AVCHD / MPEG2 (SD_VIDEO) support in Panasonic SDHC BD players & Viera TV (multiAVCHD) [Archive] - Page 7

encyclopedia

20th May 2009, 09:56

I used Davsim's sample video No. 1, with 29.97, with forced 1080i 25p, and no luck. I tried with 23.x video and also failed. Everytime the interlaced vertical noise bars will show up at the bottom of the screen. So far the only solution is to have them converted to 25p . Although convertion usually takes a long time, but at least it works, thanks to MultiAVCHD!!

deank

20th May 2009, 10:00

You're saying that the video is in fact playing, right?

Those artifacts are related to the original encoding, which Panasonic doesn't like. I think it's the best multiAVCHD can do, without re-encoding.

Dean

encyclopedia

20th May 2009, 10:35

Yeah, when I converted the 29.97 video to 25p video (I used AVCware converter and re-encoded with 'PS3 profile'), after packing with MultiAVCHD, it PLAY very well on my panasonic tv.

Ghitulescu

20th May 2009, 10:40

Yeah, when I converted the 29.97 video to 25p video (I used AVCware converter and re-encoded with 'PS3 profile'), after packing with MultiAVCHD, it PLAY very well on my panasonic tv.

I think there might be a solution to find out if the file was itself defective or the output.

I'm thinking of a change of fps in the header (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=113595), so the video will be untouched (it will play however slower) - if there are any artifacts they are clearly from the camcorder.

deank

20th May 2009, 10:50

Yeah, when I converted the 29.97 video to 25p video (I used AVCware converter and re-encoded with 'PS3 profile'), after packing with MultiAVCHD, it PLAY very well on my panasonic tv.

What I asked was if the sample play without reencoding (with artifacts).

@Ghitulescu: It is not the video that is broken or something, it's just that Panasonic Viera AVC decoder is picky and won't like some things in h264 streams.

encyclopedia

20th May 2009, 10:58

I think there might be a solution to find out if the file was itself defective or the output.

I'm thinking of a change of fps in the header (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=113595), so the video will be untouched (it will play however slower) - if there are any artifacts they are clearly from the camcorder.

you mean panasonic tv can actually play 29.97 video? or does it only support 25p? I remember my TV user manual says something like '...supports video clips recorded with 50hz vertical frequency and data modified using computers might not be displayed properly on TV.....'

encyclopedia

20th May 2009, 11:02

What I asked was if the sample play without reencoding (with artifacts).

Yes, it does play very well except for the artifacts. in fact, it seems the part of the video underneath the artifacts is also played ok. those noise/artifacts is somewhat like a transparent cloth overlaid on the lower part of the video and the video/audio plays just fine.

Ghitulescu

20th May 2009, 11:59

you mean panasonic tv can actually play 29.97 video? or does it only support 25p? I remember my TV user manual says something like '...supports video clips recorded with 50hz vertical frequency and data modified using computers might not be displayed properly on TV.....'

I do not own a Panasonic. I suggested you to force 25fps upon your 29.97fps file. This way you do not reencode the video and Panasonic will display the image. So you can notice if there's something wrong with the video before blaming the software solution.

deank

20th May 2009, 12:02

That's okay... we've discussed the subject a lot and Panasonic users know what to do.

espero

20th May 2009, 21:06

If the TV, bought from whatever region, is supposed to be able to display any Panasonic camcorder video (PAL or NTSC; 25 or 29.97ftp) fine, why can't it display AVCHD 29.97ftp video on SDHC?

If we had sample from AVCHD NTSC camcorder (all files and folder structure) we could test some things...

deank

20th May 2009, 21:13

There are a lot of samples in 29.970 format over the web... I used one earlier.

encyclopedia

21st May 2009, 13:34

There are a lot of samples in 29.970 format over the web... I used one earlier.

I couldn't find any NTSC camcorder video samples that works on my TV. Did anyone test any that really worked on their panasonic TV?

SeeMoreDigital

21st May 2009, 15:32

I couldn't find any NTSC camcorder video samples that works on my TV. Did anyone test any that really worked on their panasonic TV?I can confirm the "Force Framerate" option does indeed work with 1920x1080 NTSC (23.976 and 29.970fps) sources.

encyclopedia

22nd May 2009, 02:05

I can confirm the "Force Framerate" option does indeed work with 1920x1080 NTSC (23.976 and 29.970fps) sources.

did you use force "25ftp" "1080p"? and did the video play well without any artifacts? and did your TV user manual mentions anything like 'only supports video recorded with 50hz vertical frequency'? many thanks!

