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First time mastering a BluRay — how afraid should I be?
In the “old days” most of my video projects went to DVD. However, for the past 2 years everything has targeted YouTube and Web.
But … now I have a project where I need to play 1080P in a public setting.
This is a very important project for me — my mother’s memorial service. It is a 12 minute story of her life composed of photographs animated with After Effects with a voice over and music.
The venue is a private room in a restaurant and we have a nice projector and screen (projector is a Mitsubishi HC3800 with HDMI and component inputs).
I have been racking my brain trying to figure out the best way to set this up for optimal playback. In the end I I think I’ll need to master a BluRay. I have never done this and I am a bit worried about the learning curve/bugs/gotchas.
So, here are my questions:
1. Is BluRay my best option, or have I missed something?
2. Is there anything I need to worry about or be prepared for when creating a BluRay for the first time?By the way, I use Adobe Master Suite CS4 and everything is the latest version. I run under Windows 7. I just upgraded my hardware to a very fast rig. It doesn’t have a BluRay burner, so I need to add that.
Thanks, I appreciate any help I can get.
Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS -
5 Replies
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If you’ve used Encore in the past, Bluray should be easy.
Just send to Encore using the dynamic link option and set your format to H.264 at 15 Mb/s (high quality), leave the audio alone and burn away.
For this type of presentation I would create a countdown leader in Premiere for cueing and leave some 20 seconds of black video at the end.
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
Hi Neil,
At the most basic, you can from Premiere simply choose “File > Export > Encore”, hit a few buttons in the pop-up, including burn without menus, and it’s pretty automated from there so you don’t really have to “learn” Encore if you don’t want/need to.
If you don’t really see much future need to keep making Blu-ray discs for yourself, take a look at the Western Digital WDTV, it is a little box with HDMI out and USB inputs. Put your video clips on a USB drive and play them out through the WDTV, it prefers H.264 but works with several formats.
Jeff Pulera
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Since you will be playing back your BluRay disc at a very important time, make sure that you have the chance to ‘test play’ your disc well before the service. Use this time to check for any problems and let the disc play all the way through. You can use this time to set audio levels, etc. Set and note all lighting and volume levels in advance and watch and listen to the playback from different places in the seating area. No matter how good the disc looks and sounds at home, playing it at another venue can often bring unwanted surprises. Good luck.
John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore
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Thank you to everyone’s responses. Jeff, based on your idea I purchased a WDTV Live. Wow! What a great solution:
1. Cheap (like $129).
2. Super simple. I just encoded in H.264 at very high settings and copied to a portable HD I had sitting around.
3. Unbelievably good quality. The video quality was superior to what I can see on my editing platform. I used a new Mitsubishi HD projector and the result was pristine.Thanks to everyone for helping out at what was a very difficult time for me.
Neil Myers
Connect Public Relations
CS4 Master Suite, 3DS -
Hi Neil,
Glad it worked out for you. I didn’t sound like you had much need for a Blu-ray burner at this time, I think you’ll get a lot more use out of the WDTV.
Regards,
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers
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