Chanter

MArk Clark, I agree with Chris75. It seems that ExpressBurn looks at the pixel ratio, and takes this as the aspect ratio for the video. This is somewhat unfortunate, in that DVDs for Region 2 (USA, Japan, etc) often use a pixel ratio of 720x480. 720/480=1.5, which is neither 4:3 nor 16:9. Indeed, ExpressBurn makes DVDs using a pixel ratio of 720x480! My solution is to used VideoPad to change the pixel ratio. Bring the file into VideoPad. Set the video display to either 4:3 or 16:9 ratio (sounds like your video is closer to 16:9, so select that one). Select "Video Effects", then "Scale" from the menu of options presented. At that point, adjust the "Horizontal (ratio)" or "Vertical (ratio)" (they are locked together by default - see "Keep Aspect Ratio" at the bottom of the "Scale" function box) so that the edges of the video touch the edges of the video display box. In your case, this would be only the top and bottom edges of the video, since the video is less than 1.78 ratio. Then save the video with the proper pixel ratio. This can get involved if you are trying to retain the best quality. For example, I am presently working on 4:3 ratio video that has a pixel ratio of 720x480. I will save it with a pixel ratio of 720x540 (4:3 ratio). If this were a wide screen video, I would have saved it at 854x480 (as close as I can get to 16:9, using even integers). I try to match one of the two numbers in the pixel ratio (either 720 or 480), and increase the pixel count for the other number that I cannot match, in order to get the proper pixel ratio (and thus proper video aspect ratio). I don't like having to re-scale a video just to have ExpressBurn re-scale it back to what I started with, but that is how things work, at least for now.

c_major wrote: and previously: So it looks like the disc I burned is what VideoPad intended to burn, given the current design. The original program material was 720p at 59.97 fps. The resulting disc is the same scan format. I find the results disappointing, especially given that there is still a significant amount of emply space on the disc after burning (I estimate 40%) that could have been used to give higher quality video. And so far as I can tell, there are no controls for me to use to achieve a better result. I will wait to see the result of the bug fix, where there should be no conversion triggered in the middle of the reading process (as mentioned above). I hope the video on the disc will be of higher quality.

I cannot find any place to control the format of export to Blu-ray disc. I looked under Tools, Options, Export (tab). All that I find there are check boxes to erase previously recorded discs, verify, automatic disc eject, the experimental lossless disc burning, and automatically fade audio before a transistion. I also checked Tools, Options, Disc (tab). This controls things dealing with the hard disc like file paths and cache control. I looked under Export, Blu-ray, Blu-ray Movie Disc. This brought up a dialog box where I can enter a disc title and select the path to the disc burner, but nothing else. Hitting the "Create" button to proceed brings up the Create Menu dialog box. Hitting the "Save" button from this dialog box allows me to "Burn It", at which point VideoPad begins encoding with whatever settings it has (which I cannot change, it seems). I tried using the Export Wizard, but all this did is back me up a step or two in the process beginning with "Export, Blu-ray ..." that I oulined above. I see that I can choose video format if I choose to Export to YouTube (as an example), but I can find no similar selection menu for Export to Blu-ray Movie Disc. BTW, I am running version 4.14 of VideoPad.

c_major: The video format on the disc I sent is true to the original TV broadcast. Your note reminded me that here in the USA, both 720p (60 fps) and 1080i (30 fps) are used as broadcast standards. The TV program I recorded was broadcast by the ABC (American Broadcasting Corporation) Television Network, which uses 720p. The TV tuner recorded exactly what was broadcast, no conversion involved. I will retry exporting at 60 fps instead of 30 fps to see how the video looks.

A Blu-ray disc with the video file is on its way. I printed out this discussion and put it in the envelope along with the disc in order to provide the context when it arrives.

c_major: I am using a Hauppauge 1191 WinTV-HVR-955Q USB TV tuner. For what it is worth, I have viewed the original video files that I referenced above using both the Hauppauge software and Windows Media Player. Both give me the same result with good video and smooth motion. I am certainly interested in the lossless option you describe. I did see the "button" to select it, but as you point out it does not work yet for MPEG-2. I hope the option appears soon. I would be happy (at least initially) if the option only works for cut-down files (i.e., editing out commercials) even if other more advanced features do not work. BTW, I would be happy to send a Blu-ray data disc with the file in question to anywhere in the world. It would take me way too long to upload 19 GB.

