Blu-ray Authoring Trick

[Tom Roper]

We've come up with a workflow that although not perfect, solves some Blu-ray authoring problems.

The objective (for some of us), is to burn a disk that plays for the largest audience. To recap some of the issues:

- BD-R/RE high capacity burners and media is expensive, overkill for small projects, and not always compatible with all Blu-ray players.

- BDAV is the legacy format, that while mostly compatible, does not have 100% authoring support or player compatibility for DVD5/9 media. There is no support for chapter stops, menu structures or 5.1 multi-channel audio.

- BDMV is the Blu-ray authoring structure, where the main movie is supported on 100% of players, except for burned media where the compatibility is less than 100% due to AACS, firmware restrictions, or media incompatibility. A few players support BDMV on DVD5/9 media, but the largest audience representing the Sony Playstation3 owners cannot play BDMV from DVD5/9 media.

- MPEG2 on DVD5/9 data disk will play on the PS3 and some players, with 5.1 audio, no menus or chapter stops, but other players do not support MPEG2 data disks. User intervention is sometimes necessary to navigate to the video file.

- AVCHD is the camcorder format. It may be the single most compatible format you can author yourself onto writable media. Unlike a data disk that sometimes forces the user to navigate to the video file, it plays as soon as it's inserted, just like a DVD. It supports chapter stops and 5.1 audio, but not menus. It is playable on most players and the PS3. The problem for HDV is that video had to be re-encoded to h264, time consuming and adversely impacting the picture quality.

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The workflow that we came up with is for a hybrid disk with MPEG2 video, that spoofs the PS3 into thinking it's an AVCHD disk.

- No re-encoding of compliant MPEG2 or HDV video is required.
- Can be authored on inexpensive DVD5/9 media.
- Compatible with the largest population of Blu-rays players and the PS3.
- Supports 5.1 multi-channel audio.
- Auto playback when the disk is inserted.
- Chapter stops.
- No menus.

I should point out this process is compliant with HDV 1440x1080i60, and Canon's 24F. It may work with others, but I have not tested them and will be unable to do so.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...&postcount=958

[Dana Salsbury]

Thanks Tom,

I'm quite surprised that nobody has replied, especially considering the implications and all your hard work. It looks like this is a PC solution, so I'm out of luck, but it's nice to know that there is a possibility of using a crutch until Apple gets its act together with Blu-Ray.

Are you saying that you get uncompressed HDV, similar to HD DVDs burned to DVD5/9 that play on Blu-Ray players?

[Tom Roper]

Hi Dana,

Yes, the method above permits uncompressed HDV video that plays on Blu-ray players, on regular DVD media, single or double layer.

[Khoi Pham]

If you don't need chapters, you can burn HDV files as "data" and PS3 will play them just fine.