h.264 blu ray setting not working

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h.264 blu ray setting not working

I am about ready to pull my hair out. I purchased final cut pro x, compressor 4, and a new canon hd camcorder. From the research i did it appeared i also needed anusoft's media converter program in order to work with my canon's .mts files. i successfully edited several hours of footage down to about an hour and exported it from final cut prox using the export media setting and dragged the prores file into compressor 4 and converted it to h.264. however i am unable to open the file that is produced by this process. I have tried doing it various ways. i have tried using a small segement of the video. i've tried using another video with the same results. I did try converting a segment to another compressor pre set and it worked fine. i continue to get the same error every time when i try to open the h264 file, "cannot open media file". The other odd thing that happens when i double click on the file, just before i get the error message, is that compressor opens. i had assumed it would've opened in quick time but perhaps i'm wrong in this. i've deleted my compressor program and re installed it. I've deleted final cut pro x and reinstalled that. I've done a clean install. (i was having serious problems with final cut pro x not opening in my administrator account so that was why i took such a drastic step with the clean install). Final cut pro x now works perfectly well. But i am still getting the exact same problem with the h 264 setting. my goal is to burn a blu ray disc with my digistor blu ray burner. I am using Lion. Anusoft MTS conversion was set for prores "lite" and everything seemed fine in final cut pro x.

after all this i am assuming i am an idiot and have missed something really obvious. I've been making home movies for a long time and have upgraded to the pro applications and realize it's a learning curve but i'm usually pretty quick to catch on. I'd really appreciate some advice! I've been working at this in my spare time since December 11 and haven't been able to find much out there so thanks anyone if you have a moment.

Compressor

Posted on May 6, 2012 6:57 PM

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Answer 1

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

May 7, 2012 4:59 AM in response to bren from NS

Yeah, if you Google "how to import AVCHD or mts" – or something similar – you'll get all sorts of "converter" commercials and commercials masquerading as blogs, etc.). I don't know Aunsoft. If you research these discussions, or Creative Cow, or some of the FCP user groups, you'd find that people tend to recommend Clip Wrap or Voltaic for wrapping mts files. And you'd find acvice on working with AVCHD – working with the cmera's intact card structure, backing up and importing. Shane Ross, who often responds to quesions in the Final Cut Studio forum, has an excellent and free tutorial on tapeless workflow.

To simplify things, edit your project with optimised media (Pro Res) and share using the Blu Ray option. You didn't mention what kind of a Blu Ray burner you're using; hopefully it's one that plays well with OSX, because some do better than others. So where does Compressor come into this? 1), if you want to fine tune your settings; 2) if you want to add chapters.

Good luck.

Russ

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Answer 2

bren from NS Author

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May 7, 2012 6:28 AM in response to Russ H

Oh thank you so much for responding. I will certainly follow up on your recommendations and watch the tutorial.

I was aware of the final cut pro x share blu ray option and did export the project successfully from there. The quality didn't seem as good as the pro res file that I had exported, the one that I was trying to use in compressor. Anyone have any comments on that?

I will try optimized media import next time. Sounds like that would allow me to skip the step of using anusoft to convert from mts to prores. Saving steps is good. And maybe it's the conversion that is causing me problems with compressor.

The blu ray burner is digistor and I've had very good results with using it to back up old home movies and pictures, using roxio's toast. I haven't even gotten close to burning a home video with it yet due to this problem.

Thank you very much. I have footage of my little boy that I've been trying to burn for months.

Brennan

Sent from my iPhone

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Answer 3

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

May 7, 2012 6:42 AM in response to bren from NS

Hey Brennan.

The option to use optimized media is available – even after import. If you select a clip in your Events browser and right clip, one of the available actions is Transcode. If the clip is Proxy, that will be dimmed and Optimized will be your only choice, My guess is that when you previusly shared to Blu-Ray, you were encoding from Pro Res Proxy, which is great for complicated projects, but not something you'd ordinarily want to use as a compression source file.

Russ

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Answer 4

bren from NS Author

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May 7, 2012 5:46 PM in response to Russ H

Hi again Russ,

Previously I used Anusoft to convert to prores 422 lt.

