Almost 2 weeks into MC. The migration from Liquid is going well.
Most problems centre around the exporting of the timeline.

My first question is about exporting for Blu-Ray authoring in DVDitPro HD.
From Liquid a fused timeline worked well.
I asked on the Roxio Forum about exporting from MC and was advised to export as a QT Reference file using one of the DNxHD methods.
When I tried I got a message like, "Cannot export long GOP - use QT movie"

I am capturing HDV through a firewire from my HVR-M25 Sony deck.
Is this a limitation I have using software only MC and firewire?

What other formats are you using to export timelines for further authoring in DVDitPro HD?

Otherwise I must say I am finding MC a pleasant piece of software to work with.
In the next few days I will probably be back with some other newcomer questions.
I hope you will be patient with me...................

Regards,

Douglas

drbgaijin:

When I tried I got a message like, "Cannot export long GOP - use QT movie"

I would do a video mixdown of your timeline selecting a DNxHD resolution. Duplicate your timeline and edit in the mixdown (or put the mixdown on a top empty video track of your existing timeline) Then export timeline as a Quicktime reference for DVDit Pro HD

AndrewAction:

I would do a video mixdown of your timeline selecting a DNxHD resolution. Duplicate your timeline and edit in the mixdown (or put the mixdown on a top empty video track of your existing timeline) Then export timeline as a Quicktime reference for DVDit Pro HD

Thank you, Andrew

Next problem: I am going very much "by the manual" at the moment. I cannot find any information about "video mixdown" there or in the "Help" files in MC.
Could you please point me in the right direction?
I was able to duplicate the timeline...... but cannot find any "video mixdown" information.

Regards,

Douglas

Mark In and Out at the start and finish of the timeline.
Make sure you are monitoring the top video level.
Video mixdown is found under the "Special" drop down menu items.
select your drive and resolution

Thanks again, Andrew

Without that "mark-in/mark-out" pointer I would never have found the Video Mixdown.

In the Mixdown dialogue box my only option was DNxHD-TR 145 MXF.
Does that seem correct for my HDV material?
(Earlier I noticed that in the QT Movie options I had a choice of all of the DNxHD resolutions.)

After the mixdown I tried as best I could to follow your description and eventually ended up with a Blu-Ray disc that played without any hitches.

However DVDit Pro did have to re-encode it in the process.

I was advised by Roxio not to install the DVDitPro HD version that came with MC, as I already was using a later version of it.
But one thing I wonder..... I do not have DVDitPro installed on the same system as MC and Liquid.
(Because of Liquid's selfishness when it comes to sharing disk space with other applications, I have 2 exchangeable drives. One with XP Pro and Liquid (now MC has been added) and the other with all my peripheral applications like DVDitPro, Canopus Procoder etc. etc.
I have a 500Gb data drive that is available to either of the 2 OS drives where I keep files that I need to share.
Question:  Do you have any idea if there are some codecs installed with DVDitPro which should be on the same drive as MC?  In other words, would it be better to have DVDitPro installed on the same system that I am running MC on?

With that I will start a new thread when my next question arises.

Thanks again Andrew for some extremely useful help.
Nice that someone in this region of the globe can be awake about the same time as me.......

Regards,

Douglas

The Mixdown has to be MPEG encoded at some point so letting DVDit do it seems to be a reasonable answer.
With MC you should have got Sorenson which will take almost any Avid file for encoding to Blu Ray. It MAY even take an HDV file (I have not tried it)
Using Quicktime reference files is usually best for encoding when the encoding software is on the same CPU as Avid

If you have your CPU's networked here is a very old Avid advisory on using a QT reference file over a network that may help. 

It works best on NT versions of Avid since File Sharing is not compatible with Media Composer on a Mac but it should work on both systems.

1. Designate a folder on your Avid to be the home of all your Quicktime reference exports. This will be where the .mov and .aiff files will be stored.

2. Make this folder shared. On NT, right click on the folder and choose "Sharing..." and choose "Shared As". On Mac, get info on the folder by Apple-I and turn on sharing for the folder by selecting it from the General Information pulldown.

3. Export your sequence from Media Composer to this folder as a Quicktime Reference with the following options selected: "Use Network Media References" and "Add Shares for Media Drives". NOTE: If you are using Unity...DO NOT select these options.

4. On the other system browse to the folder to where you saved the file using Windows NT Explorer or Network Neighborhood on NT (Chooser on Mac) and open up the file. It should come up fine without an error.

5. Load the .mov file into Media Cleaner Pro or After Effects and start rendering.

Thanks again, Andrew.

I got Sorenson with MC, but I did not install it yet..... I have been using Canopus Procoder with Liquid..... but I see the advantage of making the move to Sorenson.
I will install it later today.
Thanks also for the extra information, however I am running only 1 computer with MC.

Regards,

Douglas

 

IMO ProCoder 3 does a better job than Sorenson with HD files.
ProCoder says it supports the HDV codec but I have not tried using HDV as a source at this point.

I am using Procoder 2 at the moment.
I was thinking about upgrading to 3.
Then about 15 minutes ago I was going to install Sorensson.....
Now your reply makes me stop and think....  

Question: Does Sorenson work as a plug-in with MC.
Or is it a stand-alone programme in the same way as Procoder?

If this is the case I will probably upgrade to Procoder 3, as I am at home with that programme.

Regards,

Douglas

 

drbgaijin:

Question: Does Sorenson work as a plug-in with MC.

Or is it a stand-alone programme in the same way as Procoder?

Stand alone. Though there are send to Sorenson templates in MC.

Somewhere in the knowledge base there is also a how to make your own send to templates so you could do the same with ProCoder.

so you would suggest doing a mixdown of the video to DNX rather than transcoding the sequence? if so, any reasons why or why not?

Thanks-

Why
I like to keep my edit timeline media and renders (I often do not render) in their original capture format.
A mixdown is an easy file to find, delete and remake if I make changes in my original time line.
A mixdown creates a single media clip in the format I choose rather than having Avid transcode hundreds of media and precompute files (hopefully finding all of them)
All the encoding I have done has shown me that the encoders work much faster with a QT reference of a single media clip than a QT reference of a rendered timeline.
COMFORT and peace of mind.... For more than 5 years of creating DVD's from Avids I have never had a failure using a mixdown

Why not
I cannot think of a good reason not to in my situation. Others may have different views

Traub19,

I find Andrew's arguements to be in line with my own thoughts on the subject.

I think that the "Fuse" function in Liquid is similar to the "Mixdown" function in MC.
While I was working in Liquid I always Fused my timelines.
From the fuses I could then decide what format I wanted to re-encode them as.
For Blu-Ray I re-encoded in one way, for Web delivery I re-encoded in another - but always from the fuse.... not from the timeline.
Also I was able to build a library of short videos in the Fused form.
When compiling DVDs or Blu-Rays I had this library to pick and choose from as I wished and then authored my final disc in DVDitProHD.
In other words..... one Fuse (Mixdown in MC) and I had the building blocks for my authoring.
At the same time I had a timeline that could be adjusted if necessary.

Regards,

Douglas

I'm using the mixdown method to get a 128 minute sequence from HDV source output to DVDit, so I can burn DVDs. However, the mixdown files are much larger than the original DNxHD 145 media - the original media is ~24Gb, while the mixdown will consume ~135Gb. Is this normal?

 

To what resolution are you Mixing down? If it is, say, 1:1, then yes, that would be normal.