Blue Ray Discs for Archiving mxf.mpg files etc.

John Arnold Ph.D. · February 12th, 2008, 08:39 PM

I splurged before the Holidays on a PC Quad core, Sony BluRay burner 200S and the Sony BluRay player S500. I had taped with my new Canon A1 (I have been a devout Sony user for the last ten years, so I am not a complete apostate) the World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships in September in Patras, Greece. It is a very beautiful sport and the girls wear very colourful bodysuits adorned with a lot of sequins and crystals that sparkle. I will get to the significance of this in a moment. I edited one 2 hour plus segment of the Group competition, rendered it Mpeg2 Program stream, and used Ulead Movie Factory 5 BD module, to burn. I expected problems, but everything went seemlessly but for one small item. The 25 gig BD disk will only hold 22 gigs of data equal to 2 hours of video. So, I had to reduced the bit rate slightly to accomodate the limitation. I tried to use the Cyberlink software that came with the Sony burner, but it would freeze Windows Explorer for some unknown reason. I got the fix for it from tech support but I noticed that it required that I reduce the screen resolution of my new 1940x1200 monitor to 764 by something. Tech support said that the software did not support any higher resolution!!!!!!!!!!??????????? No kidding. So, I deleted Cyberlink, and used Ulead, but I do not have software for playing a BD disk on my PC now, which is not a big problem, because I just use the Sony BD player with my TV. I not sure why, but Ulead does not allow playback on their latest BD burning software. And other software manufacturers, I suspect. The time taken to burn 22gigs of HD was about as fast burning 4.7gigs of SD because they are SATA drives.
So, my HD video looks great on my old Sony 36inch XBR 1080i that weighs 230lbs. But sparkles from the body suits were hardly visible. Just to test my video with the latest TVs I hustle down to the Sony store here in Vancouver and try it on the 52inch XBR4/5 LCD Full 1080p with Motion Flow. Motion Flow doubles the frame rate to 120 Hz when the action speeds up. Above this TV was a cheaper model without Motion Flow. It knocked my socks off and my wife's--absolutely no judders compared to the cheaper TV, the sparkling of the sequins and crystals were brilliant, and of course the colour gamut was superb. One final note: There is an earlier Blu Ray format called BD AV which does not allow for chapters etc to be built in, and the newer one called BD MV which allows for the chapters that we are used to creating and burning on SD DVDs. Hollywood creates BD ROMs. The latest Ulead HD Power Pack Plus supports BD MV. Some standalone players do not, for example the Sony S300. I would not hesitate to suggest that anyone moving into the Blu Ray domain should pay the extra and get BD MV. And one final minor problem: there are as yet no printable BD blank media!!!!
Now I have to get my clients to upgrade to Blu Ray players and HD TVs.
Ciao,
ja

Barry J. Weckesser · February 13th, 2008, 06:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Arnold Ph.D.

And one final minor problem: there are as yet no printable BD blank media!!!!
Now I have to get my clients to upgrade to Blu Ray players and HD TVs.
Ciao,
ja

You are incorrect about that one - I have made over 70 discs with the TDK printable media - the product ID is BD-R25PWX25CB - google it and you will find where to buy - expensive though - comes in 25 pack spindles and averages around $ 16.50 to 17.50/disc (U.S.)

Paul Joy · February 13th, 2008, 06:27 AM

I canceled the LG drive but further investigation does show that there are drives made by Logitec, MCE & Fastmac which all work from within the Mac Pro. I've made the decision to hold out for a little while longer though, I'm hoping all the rumors about a new Macbook Pro being released soon are going to be true, wouldn't it be lovely if it had a BR burner too!

Paul.

Tom Roper · February 13th, 2008, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Arnold Ph.D.

The latest Ulead HD Power Pack Plus supports BD MV. Some standalone players do not, for example the Sony S300. I would not hesitate to suggest that anyone moving into the Blu Ray domain should pay the extra and get BD MV. And one final minor problem: there are as yet no printable BD blank media!!!!
Now I have to get my clients to upgrade to Blu Ray players and HD TVs.
Ciao,
ja

I tried my Ulead authored BDMV disk in the Sony S500, would not play. Tried it in the Panasonic DMP-BD30, would not play, tried it in the Sony S300, it did play, and of course it plays in the PS3.

My opinion is that authoring to Blu-ray is an expensive, messed up hodge podge of incompatibilities.

