Establishing a solid Blu-ray workflow

[Dennis St. John]

Hello All,

The lack of blu-ray disc authoring options out there right now is staggering, or so it would seem.

So far, I have had the most luck with Toast, but that has also left me wanting.

I produce a lot of video for a local dance studio and the thing I need the most is the ability to be able to deliver blu-ray video with chapter markers at exact locations in the video (so they can skip through dance numbers). Toast will not allow you to do this. I place my chapter markers and adequately describe them on the Timeline with FCP7, export, but Toast ignores them. I have tried two methods of export, one through Compressor and one direct. Both work in terms of the video as a whole, but NO chaptering is exported.

I have also exported clips separately (along the timeline in FCP7 using In and Out points), fed them into Toast as individual clips, yet when you are viewing the video, and click the Blu-ray remote's "Next" button, nothing... nada... (it does not go to the next video clip). However, with the same individual clip treatment, it will produce a disc with a menu that you can access (if you opt to have a menu on the disc) and it actually does show each clip individually and let you select and play the clip you choose, but this is as close as I have ever got.

Any other ideas anyone might be willing to share in my dilemma?

I do have Encore CS4, and have opened it a few times but have been very intimidated by the process. I haven't found a good tutorial on how to use Encore.

Again, I produce all my video with FCP7, and place my chapter markers there. What should I do from there? How should I export and what program is the best to be using to create Blu-rays? I don't need any fancy menus - basic is fine. I would just like viewers to be able to skip through performance numbers, autoplay or basic menu to select a clip to watch.

Thank you for your time!

[Dennis St. John]

Wow, no one is producing Blu-ray? Absolutely staggering! Still stuck in shooting 4:3 out to VHS or what?

[Michael Bray]

Hey Dennis,

I think the vast majority of users producing Blu-ray (myself included) are doing so via Adobe Encore CS4 and 5. As you've found out by now, Apple & Co. have made it difficult for their users to produce Blu-ray as there is only limited support for it. It would be nice to see them support it fully with their next release but that's pretty doubtful...seeing as Mr. Jobs was quoted as saying that "Blu-ray is a bag of hurt".

If you have Encore CS4...I would try to learn it. It looks intimidating, but once you start playing with it, it's really not all that difficult and it produces some amazing results... pop-up menus and all. If you don't have the time or patience to learn on your own, a good resource to learn from is lynda.com.

[Kevin Spahr]

I bought a LG WH10LS30 Blu-Ray Burner and stuck it in my 1.1 MacPro. I have bought discs that are listed as compatible with this drive. To make a long story short, it has been very un-reliable using Compressor and Toast 10. I haven't tried using it in an external drive via USB - I'm just not going to put more money in to this. My current thinking is before I would put money into the Adobe products, I would send my projects out to have done by a third party. I'm going to wait to see what the next FCP brings...

[David Chilson]

Dennis,

I have not used Toast, so am of no help there.
I had to look back but I burned my first Blu-ray in June 2006 in CS3 and blank media was about $25 a wack. At the time, nobody I knew could play it and for me there was zero demand from paying customers.
Encore has done this quite easily since CS3 and would be well worth the effort to learn the program, it will do what you want. As far as learning the program the fastest, Lynda.com is a good pay service and worth every dime. They have exercise files that go along with the tutorials and it's a hands on way to learn. Not to mention a great tool to use when you "forget" how to do something, which I seem to do more often......

[Joe Goldsberry]

Dennis,

I too am a FCP editor but I use Premiere and Encore to author Blu-ray discs.

It's a little time consuming but here's how I do it. I export the FCP timeline with chapter markers as a HD Quicktime file. I then import that file into Premiere. Next, open the Quicktime file using Quicktime pro. This let's you easily see all the chapter markers and their timecode. I guess you could use FCP for this also.

Anyway, in Premiere set all of your chapter markers and export to Encore.

Lynda.com has some good tutorials on Premiere and Encore as well as Adobe's website.

If anyone knows of an easier way to do this please let me know.

Joe

[Joe Goldsberry]

I just learned today that I can make chapter markers right in Encore eliminating Premiere from the workflow.

Joe