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03/15/2007
Making your first Blu-Ray disks
One of our customers just sent me a great email with his first blu-ray experiences. With his permission I'd like to share these with you:
"I got ambitious this past week and produced my first Blu-Ray authored projects. Some of the information I have learned might be helpful to you and future clients who will probably opt for blu-ray burners in their new workstations.
First, on BD-R and BD-RE discs there are two formats currently (for prosumers) - one is called BDAV and is the simplest - does not allow for menus but does allow chapters - this can be done with Cyberlink Power Producer that comes with the Sony drive. HOWEVER - it does not allow transport stream (.m2t) or program stream (.m2p) into the program but will accept Canopus HQ-avi and do it's own encoding to blu-ray compliant files. The quality seems to be excellent and I am able to play it on standalone players including my Playstation3's.
Second, the next format is called BDMV and will allow menus and is what is produced in DVDit Pro HD. Currently these files will play in the Panasonic and Pioneer Blu-Ray players and the older Samsung players (before current firmware update) and now they should play in the Sony BDP-S1 with the recent firmware update released March 12th (hopefully Playstation 3 firmware update to allow this is not far behind). In DVDit Pro HD you again cannot use .m2t (I have over 25 files that I will now have to transcode). The software will accept program stream (.m2p) files but will transcode them. If you render your timeline out to elementary stream (.m2v) within certain parameters and get your project settings just right in Pro HD it will pass the file through and not transcode (saving a lot of time and potential quality loss). I have references to the proper Procoder 2 and Procoder Express settings:
Procoder Settings
Procoder Express Settings
It is sort of exciting that we are at the point where we can finally produce Blu-Ray videos with menus like we have been doing for years with the DVD's. I even opted for a Primera Bravo SE - CD/DVD dedicated printer and inkjet printable and waterproof Blu-Ray discs (just came out from Imation). Since the Blu-Ray players really get hot with playing of the discs the old sticky labels (with pictures/graphics) will probably not work in the long run as I can see they would easily buckle with the heat."
Thanks, Barry for the info.
Addendum: After further testing today (can't believe what you read on some of the forums) I find that BDAV format discs will NOT play in the current players from Pioneer, Panasonic and Sony. Since it played on my PS3 and computer, I assumed it would play on the other machines. Currently BDMV discs will play on the above- mentioned Blu-Ray players. I don't know if you need to add this to the Blu-Ray blog as an addendum or just leave it - your call. I had not had a chance to run out to Best Buy to test the actual BDAV disc until today (tested the BDMV disc last week).
Ashley Guy
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