Mike Barber · February 13th, 2008, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul Joy

I've made the decision to hold out for a little while longer though, I'm hoping all the rumors about a new Macbook Pro being released soon are going to be true, wouldn't it be lovely if it had a BR burner too!

Considering the new Mac Pros released a few weeks ago did not, i wouldn't count on it.

Steve Shovlar · February 13th, 2008, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

I tried my Ulead authored BDMV disk in the Sony S500, would not play. Tried it in the Panasonic DMP-BD30, would not play, tried it in the Sony S300, it did play, and of course it plays in the PS3.

My opinion is that authoring to Blu-ray is an expensive, messed up hodge podge of incompatibilities.

No its easy. Get Premier Pro and Encpore CS3. Its does it all. Blu-ray all the way to burned disk. Buy a LG burner. Superb.

You don't have to use PP but it makes the job more streamlined as you do all you work and then render out to encore. Once there, treat it as a normal dvd and make menues etc, then it builds and burns the disk. Very, very easy.

Paul, I heard the new Macs are not supporting blu-ray, and there is currently no update in the offing with DVDSP to offer it in the next few months. being Apple, yo can never ve sure, but I definately heard from a rep that Vegas will be completely updated with its DVD Architect to provide the same solution currently offerd by Adobe.

It seems very strange that Apple is not leading the way with its FCS package. It seems they could easily lose a bit of ground on the oppostion if they don't get their game together in the HD ring.

Tom Roper · February 13th, 2008, 06:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Shovlar

No its easy. Get Premier Pro and Encpore CS3. Its does it all. Blu-ray all the way to burned disk. Buy a LG burner. Superb.

You don't have to use PP but it makes the job more streamlined as you do all you work and then render out to encore. Once there, treat it as a normal dvd and make menues etc, then it builds and burns the disk. Very, very easy.

You may be missing the point. Your BD-R/RE disks will not play in every Blu-ray player no matter what programs and hardware you use to author and burn them.

Steve Shovlar · February 13th, 2008, 06:58 PM

The blu-ray cosortium did an upgrade to their firmware around Christmas time and said some of the older blu-ray players would not play all disks. The new players now in shops are more likely to play every blu-ray disk now being made.

Sony said the recent firmware update helps sort the problem you mention. Or so I gather. Like all new technologies, and this happened in dvd, it took a while before there was 99.9% campatability.

Paul Joy · February 14th, 2008, 09:41 PM

I've placed an order for the Pioneer BDR-202 which was the same cost as the LG and is reported to work with Macs. It's also capable of 6x burning, although most of the media is still limited to 2x anyway. I ordered a bunch of rewritable disks BD-RE as they were the same price as the BD-R's and will allow me to to experiment a bit more.

The main limitation of the BDR-202 is that it is not BD-R(DL) compatible, so will only write to single layer disks. I'm not overly concerned about that at the moment though as 25Gb on a disk will be fine for my needs and I'm sure that in 12 months time there will be much faster and cheaper drives around anyway, hey my next Mac Pro will probably even come with one, if apple ever start concentrating on pro gear again instead of ipods!

I'm not overly concerned about being able to author at the moment, I just need to offload EX1 footage from my drives as data.

I've also got the required parts for fitting in the mac coming too (90 degree SATA cable and SATA - MOLEX converter). It should get here on Monday so I'll report back as to whether the surgery succeeds!

Paul.

Rob Collins · February 14th, 2008, 11:08 PM

I've just ordered the FastMac drive (http://store.fastmac.com/product_inf...roducts_id=337) and Encore--need to have a looping HD kiosk video. Will report how it goes.

