Blu Ray on regular DVD

[John Rofrano]

[Mark Moss] “I have a piece of HD production, I have used the “tools/Burn disc” and selected blu ray and used a regular dvd in my regular dvd burner. It seemed to burn the disc, but the disc will not play in my panasonic blu ray player, and shows it as an “Unsupported Disc”

Is there something I’m missing?”

You’re missing that this isn’t “officially” supported by the Blu-ray spec. It was a late addition that never got adopted and so it works on some players and not on others because not all players implement it.

[Mark Moss] “Most people on this forum are using the regular DVDs as Blu Rays for short productions instead of the high cost of blank Blu Ray media. I would like to do that as well.”

Blu-ray burners are $89 and media is $1.30 each. That is hardly “high-cost”. I do not burn Blu-ray to DVD because it doesn’t work correctly on my Samsung Blu-ray player so you are not alone.

[Mark Moss] “There is mixed info about burning regular DVDs as Blu Rays. I have heard that you need a Blu Ray burner, but others have said that you do not need one, and a regular DVD burner will work.”

You do not need a Blu-ray burner. All you need is a DVD burner.

[Mark Moss] “Also, Is there a certain format that I should use? 1440X1080? 1920X1080? “

You can use any acceptable Blu-ray format but AVCHD will give you more time than MPEG2 will. Also keep the bit-rate down around 9Mbps because red-laser DVD media was never meant for bit-rates higher than that. Of course, all this is moot if your player doesn’t recognize the disc.

I would see if there are any firmware updates for your Panasonic Blu-ray player. They may have added support in an update. My Samsung will recognise the disc, start to play it, and then stutter badly so that it’s unwatchable. So, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Mark Moss]

Wow…I guess I am still in the dark ages….LOL. For some reason, I thought that Blu Ray discs and burners were WAY more than that. If they’re that low, I guess I can make the jump.

Thank you John for your help and expertise.

Mark

Mark Moss
Mossman Productions

[Dave Haynie]

I have a piece of HD production, I have used the “tools/Burn disc” and selected blu ray and used a regular dvd in my regular dvd burner. It seemed to burn the disc, but the disc will not play in my panasonic blu ray player, and shows it as an “Unsupported Disc”.
While DVD Architect can produce a Blu-ray file structure on a regular DVD, this is almost never supported by DVD players. No real idea why, it just isn’t.

Even more curious, nearly every Blu-ray player supports an AVCHD DVD. AVCHD is, of course, the camcorder format, originally defined for HD recording on 3″ DVDs and Blu-ray discs (some years back, I had a Hitachi Blu-ray camcorder). AVCHD was derived from Blu-ray, but it’s not identical. For one, I believe (as the name suggests) that only AVC video is supported — BD supports AVC, MPEG-2, and VC-1.

All Blu-ray players that support AVCHD handle 2x DVD speeds. You can legally put AVCHD file structures up to 18Mb/s on a DVD and expect it to play in nearly any DVD player, including the Sony PS3. Blu-ray players that support flash memory cards will usually play higher bitrate AVCHD file structures.

Unfortunately, DVD Architect does not create an AVCHD file structure, only Blu-ray. I recommend the freeware tool “multiAVCHD” if you need to create an AVCHD DVD. Of course, do realize, you’re compromising on quality versus Blu-ray (in theory, anyway… in practice, since Sony’s AVC CODEC only supports 16Mb/s video, you actually can’t deliver better quality on BD using Vegas/DVDA… unless you can figure out how to get a valid BD format using Main Concept’s AVC encoder).

Is there something I’m missing? Most people on this forum are using the regular DVDs as Blu Rays for short productions instead of the high cost of blank Blu Ray media. I would like to do that as well.
AVCHD is definitely useful for short video, though it’s a little questionable as a distribution format to customers. While it is largely supported, there’s no guarantee that any given BD player will play it. And, for that matter, there’s no guarantee that any BD player will play back a BDMV disc on BD-R, either. You would kind of thing these industry people would for once get their act together and create linked standards, not the Chinese Menu approach that seems to generally rule.

There is mixed info about burning regular DVDs as Blu Rays. I have heard that you need a Blu Ray burner, but others have said that you do not need one, and a regular DVD burner will work. Also, Is there a certain format that I should use? 1440X1080? 1920X1080?
BD and AVCHD support the same video formats: 1920×1080/60i|50i|24p, 1440×1080/60i|50i|24p, and 1280×720/60p|50p|24p (and the “24p” can be either real 24p or “NTSCFilm” 23.976p). Keep the resolution you’re shooting in, when possible.

-Dave