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FCP Blu-ray authoring initial thoughts
Got a chance to output onto to blu-ray this week.
Thought I’d share them because there’s not much technical info out there yet.I had two HD projects I needed to output for a HD screening with both playing in sequential order. By tomorrow. . .
One was 720p/24 short film that was a quicktime movie encoded with the original flavor Pro Res (HQ) Codec.
The second was a 1080/30P HDV behind-the-scenes documentary encoded as HDV codec.The first problem was what to do with the 30P material because you can’t author a blu-ray in FCP with more than one video track/sequence – does anyone know if it’s possible?
I decided to convert the the 30P material to 24P in compressor and downrezed to 720P. Because the short film was already in that format.
Once that was done I placed both Pro Res movies in sequentially in the sequence- connected my LG Super multi-Blu-ray burner and chose the new menu option “Share”. This was exciting because the LG burner has sat in my office unused until this moment. I also cracked open the cake of BD-R’s that I had purchased with the burner ($250 for 25). Next I opened the drive and put the blank BD-R so I could just walk away.
I wanted the best possible quality, but its not clear what the bit rate will be on the finished disc even if you choose get info. You just get file size.
I did a little research and it turns out the bit rate is determined by the output device pull down and the length of your sequence.
By default the output device is set to your internal super drive. This will produce a AVCHD blu-ray compatible disc using a standard DVD-R. The bit rate is variable between 5-17Mbps
and this will fit between 15-40 Minutes of low bitrate HD on a regular DVD-R.
If you choose your blu-ray burner or the hard drive option the bit rate is variable between 5 and 35Mbps and this will fit between 484 and 101 minutes on a single layer BD-R.It took a 2Ghz Macbook 4 Hours to render out the 44 Minute sequence and about 22 minutes to burn the BD-R.
The next dilema is how to check the blu-ray. Mac’s can’t play blu-rays currently – you need a set-top blu-ray player to check the menu options. However if you have VLC or toast titanium 10 video player you can open the BDMV folder and inside is a stream folder with a couple of files in it. In my case there were two 0000.m2ts & 0001.m2ts. If you had FCP 7 create chapter index menus then there will be three files. You can open these files and view them with VLC (Plays choppy and glitchy) and toast video player(Played smoothly and even told me the final bit rate 30-35 Mbps). You have to right click the files to see find the toast video player. . . The bigger file is your video. In my case it was a 9 Gb H264 encoded 44 minute video clip.
In the end the blu-ray disc work and looked great and didn’t take that long to create.
What are everyone else’s experiences?
Dan Nocera
CTFCPUG ModeratorIf all else fails give it a whack!!
-Anonymous Techie -
4 Replies
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Thanks for your experience. Sounds like it’s simple and works well, as long as you don’t need anything more than the basic play and chapter selection.
-Russ
Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net -
Dan! What actual dvd program did you use? DVD SP, the Adobe product or another? OR does
compressor have a “basic” burn” feature? Never have looked.
We have used compressor with DVD SP for only standard-def stuff, but have received a few
client requests for HD materials burned on DVD, so we are starting to “look at” what is out there.
FCP 6.0.6
MAC OS 10.5.8
2 x 3.0 Dual intel
4 gig ramD’s Video
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I used the new “share” command in Final Cut Studio 3.
Final Cut Studio 3 includes Final Cut 7 and Compressor 3.5. which let you now output blu-ray discs through the “Share” commmand and with Compressor’s new template menu or Job actions tab.
It seems that all share command is really doing is giving you some pre-built compressor templates(Blu-ray, DVD,Youtube, Mobileme etc) that let out output a FCP sequence by rendering IN THE BACKGROUND- So you can keep editing in Final cut while it outputs and in the case of blu-ray – author and burn a simple disc with menu and chapter index!
I think is the best new feature in Final Cut Studio 3.
The “share” command is located in the file menu. The “Export using Compressor” command has been moved to the bottom left of the “share” menu. Anything you can do in the share menu you can also do in compressor 3.5 with the new “Job Actions” tab such as outputting blu-ray disc or AVCHD Discs on DVD-R.
You are pretty limited in how customized the blu-ray disc will look but for most jobs it’s great.
Dan Nocera
CTFCPUG ModeratorIf all else fails give it a whack!!
-Anonymous Techie -
Is it possible to make a FCP/Compressor-created Blu-Ray disk loop automatically?
Joe Murray
Edit at Joe’s
Charlotte, NC
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