Need expertise - Blu-ray/DVDA

[Paul Cascio]

I want to deliver 1920x1080 with menus on DVD+R discs using DVDA and have several questions regarding workflow:


1. Is this possible? What steps would enable them to play on most Blu-ray players?

2. Can/should I use the Tool-Burn Blu-Ray To File and bring it into DVDA, or should I render to AVC instead (and use a seperate AAC render for audio)?

2. Once I've created the first DVD, can any DVD Burner and disc copy software be used to make copies?

3. What other workflow, if any, would you suggest for this?

Thanks to all and happy holidays.

[Paul Cascio]

Anyone? Thanks

[Sami Sanpakkila]

Im interested as well!

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Paul Cascio

I want to deliver 1920x1080 with menus on DVD+R discs using DVDA and have several questions regarding workflow:


1. Is this possible? What steps would enable them to play on most Blu-ray players?

Yes, but first you need a low enough bit rate, about 18 mbps AVC. The read rate of the physical media (DVD5/9+-/R/RW) is the bottleneck for most standalone players. The PS3 is the exception since its drive can read at 2x or greater.

Second you have to patch the index.bdmv and movieobj.bdmv files in the BDMV folder.

2. Can/should I use the Tool-Burn Blu-Ray To File and bring it into DVDA, or should I render to AVC instead (and use a seperate AAC render for audio)?

Neither. Use Vegas to smart render your project in the closest native codec or intermediate codec, preserving quality and time. For example, if you were using the Sony EX1 camcorder, use Vegas Pro 8.0(c) to render to MXF (material exchange format). Vegas will smart render this format with no recompression except a little bit around the edit points. Separately render out an AC3 5.1 surround file, or use your background track to create one.

Next, insert your media files into the DVDA project, build your menus, and replace the default audio track with the AC3 you created above.

Burn your DVDA project to a Blu-ray BDMV .iso image, or alternately, burn it to a DVD/RW rewritable disk. Choose AVC as your video codec, 18 mbps. Let DVDA do the final render. Your goal should be to avoid prior rendering from within Vegas.

Use a utility to extract the folders from the .iso image, or just rip them from the DVD/RW disk.

Open the BDMV folder, and patch the index.bdmv and movieobj.bdmv files. Use the guide HERE for the steps to do this. At the bottom of the page find a link for the freeware tools.

After the files are patched, you copy and replace the files of the same name in the BDMV and BACKUP folders. Again, this is explained in the discussion above.

After the files are patched, you burn a UDF 2.5 disk with Nero or ImgBurn.

2. Once I've created the first DVD, can any DVD Burner and disc copy software be used to make copies?

Yes

3. What other workflow, if any, would you suggest for this?

Thanks to all and happy holidays.

This is the best workflow to create Blu-ray playable disks that play in the majority of players and the PS3, with full menu functionality. The disk will auto-play upon insertion.

Discussion Here

[Dave Blackhurst]

Um, maybe I missed something, but I just opened a DVDA project off the built in template for BR... only hitch I ran into was that if I rendered the files in Vegas with too high a bitrate they stuttered on a standalone player on playback (and now I see the 18mbps is the limit, which is consistent with the 17mbps I ended up using).

DVDA was happy to burn the project onto a regular DVD...

1) render the files with no more than 17-18 mbps in vegas
2) open BR project in DVDA, add media just like always
3) burn to DVD

Did I miss something?

[Tom Roper]

To me, the goal is to progress the project from camera to disk, with just one render. Whether that one render happens in Vegas, or DVDA would not matter to me, but I personally had better luck with getting Vegas to smart render the MXF files from my EX1 back into the same MXF format, so no generational loss, then let DVDA render the project output to Blu-ray.

I'm not sure about your experience, maybe you are working with native AVCHD from your cam. But if I try to use one of the Vegas codecs, either the Sony AVC or Main Concept AVCHD, I cannot combine the features I need (24p, 18 mbps, AC3 5.1) and have DVDA accept the file without rendering it again. So in my case, that's bad because if I did it that way I'd have to render twice. But Vegas will smart render (no recompress) my mxf files if i keep them in that native format. I also thought DVDA did a spectacular job of rendering to 24p AVC and BDMV authoring.

But either way, there is still one more step if you are burning to red laser media. The fact that DVDA will burn to red laser media is great, except the menus won't play for me on the PS3, and I have to navigate to the streams folder to play the video file. I don't know if that's been your experience, but the hack from the guide is intended to make the disk playable with menus and full functionality in all or most all Blu-ray players.

What the hack does is trick the player into seeing the BDMV disk as AVCHD. You might ask why not just burn it to a true AVCHD disk in the first place? The answer again, is that you don't have the full featured functionality with AVCHD of combining 18 mbps AVC, native 24p that's not contained within a 60i pulldown stream, and AC3 5.1 surround.