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No True BD Authoring software?
Last year somebody told me in a message thread that there wasn’t any true BD authoring software that you didn’t have to break the bank for, and pay SONY a fee for. That the only way to author a BD was to go through additional programs like toast? Is this still the case today or is that info bogus? The conversation was in the realm of Apple computers and not PCs.
Vinnie
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24, LOST, Prison Break, FRINGE, Supernatural, DEXTER, Breaking Bad, CHUCK, Flash Forward, HEROES…even SMALLVILLE in the latter seasons.. they’ve all ruined my movie going experience by being better than so many movies out today. -
5 Replies
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That wasnt even true last year 🙂
There’s Do Studio which runs $3K and there’s the Easy BD suit from DVD logic which runs $700 Both have a moderate learning curve and it will take some time to get up to speed with the technology – There are MANY pitfalls which will cost you embarrassment and money
https://www.dvd-logic.com/easybd/
https://www.netblender.com/main/products/dostudio-bd-authoring-edition-dsa/
Personally, unless you plan to do many titles in the future, I would farm this work out to an experience author or facility.
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Yeah it’s really rarely called for. Most of my work is either standard definition DVD- less and less these days or online HD.
Noah
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Panasonic GH2 and GoPro HD Hero.
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Noah, surely BD is the way to go? Mine look so much, much better than DVD’s of the same production. Encoding and burning is easy and fast with Titanium Toast 11 Pro and players cost £99 in the UK. There is, it is true, some resistance from the punters who are rather stuck with DVD but BD are making progress.
Michael Slowe
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Yeah you’d think so but no so much at least in the markets I touch. I’d guess more people are buying (or pirating) HD videos only than any disc media at this point.
Noah
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Panasonic GH2 and GoPro HD Hero.
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MacOS PCs may be disadvantaged versus Windows PC, simply because Apple is anti-Blu-ray (they want your video sold on iTunes, only) and the MacOS is a relatively small market. They’re kind of anti-DVD these days, too, having pretty much eliminated the full featured DVD tools recently, replacing them with a very rudimentary DVD function in FCP X.
But there’s Blu-ray authoring and there’s Blu-ray authoring. There are many different solutions for BDMV (HDMV) authoring. Like DVD tools, most of these layer some kind of abstraction on the Blu-ray, so while you can’t necessarily access all features, they are true Blu-ray authoring tools. A BDMV is very much like a DVD, though certainly with more features.
On the Mac, you can use Adobe’s Encore to author BDMV projects. That’s not sold stand-alone, so you need the whole CS5 suite, but given the way FCP X has gone, many Mac users are crossgrading anyway. On Windows, as well as Adobe, there’s Rovi’s DVDit Pro HD and Sony’s DVD Architect.
DVD Architect supports BDMV basically just as high resolution DVD… there’s not much in the way of additional features, other than some DVD limits removed. But on the other hand, if you author a Blu-ray in DVD Architect, it’s usually take only a few minutes to save off a DVD version of that project. So for small production, that’s probably preferable to spending a week or two on an over-the-top Blu-ray.
On the other hand, to create extremely complex BDs, you have the option of authoring a BDJ (Blu-ray Disc Java) disc. I don’t know of any BDJ tools that won’t break the bank… Sony’s Blu-print costs more than any two of my cars (about $50,000)… Rovi’s Scenarist BD not far behind at $35,000.
There’s no guarantee that any given BD player will play a BDMV disc on BD-R or BD-RE, or one without AACS copy protection. In theory, unlike DVD, the copy protection is mandatory, and as usual, the Blu-ray spec did require support of BD-R or BD-RE in stand-alone players. A few may play another format, BDAV (a single video file on BD, no menus… some NLEs can burn BDAV directly from their timelines) but refuse to play BDMV. In short, SNAFU as usual.
With that said, Blu-ray is by far the best digital video format around, at least this week. Most online “HD” is really piss poor quality by comparison. Yeah, I know that the Apple spin on digital media is that less is ok, but NOW is important (eg, quality can suck as long as I get it now). Not a big fan of that… I work too hard to deliver top quality video.
-Dave
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