Sorry if I have put this in the wrong section.
I am a Vegas 'beginner', making leaps and bounds since I received some help from the forum last week.
I am currently making a shopping list for an upcoming UK Trip (currently living in Siberia), and I would like to try and buy a Blu Ray disc burner for my PC. I hace searched the internet to see what is out there, but just wondered if anyone in the forum was using one and could share their experiences with me. The burner would need to be stand alone.
Thanks in advance for any tips or advice.
Colin.

I found this Blu-ray burning info on the Sony website. Also note that Vegas 8a added the ability to burn Blu-ray video to DVD recordable discs (added 8 Mbps MPEG-2 and AVC rendering templates).


Blu-ray burning in Vegas Pro 8 software

Question
Vegas Pro 8 software can burn Blu-ray discs. What are the details related to that feature?

Answer
Vegas Pro 8.0 burns Blu-ray BDMV format to BD-R and BD-RE recordable media.

For the video, you can use MPEG-2 or AVC encoding.

The MPEG-2 video templates have an average bitrate of 25Mbps.
The AVC video templates have an average bitrate of 15Mbps.
For the audio, we use Dolby Digital 2.0 or 5.1 (AC-3) encoding at 192Kbps or 448 Kbps respectively.

On a 25G single-layer BD recordable disc this gives you approximately 3h42m for AVC or 2h15m for MPEG-2.

You can create your own templates if you need to adjust the bitrates.

Also, you can use standard definition MPEG-2 formats for very large amounts of video on a Blu-ray disc.

Vegas Pro 8.0 does not currently have the ability to burn BDMV to DVD recordable media.

We have specifically tested on the following burners*:

Pioneer 101 A
Plextor PX-B900A
Sony BWU-100A
Lite-On LH-2B1S
Philips SPD7000BD
Matsushita BD-MLT SW-5582 (within a VAIO VGC-RC310G desktop)
Matsushita BD-MLT UJ-220S (within a VAIO VGN-FZ190 laptop)

We have specifically tested on the following players*:

Sony PS3
Sony BDP-S1
Samsung BD-P1000
Samsung BD-P1200
*Other burners and players on the market today may work as well.

Also found this new Sony BWU200S Blu-Ray burner at Sony Style:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665251949

Also found this new Sony BWU200S Blu-Ray burner at Sony Style:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665251949

I was looking at the specs on a review site for that drive. Seems pretty slick, but to me totally useless unless I can get DVDA to do the burning so I have menus.

I checked with Sony regarding the BWU200S and their response was the burner hasn't been tested and is not supported by Vegas.

I was looking at the specs on a review site for that drive. Seems pretty slick, but to me totally useless unless I can get DVDA to do the burning so I have menus.

As far as I know, the only way you can get menus on a blu-ray is with
DVDit HDPro.....

another thing to watch out for.... you may be able to play HD material on your computer, but you may not be able to playback a blu-ray disk on the same computer that it was authored from....

I found that out the hard way.... seems stupid but I can create blu-ray
disks all day, I can play the HD material all day on the same computer but
the disks wont play back... so I have now come to the conclusion that I
just burn to a rewritable blu-ray, test it in a PS3 and if all goes well then I burn the final......

As far as I know, the only way you can get menus on a blu-ray is with
DVDit HDPro.....

another thing to watch out for.... you may be able to play HD material on your computer, but you may not be able to playback a blu-ray disk on the same computer that it was authored from....

I found that out the hard way.... seems stupid but I can create blu-ray
disks all day, I can play the HD material all day on the same computer but
the disks wont play back... so I have now come to the conclusion that I
just burn to a rewritable blu-ray, test it in a PS3 and if all goes well then I burn the final......


I must be missing something silly but... Why wont the disks play back?

Because Sony is asking that all components on your computer are HDCP compliant...

If you want to test your system for complance then download the diagnosis program and run it.... all items must be green for your computer to playback either blu-ray or HDDVD disks........


http://www.cyberlink.com/english/support/bdhd_support/diagnosis.jsp

Because Sony is asking that all components on your computer are HDCP compliant...

If you want to test your system for complance then download the diagnosis program and run it.... all items must be green for your computer to playback either blu-ray or HDDVD disks........


http://www.cyberlink.com/english/support/bdhd_support/diagnosis.jsp

Ahhhh.... I will have to test out my new machine... so you are forced to have the HDCP bit even when you burn the disk your self? I figured it would be like regular DVDs where you can opt to not turn it on. The only thing I am not sure about for my new rig is the flat screen... not sure if it is HDCP compliant...

As far as I know, the only way you can get menus on a blu-ray is with DVDit HDPro...

Adobe CS3 also works, and if you have an old version of Premiere you can buy the upgrade for $299.

Because Sony is asking that all components on your computer are HDCP compliant...

If you want to test your system for complance then download the diagnosis program and run it.... all items must be green for your computer to playback either blu-ray or HDDVD disks........


http://www.cyberlink.com/english/support/bdhd_support/diagnosis.jsp


Well after many many hours trying to get my bluray reader/writer to be able to write bluray disks and then actually be able to play them back on my computer I found this as a solution....

If you use PowerDVD for playback software you will need to load another program called AnyDVD HD to get past the crazy issue of HDCP....

My system, now writes bluray disks and it actually will play them and commercial bluray disks back.......

Thats great.......

Very useful info ...thanks a lot guys!