SeeMoreDigital

22nd May 2009, 09:15

did you use force "25ftp" "1080p"?Yes.. I "forced" the framerate to 25.000fps

and did the video play well without any artifacts?No "artifacts".... However, some people have reported some "line" distortion at the very bottom of the image when playing 1920x1080 sources.

and did your TV user manual mentions anything like 'only supports video recorded with 50hz vertical frequency'?My Panasonic Viera PZ81B's user manual does not mention anything specific.

deank

29th May 2009, 18:58

I'm reading some weird posts all over the net that AVCHD playback is in Viera and Panasonic BD players is broken or something. I can't see how this can happen, so please let me know if anything is wrong with version 3.0.

I'd like to warn new users and those visiting from other forums, that you can't expect Viera TV to play 100% of your files. It is JUST a TV, not a BLU-RAY player. It has many restrictions and you can't expect to be the lucky one, who had won the jackpot by buying a TV to watch all your (may be downloaded?!) videos. If you want all features - buy a blu-ray player or playstation (better).

Dean Kasabow

Eyedoctor2

30th May 2009, 16:18

First, thanks for a great program. It works wonderfully with my PS3.

I just bought a Panasonic BD60 and followed my usual routine for PS3 except I chose the Panasonic output option.

The SD card is showing up as "Picture" on the BD60 menu.

I apologize if I am doing something wrong. I am attaching my mediainfo file in case it will help. The Streams folder has two files in it.

The original file was a blue ray movie file that I shrunk to 7.25 gb using BD Rebuilder. It works fine on the PS3 even though Panasonic SD output was selected.

Thanks!

deank

30th May 2009, 16:23

Try with some other (small) files to check if it will work.

I can't be of much help, because I have no way to test panasonic output.

May be other users will check if something is wrong with panasonic output in 3.0.

Eyedoctor2

30th May 2009, 21:06

MultiAVHCD didn't create a PRIVATE folder. I don't know if it was my fault the way I set it up or not.

When I checked out my camcorder sd that works fine I noticed it had a PRIVATE folder but otherwise the contents were the same.

Hope that helps.

deank

30th May 2009, 21:38

Yes, your fault is that you do not care of the messages in the LOG tab.

[23:51:56] D:\multiAVCHD\AVCHD folder created!
[23:51:56] Copy D:\multiAVCHD\AVCHD to X:\PRIVATE\ of SD/MMC card.
[23:51:56] You may now remove temp folder (D:\_TEMP\).

Eyedoctor2

30th May 2009, 22:05

I thought

Copy D:\multiAVCHD\AVCHD to X:\PRIVATE\ of SD/MMC card

meant that the PROGRAM had copied it to the SD card. I thought it was logging something it had done rather than instructing me to do so.

My bad.

deank

30th May 2009, 22:12

I tried to use as much as I can possible can "user-friendly" messages in multiAVCHD.

If I was to say that it was created I would have used 'PRIVATE\AVCHD is created", not "Copy ... to"...

Sorry if your English skills get in the way. I could've written log messages in Bulgarian.

Eyedoctor2

30th May 2009, 23:56

What confused me was that I was writing directly to the SD card with the program rather than to my hard drive and then transferring to the sd card.

Maybe you can add an option to write directly to sd card and automatically create the PRIVATE folder and you will get less of these posts?

deank

31st May 2009, 00:20

Yes, I may add such an option. But it is not really a good idea to use the SD card as medium for direct output, because it is slower and may suffer from multiple read/write cycles needed to create a compilation with multiAVCHD.

I think it's better to just use your HDD and then put multiAVCHD's AVCHD output into an empty \PRIVATE\ folder of your SDHC card.

Dean

Eyedoctor2

31st May 2009, 03:27

You are right that hard drive is faster than sd card

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4258

but you need to add time for multiavhcd to repackage video from hard drive to itself and then the time to transfer from hard drive to sd card.

When I have done it the direct transfer from multiavhacd to sd card is always faster.

hard drive seagate 7200.12
sdhc card kingston 8gb class 6

serendiptiyfish

5th June 2009, 02:51

Hi there,

I have been following this and other threads for the last 7 days trying to get my American TC-p50G10 to play from its sdhc slot.

I went to town and used a camcorder to film a little film on the sdhc this little clip worked perfectly and can be found below:

http://download.yousendit.com/U0d4ZFhzNnk4Q1JMWEE9PQ

Next I dropped the mts file from the clip in to multiAVCHD and processed it for viera tvs setting the default refresh to 29 (also tried 24) and resolution to 1080i.

