultiAVCHD; also Easy BD Light is a good software, but the latter doesn't allow you to make menus... I must admit lately I'm using only TSmuxeR, that, even if it doesn't make menus, it seems to produce good compliant files.
Thanks to many OT members, in particular Chewtobacca, that helped me to find out these settings!
replace 25000 with the desired average bitrate, 24 in the keyint with the video framerate (24 would do for 23.976 and 30 for 29.97), Input_File.avs with an AviSynth script (or a video file), and Output_File.264 with the final x264 file.
You can use them directly with the x264 command line - just copy and paste pass 1 settings then, when finished, copy and paste pass2 settings - or save as .bat file (thanks to Feallan for the idea), or use them inside some GUIs - the best so far IMHO is Simple x264 Launcher, but using any software that is not the original x264 command line could add some further setting that could lead to have a not-compliant file, so be aware, you are warned! And, do NOT delete any temp files you get after pass 1 (.stats and .stats.mbtree) because they will be used by pass 2!!!
HINTS:
these settings are good for 1080p video
pay attention to the BD size: actual ones are 23.3GB for BD-25 and 46.6GB for BD-50
allow about 7% overhead for the .m2ts container - for example, total file size (video+audio+subs) excluding eventual menus would be around 21.75GB for a BD-25, and 43.55 for a BD-50
to retain grain, better to not go under 20/22mbps for 2.35:1 and 28/30mbps for 1.78:1/1.85:1
max bitrate allowed for BD (video+audio) is 48mbps, so if audio tracks total bitrate is over 8mbps, you should lower video bitrate accordingly, in particular pay attention to --vbv-maxrate
to improve speed, you can use for pass 1 a "simpler" version of the final file, for example without noise reduction, grain plate, color grading, but it should be otherwise identical - same frame numbers, same resolution etc.
Hope it will help some user here; any feedback is really appreciated!
Do you know if this can be used in Adobe Premiere as an external encoder?
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I tried with the x264vfw variant out of premiere, and could not get it working. This was the actual render to .avi, not the BD compliant settings posted above. Outside of expensive plugins I don't know any other wat to get x264 directly out of premiere.
I got a .h264 file that I could load into Adobe Encore without any re-coding flags, and it played fine on the PS3 (This was a BD9 as I do not have a BD burner.)
I'm still experimenting myself, but these were possitive results. I Will put a more comprehensive tutorial together when ive prefected the process a little more if people want it, this will include how to export a 5.1 mix from premiere, which is actually a bit of a pain!
(2015-02-01, 03:09 AM)CSchmidlapp Wrote: I tried with the x264vfw variant out of premiere, and could not get it working. This was the actual render to .avi, not the BD compliant settings posted above. Outside of expensive plugins I don't know any other wat to get x264 directly out of premiere.
I got a .h264 file that I could load into Adobe Encore without any re-coding flags, and it played fine on the PS3 (This was a BD9 as I do not have a BD burner.)
I'm still experimenting myself, but these were possitive results. I Will put a more comprehensive tutorial together when ive prefected the process a little more if people want it, this will include how to export a 5.1 mix from premiere, which is actually a bit of a pain!
Hi CSchmidlapp,
What do you mean by dummy .avi? Is it a small file at that point with just information from Adobe or?
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2015-02-01, 04:21 PM (This post was last modified: 2015-02-01, 04:24 PM by CSchmidlapp.)
(2015-02-01, 03:40 PM)DoomBot Wrote:
(2015-02-01, 03:09 AM)CSchmidlapp Wrote: I tried with the x264vfw variant out of premiere, and could not get it working. This was the actual render to .avi, not the BD compliant settings posted above. Outside of expensive plugins I don't know any other wat to get x264 directly out of premiere.
I got a .h264 file that I could load into Adobe Encore without any re-coding flags, and it played fine on the PS3 (This was a BD9 as I do not have a BD burner.)
I'm still experimenting myself, but these were possitive results. I Will put a more comprehensive tutorial together when ive prefected the process a little more if people want it, this will include how to export a 5.1 mix from premiere, which is actually a bit of a pain!
Hi CSchmidlapp,
What do you mean by dummy .avi? Is it a small file at that point with just information from Adobe or?
Hi Doombot, Hope you are well sir?
It basiclly turns Premiere into a frameserver, you have to leave premiere running while you do your encode through MeGui.
The dummy .avi is like you said, a small file containing information from the premiere timeline and can be loaded into anything on your machine that will except .avi files.
There are alternatives but this is working for me.
If you are going to try this use Advanced Frameserver and not DebugMode frameserver which its based on, as it does not work in CS6 or above. (Im on CS6)
Ive also had problems with audio, so turn that off in the frameserver plugin settings (available in Adobe Media Encoder when you are setting up your export)
Hope this helps, I will attempt a tutorial at somepoint.
(2015-02-01, 08:12 AM)Booshman Wrote: An up to date tutorial would be appreciated.
That's sounds like a good plan of attack instead of the internal encoder of premiere. Do you think the settings provided by Andrea could be used in MeGUI or could this method be done with another GUI?
You guys are a wealth of useful information.
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(2015-02-01, 04:58 PM)DoomBot Wrote: Thank you CSchmidlapp i'm doing very well indeed
That's sounds like a good plan of attack instead of the internal encoder of premiere. Do you think the settings provided by Andrea could be used in MeGUI or could this method be done with another GUI?
You guys are a wealth of useful information.
The setting's provided by Andrea are perfect if you are using the command line (cmd.xe) method to encode your .h264 file using x264.
MeGui is a frontend to control x264 and other plugins (AVIsynth scripts ect) and you access the x264 settings through its own GUI contained with in. I literally followed this tutorial here and got great results. There are multitude of other things you can also do filtering wise through MeGui's AVIsynth implementation. It's a great piece of software, abit of a learning curve, but very powerfull and worth your time.
If like me you have very little experience with command line, go with MeGui.
Yep it all made sense, i've done some command lines and scripts before out side of premiere of course. I'll check out MeGUI and Advanced Frameserver and see what happens.
Thanks again
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