Blue Ray on MacPro

[Eric Pautsch]

There are no Mac authoring programs which support HD DVD or Blu Ray drives at this point

[Daniel Low]

Actually there are, one of the best value is Toast from Roxio:
https://www.roxio.com/eng/products/toast/titanium/overview.html

As for a burner, it’s still early days and prices are still quite high but you could look at:
https://www.mcetech.com/blu-ray/

Logitec also do one.

It’s a London thing.

[Wts(jmanz)]

Danny2007,

I think the devil is in the details. “Supporting” Blu-ray disc burning, and actually offering true HD Blu-Ray authoring with menus and the like can be two different things. It’s not clear to me that one can actually do more than simply dump HD video on a Blu-Ray disc. It’s even more unclear as to how that would actually play back except on the same computer, and whether or not the disc would actually play on a Blu-Ray set top player–and if it does, is it anything more than simple playback of the video stream, or are there any menu interfaces. True dvd authoring for Blu-Ray discs is very limited on both the PC and Mac sides. The Blu-Ray burners are expensive and limited in terms of choices’ for either side, but especially for the Mac. On top of that, it’s very likely that these burners will not allow playback of Hollywood Blu-Ray discs–just your own content.

Right now all of the HD formats and authoring options for ‘the masses’ is in evolution. It’s in evolution even for the ‘big boys’. If you are or have been a distribution house for major Hollywood titles with standard definition content, then it makes sense to be on the cutting edge to try and invest in the costly HD encoders and authoring apps to be a part of the transition. For the rest of us, it’s very hard to predict what or even if these formats will have a big impact on our HD content distrituition. There is a chance that optical delivery won’t be the medium or method to accomplish the task.

The comforting thing for me right now is that there really are no cost friendly alternatives to choose from, I don’t have to worry about the fact I haven’t jumped on one bandwagon or the other.

Jim

[George Wing]

On the PC side — Corel just announced DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus – that gives you the ability to Author “Basic” HD-DVD (mpeg2, and simple menus). It also allows you to burn to HD-DVD Folders, or create an ISO Image. And you can then burn that to regular DVD-5/9 discs.

The package also has the ability to burn direct-to-Blu-ray from a video source — but I’m not sure what type of menu-options that gives you (similar to what WTS mentioned).

Regards,
George

[Daniel Low]

Thanks Jim,

All your points are totally valid and I agree with all of them but ziongms post asks “……that will need to be output to either HD DVD or Blue Ray. Im using a intel based MacPro, and was curious if anyone knew of a hddvd or blueray burner that would work well with that machine. Any help/tips would be a great help. Thanks! ”

eric respond to that post with the blunt reply that “There are no Mac authoring programs which support HD DVD or Blu Ray drives at this point”

Now I know that Toast is not an authoring application in the same way as DVDSP is, but I was simply helping the guy out by stating that there is support for the Mac in terms of both hardware and software if he just wants to “output to Blue Ray” This, in my opinion, is far more helpful than the post from eric and although your response is educational it doesn’t answer ziongms post, but simply tells him that the state of play is still ‘up in the air’ right now.

Would you not agree?

Thanks

Danny

It’s a London thing.

[Eric Pautsch]

Since this is an authoring forum, I was naturally assuming he was talking of authoring a HD DVD and/or BD Disc. Toast does support Blu Ray burners, but this is to burn data only. I have to thank Apple for leading people the wrong way – they’ve given the impression that anyone with some HD footage and an Apple can create they’re own HD titles which is simply not true.

[Daniel Low]

eric,

Can you point me to the page or article or infact anything that Apple has published which gives (you) this wrong impression?

Danny

[Eric Pautsch]

It’s printed on the box :

“The latest upgrade (4.0) introduces the next-generation of DVD delivery with HD DVD support for both H.264 and HDV…”

Considering that most people who purchase Final Cut Studio 5.1 are not professional DVD authors many folks would (and have) thought that DVDSP 4 will author a spec compliant HD DVD title – but this is not the case.

[Daniel Low]

eric,

Agreed, what you quote maybe slightly misleading but a visit to the Apple site (something that anybody would do before forking out for such an expensive package) and you’ll see:

“With DVD Studio Pro 4, you can harness the power of H.264

[Eric Pautsch]

I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. I just hate to see misinformation strewn about public forums. “Misleading” is “misleading” – anyway you look at it and it’s obvious in the amount of times the original poster’s question has been asked on this and other forums that people have indeed been mislead.

“With DVD Studio Pro 4, you can harness the power of H.264