c_major: I don't know how to make a determination about keyframes. As I understand it, broadcast TV uses I-frames (keyframes?) quite a bit so that TV receivers can quickly lock (or re-lock) onto signals. The broadcast TV recorder that I am using claims to record the exact MPEG-2 stream as it comes over the air. The signal is strong without problems. However, I did an experiment and discovered something troubling about VideoPad for my application. I loaded the file for the 3-hour TV broadcast (2.5 hours). Next, I immediately put it in the Sequence Bin (no editing whatever). After that, I burned a Blu-ray disc (3+ hours of coding, plus more for time for burning and verifying). Here is what I found: The recorded program on the Blu-ray disc is visibly degraded from the original video file (which I can play on my laptop). The major degradation is that motion is no longer smooth, as if there are skipped frames, or a frame rate conversion. It also appears that the video has lost some detail. For what it is worth, the recorded program occupies about 75% of the space on the disc. My speculation: VideoPad cannot handle a large file directly, so it does lossy compression to make the file smaller (thus the long load time, with the laptop's processor being heavily load and generating a lot of heat all during loading). I could live with this, annoying though it is. But then it appears that editing is done on this compressed file, and this edited, compressed file is then the output put on Blu-ray disc. I would have hoped that the compressed file would be used only as a proxy to define the edits, which then would be applied to the original file. I also did another experiment where I loaded three one-hour files, also from broadcast TV. It took less than 5 minutes to load the 3 hours of video. Once again I did no edits. I simply put them into the sequence bin, one following the other to make a three-hour sequence. I then immediately burned a Blu-ray disc. As with the single 3-hour video, encoding proceeded at appoximately real-time speed. When this disc was ready, I compared it to the original video files. There were subtile differences, mostly loss of smoothness of motion. I am bothered by the large amount time it takes for encoding for Blu-ray disc. I should think it would proceed fairly quickly, since the source file is MPEG-2, and the resulting file for the disc is also MPEG-2. No doubt there is some "repackaging" that needs to be done, but the data should not need to be modified. Given what I see, it seems that VideoPad always re-encodes, even if the input and output are the same format (MPEG-2 in this case). It looks like the re-encoding process is lossy. This is greatest disappoint for me. I was hoping for a lossless process. I guess I need to restart my search for video editing software.

Thanks for the help. I will check with my broadcast TV recorder software. If nothing else, I could program a three-hour recording session as three contiguous one-hour recordings. I need to run an experiment here to see if there is a resulting gap or not. Perhaps my Question 1 could use a bit more discussion. I asked the question about the RAM due the profound difference in loading time between the one-hour (6.3 GB) file and the three-hour program (19 GB) file. The 6.3 GB file loaded in a matter of seconds. I did finally take the time to fully load the 19 GB file. It took about 2.5 hours! Since 19 GB is more than my 16 GB of RAM, I thought that perhaps this huge difference could be explained by the fact that the larger of the two files requires more storage space than I have RAM space.

I am using a USB TV tuner to record broadcast video. It records the broadcast MPEG-2 stream and puts it in a .ts file. I downloaded VideoPad a few weeks ago, and was happy to find that VP can handle this type of file container with no problems, so I bought the software. Yesterday I recorded an HD program (1080i) that runs for 3 hours. The recording file is almost 19 GB long. When I try to load the file, VideoPad begins the loading process. The progress bar shows good progress almost to the half-way point (about 8 seconds). At this point, the progress stops, goes back to the start, and proceeds VERY SLOWLY. I am not sure exactly how long it will take to load, but it appears it will require several hours. I notice that my laptop's processor fan begins running at full speed, putting out a good deal of heat. My laptop is a new HP Envy, Intel i7 processor running at 2.4 GHz, 16 GB of RAM. I have over 1.5 TB of free space on the hard drive. I am using Windows 8.1 (64 bits). Question 1: Do I need more RAM to make things work well? Question 2: Would splitting the input file into smaller pieces help, even if the final work product output is 2+ hours long? Question 3: If splitting the input file would help, are there any suggestions for what I might use to split the file? BTW, I am a newbie. For my first "real" project just before the problem above, I successfully loaded and then edited the commercials out of a 1 hour HD program (6.3 GB) with no problems, other than several newbie blunders.

Thanks a lot. I will give this a try. After my post, and a little more thought, I figured it would be something like this, but I wasn't sure about the exact mechanics. I assume this works the same way if I burn a Blu-ray (I use Express Burn).

I want use WavePad to put multiple videos onto disc (DVD or Blu-ray), and then be able to access the start of any video from the (top) menu. I don't mind if the end of a video runs into the beginning of the next one, though I would prefer to return to the menu. I have used, and still use, DVD recorders, all of which work this way from the menu. I have not been using WavePad very long, and so far nothing I have tried has worked. Help!