Blu ray quality on normal DVD?

[Phil Gadd]

I saw a short film today which stated you can export your footage to a normal DVD in HD ie immitating a blu ray disc!!

Apparently you can use the share button, then select 'blu ray' and your footage will be saved BUT you can only save a maximum of 30mins...

Anyone tried this and does it work?

PS will only play in Blu ray players by the way

[Steve Game]

Not tried it with FCP, but Vegas (all versions) allows a Blu-Ray to be created on a single or double layer DVD, with or without a menu.
The duration is limited by the bitrate of the video, e.g. at 16Mb/s, video can be up to 30 mins SL and nearly 1 hour DL.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Phil Gadd

I saw a short film today which stated you can export your footage to a normal DVD in HD ie immitating a blu ray disc!!

Apparently you can use the share button, then select 'blu ray' and your footage will be saved BUT you can only save a maximum of 30mins...

Anyone tried this and does it work?

PS will only play in Blu ray players by the way

These burned DVDs containing HD material are technically called "AVCHD discs". Here are the rules for the authoring of such discs:

1) The total combined bitrate - video, audio, additional tracks and menus - must not exceed 18 Mbps.

2) The video should be encoded as H.264 Blu-ray (or Blu-ray AVC), not MPEG-2.

3) Only simple menus are allowed (no complex nested menus or any submenus).

4) Audio tracks should be encoded as Dolby Digital AC-3. Using LPCM audio will substantially reduce the available bitrate for video due to the low maximum total bitrate limit for DVD media versus BD-R media.

[David Dixon]

And, if you don't really care to delve into the technical details, FCPX just does it all for you. It gives you quite a few menu/chapter options, etc.

If Blu-ray doesn't show up in your FCPX Share options, just choose Add Destination... and add it by dragging the Blu-ray icon from the window at the right into the list at the left.

[Tom Hardwick]

Any idea as to how I could do this with Edius 6?

[Todd Bradley]

Originally Posted by David Dixon

And, if you don't really care to delve into the technical details, FCPX just does it all for you. It gives you quite a few menu/chapter options, etc.

I was under the impression that FCPX will only export ("Share") a single video to a Blu-ray with only the most basic of menus - essentially "click here to play the one video". Is there more to it I'm missing? Can you actually create menus to lead to more than one video on a Blu-ray disc?

[David Dixon]

The Blu-ray sharing in FCPX gives you several options for the visual look of the contents screen. If you have Chapter Markers set it will also create a Chapter Markers screen in addition to the Main Title screen.

It also has the option to show a menu or immediately just play the video, a loop option, and the ability to set background and title graphics, etc.

But, yes, it is a Project-level feature, so can only include one Project on the disk.

[Ron Evans]

Originally Posted by Tom Hardwick

Any idea as to how I could do this with Edius 6?

Tom, there are some threads on the GV forum like this one Burning HD on a SD Disk - Grass Valley Forums you may want to look at. But why would you want to do it anyway now that Bluray discs are so much lower cost than before and allow full authoring and bit rates ?

Ron Evans

[Denis Danatzko]

Originally Posted by Randall Leong

These burned DVDs containing HD material are technically called "AVCHD discs". Here are the rules for the authoring of such discs:

1) The total combined bitrate - video, audio, additional tracks and menus - must not exceed 18 Mbps.

2) The video should be encoded as H.264 Blu-ray (or Blu-ray AVC), not MPEG-2.

3) Only simple menus are allowed (no complex nested menus or any submenus).

4) Audio tracks should be encoded as Dolby Digital AC-3. Using LPCM audio will substantially reduce the available bitrate for video due to the low maximum total bitrate limit for DVD media versus BD-R media.

I haven't tried this, but it's been my understanding that such discs won't play in any old DVD player...that the player must be capable of playing AVCHD discs, and older model players may not be up to the task.
Can anyone confirm if that is correct, or what "other requirements" might be necessary?

[Ron Evans]

They will only play in Bluray players that are also able to play AVCHD native files. Early Bluray players will not play. They definitely will not play in a normal DVD player. There was some value in doing this when blank Bluray discs were expensive. They are now a reasonable price so I see no value in restricting the quality of file and time of playback for a couple of dollars.

Ron Evans

[Phil Gadd]

I tried this out and played it on a PS3 via a projector in the pub and the video/audio quality were excellent.

[Ron Evans]

A PS3 has a Bluray player so would also play a normal Bluray too. If the original was from a small Handycam with bit rate limited to 17Mbps there should be no difference in quality from the original. I bought a PS3 as this was the lowest cost way of getting a Bluray player at the time ( never played any games on it !!!! ) You would see a difference if the original file was from a NXCam with LPCM audio as this file would have to be re encoded to drop bit rate and change audio to Dolby AC3. You would then notice the difference to a real Bluray disc and the source file then.

Ron Evans

[Barry Goyette]

I've been doing this for the past year or so with Toast. It's simple and intuitive, and the quality looks great. However, as others have said....this isn't a distribution method as a lot of older, and newer cheaper players won't play "blu-ray on DVD"

Barry

[Phil Gadd]

How about pc's and macs, will they play this format at all?

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Phil Gadd

How about pc's and macs, will they play this format at all?

It depends on both the DVD drive that the disc is inserted in and the capabilities of the video player software. A DVD drive compatible with UDF 2.5-formatted DVDs or a Blu-ray drive is required, along with a media player that's capable of playback from AVC-encoded Blu-ray discs. If you don't have one and/or the other in that system, you cannot play HD content from disc at all.