-
BluRay vs DVD compression – SD source
Hi all.
A friend will be doing a movie screening at a facility that uses Blu Ray playback. The movies are were shot and posted in SD, uncompressed. I know DVDs require fairly high Mpeg2 compression. Since Blu Rays have greater storage, will an SD transfer to Blu Ray allow for a less compressed final product?
The movies currently live as SD uncompressed 8 bit ProRes files. Output would be from FCP X to take advantage of the BluRay sharing option. If this is worthwhile, I’ll get a BluRay burner.
Thanks in advance.
Jeff M.
FCP X, Mountain Lion, Retina 15″ MacBook Pro, Kona 3, Fiber raid, etc. -
2 Replies
-
Bumping, hoping for an answer. Craig Seeman?
-
My biggest question is: “How long is the video?”
Your biggest issue won’t be the compression, but the upscaling if you go to Blu-Ray.
A standard DVD blank is 5 gig, a standard BR blank is 25 gig, but you’re dealing with a picture 6x a large.
You’d end up padding with black bars (bad) because there isn’t a 4×3 flag in HD.
You’d end up having access to h.264 which is markedly better than mp2 for compression.The only way you could truly be sure is to run your own tests; your upscaling method really can matter here (hardware vs. software).
And the amount of time involved might outweigh a slight improvement of quality.
The length will dictate the data rate for you; if it’s under 60 minutes, visually, both codecs do well towards the top of their data rates. But when we get 120-150 min, and the codecs are starving, that’d mean more about the end quality of your file this way.
Please post what you do, I’m terrifically curious.
Best,
Jeff I. Greenberg
Author/Master Instructor/Speaker/Consulting
My contact info and more
New! Come see me speak @ NAB/Post Production World!
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up