February 12th, 2008, 08:39 PM	#31
John Arnold Ph.D. New Boot Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Vancouver, B.C. Posts: 17	My experience with BD burning I splurged before the Holidays on a PC Quad core, Sony BluRay burner 200S and the Sony BluRay player S500. I had taped with my new Canon A1 (I have been a devout Sony user for the last ten years, so I am not a complete apostate) the World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships in September in Patras, Greece. It is a very beautiful sport and the girls wear very colourful bodysuits adorned with a lot of sequins and crystals that sparkle. I will get to the significance of this in a moment. I edited one 2 hour plus segment of the Group competition, rendered it Mpeg2 Program stream, and used Ulead Movie Factory 5 BD module, to burn. I expected problems, but everything went seemlessly but for one small item. The 25 gig BD disk will only hold 22 gigs of data equal to 2 hours of video. So, I had to reduced the bit rate slightly to accomodate the limitation. I tried to use the Cyberlink software that came with the Sony burner, but it would freeze Windows Explorer for some unknown reason. I got the fix for it from tech support but I noticed that it required that I reduce the screen resolution of my new 1940x1200 monitor to 764 by something. Tech support said that the software did not support any higher resolution!!!!!!!!!!??????????? No kidding. So, I deleted Cyberlink, and used Ulead, but I do not have software for playing a BD disk on my PC now, which is not a big problem, because I just use the Sony BD player with my TV. I not sure why, but Ulead does not allow playback on their latest BD burning software. And other software manufacturers, I suspect. The time taken to burn 22gigs of HD was about as fast burning 4.7gigs of SD because they are SATA drives. So, my HD video looks great on my old Sony 36inch XBR 1080i that weighs 230lbs. But sparkles from the body suits were hardly visible. Just to test my video with the latest TVs I hustle down to the Sony store here in Vancouver and try it on the 52inch XBR4/5 LCD Full 1080p with Motion Flow. Motion Flow doubles the frame rate to 120 Hz when the action speeds up. Above this TV was a cheaper model without Motion Flow. It knocked my socks off and my wife's--absolutely no judders compared to the cheaper TV, the sparkling of the sequins and crystals were brilliant, and of course the colour gamut was superb. One final note: There is an earlier Blu Ray format called BD AV which does not allow for chapters etc to be built in, and the newer one called BD MV which allows for the chapters that we are used to creating and burning on SD DVDs. Hollywood creates BD ROMs. The latest Ulead HD Power Pack Plus supports BD MV. Some standalone players do not, for example the Sony S300. I would not hesitate to suggest that anyone moving into the Blu Ray domain should pay the extra and get BD MV. And one final minor problem: there are as yet no printable BD blank media!!!! Now I have to get my clients to upgrade to Blu Ray players and HD TVs. Ciao, ja

February 13th, 2008, 06:27 AM	#33
Paul Joy Major Player Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Norfolk, UK Posts: 627	I canceled the LG drive but further investigation does show that there are drives made by Logitec, MCE & Fastmac which all work from within the Mac Pro. I've made the decision to hold out for a little while longer though, I'm hoping all the rumors about a new Macbook Pro being released soon are going to be true, wouldn't it be lovely if it had a BR burner too! Paul. __________________ Blog: www.pauljoy.com Company: www.videotrader.co.uk

February 14th, 2008, 09:41 PM	#39
Paul Joy Major Player Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Norfolk, UK Posts: 627	I've placed an order for the Pioneer BDR-202 which was the same cost as the LG and is reported to work with Macs. It's also capable of 6x burning, although most of the media is still limited to 2x anyway. I ordered a bunch of rewritable disks BD-RE as they were the same price as the BD-R's and will allow me to to experiment a bit more. The main limitation of the BDR-202 is that it is not BD-R(DL) compatible, so will only write to single layer disks. I'm not overly concerned about that at the moment though as 25Gb on a disk will be fine for my needs and I'm sure that in 12 months time there will be much faster and cheaper drives around anyway, hey my next Mac Pro will probably even come with one, if apple ever start concentrating on pro gear again instead of ipods! I'm not overly concerned about being able to author at the moment, I just need to offload EX1 footage from my drives as data. I've also got the required parts for fitting in the mac coming too (90 degree SATA cable and SATA - MOLEX converter). It should get here on Monday so I'll report back as to whether the surgery succeeds! Paul. __________________ Blog: www.pauljoy.com Company: www.videotrader.co.uk Last edited by Paul Joy; February 15th, 2008 at 03:57 AM.

February 13th, 2008, 06:58 PM	#38
Steve Shovlar Major Player Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Dorset UK Posts: 697	The blu-ray cosortium did an upgrade to their firmware around Christmas time and said some of the older blu-ray players would not play all disks. The new players now in shops are more likely to play every blu-ray disk now being made. Sony said the recent firmware update helps sort the problem you mention. Or so I gather. Like all new technologies, and this happened in dvd, it took a while before there was 99.9% campatability.

February 14th, 2008, 11:08 PM	#40
Rob Collins Major Player Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Richmond, VA Posts: 229	I've just ordered the FastMac drive (http://store.fastmac.com/product_inf...roducts_id=337) and Encore--need to have a looping HD kiosk video. Will report how it goes.