It created a nice AVCHD structure that I then placed under a PRIVATE directory on a new sdhc card. The tv did not recognize that there was a movie on the card. This has been the default behavior of the tv on all test movies apart from the one from the camcorder.

I compared tex data on the two mts files and they were identical except that the language went from <empty string> to <und> and file went from 14.7 megs to 14.6.

If anyone with an American viera G10 tv has gotten it to work could you process the file and link a down load of the resultant file and subdirectories and perhaps screen shots of settings?

I feel so close to getting this to work and yet so far.

Dean. . .thank you for all your work on this program, you are doing an unbelievably good job.

Cheers

Steven

SeeMoreDigital

5th June 2009, 10:05

Hi Steven,

Just to let you know. Dean has recently started his own forum, so he'll be spending less time here. His forum can be found here: -

http://multiforum.deanbg.com/index.php

EDIT: After running your sample thru' multiAVCHD I was able to play it on my "UK" Panasonic Viera TH-46PZ81B - which, "by default" only supports PAL 25.00fps sources.

My Panasonic DMP-BD35 Blu-ray player was able to play your sample without having to run it thru' multiAVCHD. And was even able to display the "time code" information. Which is stored as a PGS stream.

Cheers

len0x

5th June 2009, 22:03

Who's got Viera plasma around here - what kind of AVCHD are you able to play on it?

SeeMoreDigital

5th June 2009, 23:21

Who's got Viera plasma around here - what kind of AVCHD are you able to play on it?Essentially, anything that an AVCHD camcorder (and AVCHD Lite Lumix cameras) can puke out. Such as: 1440x1080 (with 4:3 PAR), 1920x1080 AVC video up-to 24Mbps high@L4.1 with 5.1 (6Ch) AC3 audio up-to 640Kbps.

The AVCHD and AVCHD Lite specifications offers more variations. However, I'm yet to receive any official samples to test with my Viera TV.

By contrast, Panasonic Blu-ray players are far more flexible when it comes to playback from an SD card ;)

serendiptiyfish

6th June 2009, 03:53

Hi there,

At present my viera G10 USA model has only managed to play movies directly from a cam corder.

I have faith that multiAVCD will get there, I suggest go to the new forums and volunteer your help.

Cheers

Steven

len0x

6th June 2009, 10:40

I'm eyeing up the new V10 model with support of DivX as well as DLNA, so wonder if that version would allow more flexibility as all I really want is to play is SD Xvid and HD x264 1080p material on it and wonder what container that woud need to be in (especially for DLNA).

SeeMoreDigital

6th June 2009, 11:08

Sadly, the TV's specification is a bit lacking: -

http://i42.tinypic.com/35bxhtd.png

len0x

6th June 2009, 11:24

SeeMoreDigital

6th June 2009, 11:41

Which all makes me wonder if I really want to go the route of investigating and making it work intead of just feeding everything via HDMI from the PC... (althought streaming from the PC would be nice, latest Samsung LCDs for example actually able to play MKV files out of the box...)Yep... Some of Samsung's Series 7 range of TV's are very well featured indeed: -

http://i42.tinypic.com/mj8ode.png

Looks like our TV's will soon become the ultimate convergence playback device, able to play, stream and display anything. Personally I'm going to wait for products supporting HDMI v4.x to arrive...

len0x

6th June 2009, 16:29

Yep, that was the one I considered before Panasonic, but decided not to go for... But codec support is just too good...

deank

6th June 2009, 16:51

Does "Supported Resolution" mean "only in this resolution"? Because if it is, it's not fancy at all. It seems this manual/translation is made by 5th grade German student.

len0x

6th June 2009, 16:59

I bet its maximum supported resolution (I actually read some reviews saying its hard to find something that Samsung is not able to play).

deank

7th June 2009, 16:11

multiAVCHD 3.0 build 636

* Added [Viera (PAL)] and [Viera (NTSC)] output modes. multiAVCHD output is now compatible with NTSC Pansonic Viera TV sets.

If anyone can test (or had problems before), please report the results in AVCHD thread of multiAVCHD forum:

multiForum (http://multiforum.deanbg.com/viewforum.php?f=10)

psme

10th June 2009, 04:23

Sorry for a off topic question.

With this software we can put almost anything to play on Panasonic device. But SDHC card is small in size and much expensive than a regular USB HDD. Is there exist a "adapter" which can convert a USB HDD to SDHC interface? Then we can use a big USB HDD with multiAVCHD to store all the content, play through SDHC interface on a Panasonic blu-ray player and gets 1080p24, TrueHD, DTS-MA bitstream output?

SeeMoreDigital

10th June 2009, 09:08

... Is there exist a "adapter" which can convert a USB HDD to SDHC interface?No there isn't...