I noticed today that Tom Wolsky has advised that final cut pro x can now import avhcd files directly without a conversion process, and that this is relatively new news, as of mid April. So this evening i backed up my card as Shane Ross suggested in the excellent video you recommended. I deleted the footage and re imported it from my camera card as optimized footage. I selected a sample clip in final cut pro x, and then exported the video with the same settings, dumped it into compressor and applied the blu ray and audio settings. It processed and again would not open. again Compressor opened when i clicked on the file and then i received an output error. I must be doing something wrong in my settings or something? Is there something simple i'm missing?

I'll do some more research on clip wrap, if anyone can shed some light on this and whether or not this is still needed, my understanding of what Tom said was that this wasn't necessary but obviously i'm not a pro at this stuff so i may have gotten that wrong. thanks again for your help, if you have any further advice it would be great.

Brennan

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Answer 5

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

May 7, 2012 6:07 PM in response to bren from NS

I'm continuing to wonder about burner compatibility. In your job action dialogue>Output Device, choose Harddrive and see whether that is a successful encode. If it is. I'd focus in on the burner.

Good luck.

Russ

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Answer 6

bren from NS Author

Level 1

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May 7, 2012 7:36 PM in response to Russ H

Hi again and thanks so much

Ok I'll look again for the reference Tom made

but it sounds like I'm misunderstanding things. so I've downloaded clipwrap and will give that a try sometime this week.

Re the burner i might be confusing you, sorry. The problem is that after I compress my final cut prox pro res file, the output file from compressor will not open when I double click on it. I get an error from QuickTime. Following that error message (Error output file is not recognised) compressor opens again and thrn nothing happens. Seems

very odd to me. I've not tried burning the file on the burner because I'm assuming there is something wrong with the file?? I have roxio's toast lined up to do the burning but didn't bother to try it because of the error, and most of the time the burner isn't even hooked up to my computer. Hope that makes sense...

B

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Answer 7

May 7, 2012 9:06 PM in response to bren from NS

Unfortunately Compressor, Quicktime X and Quicktime 7 can't play a Blu-ray .264 video files. This makes it hard to test your raw Blu-ray videos.

I found an app that will plaback the Blu-ray .264 video file on a Mac, VideoSpec. It's a free app!

http://videospec.free.fr/index.html

Drop your Blu-ray .264 video onto the open window and hit the play button in the upper left. VideoSpec has the Mplayer incorporated into the app. I guess you could download the stand-alone Mplayer app. But, Videospec gives you more options, video info for example.

What you could do to save on Blu-ray discs is to burn the Video onto a DVD for a test. You can only burn about 35 minute onto a DVD disc.

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1107035

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Answer 8

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

May 8, 2012 1:58 PM in response to bren from NS

So, I'm still curious. When you write to the HD, do you alsoi get a disc image with a whole bunch of different folders inside?

Russ

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Answer 9

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

May 8, 2012 1:59 PM in response to David M Brewer

David, Interesting app that I was unaware of.

Russ

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Answer 10

bren from NS Author

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May 8, 2012 5:19 PM in response to Russ H

Nope no disk image. I'm pretty familiar with those files and this is not one of them.

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Answer 11

bren from NS Author

Level 1

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May 8, 2012 5:29 PM in response to David M Brewer

Hi Dave.

Get out of town. You mean that the QuickTime h264 blu ray video cannot be played in QuickTime?

I can't believe I've spent months on this and the answer was that simple. Can QuickTime pro play that file?

The quicktime file that is in your video looks exactly like my blu ray videos. The ones that I have repeatedly created in various ways and attempted to open...ok so can QuickTime pro open h264? I'm running QuickTime 10 but I'm assuming it's the same as 7 and can't run a blu ray h 264 either.

Ok so does anyone knowif I can take the QuickTime h264 blu ray from compressor and into toast, review the video there, set chapter markers and so on? I know my blu ray burner works as I've burned data blu ray files. Lots of them. I backed up six years of home video and pics onto blu ray discs using toast. So that shouldn't be a problem. I'll create another h264 file (deleted the last one out of frustration) and give this a try. Can anyone confirm if this would work? Thank you so much for the tip. I'm feeling foolish but mostly relieved. Can anyone else comment on this?

B

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