Thankfully SD cards are getting cheaper. Who knows, they might even be used to replace retail audio CD's one day :eek:

setarip_old

11th June 2009, 06:34

@deank
(While this may evoke negative responses from other members, I feel it's important for me to state this)

Hi!

Although I chose not to post anything about it, I was fully in support of your thinking and decision (To avoid a nagging troublemaker) to stop posting at the Doom9 Forums and set up your own independent self-controlled forum. I also thought it was brave to state your willingness to give up direct communication with the entirety of the Doom9 Forums membership.

Therefore, it was somewhat surprising to see your June 7th post to this thread, not only announcing an updated version of one of your very useful programs, but also seeking feedback from Doom9 Forum members regarding problems and testing - and requesting that this feedback be made at your forum.

It would, therefore, appear that you are attempting to "have the best of both worlds", "having your cake and eating it too", etc., by using the Doom9 Forums to reach out to its members, but asking them to not respond to you at the Doom9 Forums.

For what it's worth, it's this (old) man's personal opinion that such mixed behavior is inappropriate...

deank

11th June 2009, 07:42

I was wondering when I'll read a post like yours... and I agree with you to a point. But IMO having "the best of both worlds" is only a benefit for the users, and it is not me who eats or will eat the 'cake'... All I'm getting for all my tools are tons of questions, problems and no free time for the last 6 months, so using my own forum makes things a bit easier for me.

I was and I'm trying to be helpful in many threads here at doom9 and other forums and I think I contributed a lot and no one is stopping users from posting or commenting anything in multiAVCHD, popBD or uncropMKV's threads. I think it is time for users to start helping each other a bit, and not relying on me to answer all their posts and questions.

Dean

setarip_old

11th June 2009, 10:24

@deank

As my final post to this thread, I'll first thank you for your polite response. However, it actually doesn't address the points I highlighted in red (that represent the essence of my post).

In any event, congratulations on creating several effective and useful tools - even though you've not created one to convert BluRays and MKVs to HD-DVD format for those of us who would like to get more use out of our wonderful Toshiba HD-DVD players ;>}

deank

11th June 2009, 11:02

I've read your post few months ago in the 'free hd-dvd tool' thread. I don't own any HD-DVDs and have no idea about structures and specifications. If I only had, I would've added this to multiAVCHD (or programmed a separate tool) long time ago.

Few times I browsed the 'code' programmed by the author of the tool... but it is not that easy.

***

If a moderator decides to strike/warn me or/and delete my threads/posts/links - I wouldn't mind. I'm a guest here anyway.

deank

24th June 2009, 21:43

OK it reads:

Video: MPEG2 Video 544x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9000Kbps [Video]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps [Audio]

audio - stops for a while and starts again
video - super

Video: MPEG2 Video 720x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9382Kbps [Video]
Audio: Dolby AC3 48000Hz 6ch 448Kbps [Audio]
no audio - DD is not supported
video - super

Video: MPEG2 Video 720x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 8000Kbps [Video]
Audio: PCM 48000Hz stereo 1536Kbps [Audio]
no audio - PCM is not supported
video - super

Video: MPEG2 Video 720x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 224Kbps [Audio]
audio - super
video - super

I tried about 10 different files INCLUDING files with lower resolutions (SVCD) like 544x576 and it worked well.
MPEG1 - is not supported

End here goes the best part: NTSC clips are supported!

TV switches automatically to NTSC (when you enter NTSC clip screen goes black for one second and we are in NTSC). So it have to work also for AVCHD...

Video: MPEG2 Video 720x480 (4:3) 29.97fps 8210Kbps [Video]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps [Audio]

Dean, is it possible to make such function in multiAVCHD to author many chapters in SD_VIDEO folder? menu is of course not important...

After some tests it is a fact now that multiAVCHD produces correct SD_VIDEO for Panasonic VIERA (PAL) TV sets from MPEG files with MPEG video + MPEG or AC3 audio.

Dean

setarip_old

25th June 2009, 02:06

@deank I don't own any HD-DVDs and have no idea about structures and specifications. If I only had, I would've added this to multiAVCHD (or programmed a separate tool) long time ago.Did you know that:

1) MANY HD-DVD titles can now be purchased (new, via Amazon "associates") for as little as $2.00US each?

http://hddvdboxsets.com/hddvd1-387548011-pr-1-HD_DVD.html

2) "PowerDVD v.7.3", free weith virtually every BD-ROM, (WITHOUT updates) plays HD-DVDs (and "AnyDVD" will eliminate copy protection from HD-DVDs)