How do I fit a 3HR M2T HD movie to disc without compression like the Hollywood Movie boys?

[John Rofrano]

[Jack McGee] “I want them to last so in 10 years time, we can take out the disc again and play it with no issues – knowing that I would have deleted the original files.”

That is a very dangerous plan. Sony posted a financial lost this last quarter and reduced revenue from poor Blu-ray sales was sited as one cause. I know we don’t buy Blu-ray movies anymore and have gone back to just buying DVD’s. No one knows if there will even be Blu-ray players 10 years from now and Apple doesn’t even make computers with slots for shiny plastic discs anymore so, I’d say you should buy some hard drives and hold on to your original files.

If you don’t believe me… I have a stack of VideoCD’s that I made 10 years ago because every DVD player could play them. Not many DVD players can play VideoCD’s anymore and no Blu-ray Players can play them so I think it’s safe to say that 10 years from now, it’s not too far fetched to think that whatever UltraHD, 16K, 24K players they are selling probably won’t play low res HD Blu-ray’s anymore. 😉

[Jack McGee] “How do the movie boys fit a crystal clear HD movie around 3 hours onto a Blu-ray without losing quality?”

They use Dual Layer Blu-ray discs that hold 50GB and so should you if you want the same quality.

[Jack McGee] “Am I doing the right thing by assuming I can archive Blu-ray (Sony BD-R Ver1.3/6X 25GB disc) discs for 100yrs or should I just archive the created M2T file onto a hard disk instead?”

Yea, well… that was the point of my opening statement. My VideoCD’s will probably last 100 years… but that’s the life of the MEDIA. There is no telling whether or not there will be a PLAYER that can play the 100 year old media. So when they say Blu-ray discs last 100 years, they leave out the part about actually having something that can play them 100 years from now.

The good news is that Blu-ray uses your original AVCHD and MPEG2 HD footage so you probably could still get the footage off of the disc and convert it to whatever player format is around 10 years from now. DVD was not like this. Back in the days when we shot DV, it was compressed 5:1. DVD’s compress 25:1 so you lost 5x the quality. Blu-ray preserves it’s HD quality so it’s not as bad. I would NOT render to 9Mbps though… spend the money and get 50GB Blu-ray discs and keep the bit-rate at 16Mbps for AVCHD and 25Mbps for MPEG-2.

[Jack McGee] “Why does the whole process take so incredibly long even on a fast machine? Is this how everyone does it? Leave the computer on all day and night to rendering movies because they take so long?”

What’s your definition of a fast machine? What GPU does it have? Rendering does take a long time and it depends on the compression used by the source footage, the amount of video processing on the timeline, and the compression used by the delivery format. It also depends on your GPU and if Vegas Pro can take advantage of it or not. So yes, lots of us render overnight. That’s a very common thing.

~jr

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

[Paul Gregory]

I agree with you that all forms of storing media is just transient. Just think of all of the formats that have been used to keep music, photos film etc,in the last century. I read somewhere recently that some library’s are now archiving both the media & the player necessary to play it.

In addition to 50GB disks what should we be looking at? More & more people are now making their video files so that they can be stored on various devices like HHD’s & other types of flash memory.

If we attempt to go this route what route would you suggest? What format? I would think that you would want to preserve as much of the other features we enjoy when viewing DVD’s or Blu-rays like chapter markets & get subtitles that turn on/off as well as multiple audio tracks.

MKV allows for most of those features. What I have never heard of if it exists is any way to save all of these additional features, as well as being able to get menus & the other things that you can also see in existing disks? Does such a format exist and/or is it likely to arrive in the near future?

Thanks in advance

[John Rofrano]

[Paul Gregory] “In addition to 50GB disks what should we be looking at? More & more people are now making their video files so that they can be stored on various devices like HHD’s & other types of flash memory. “

As I said, the one nice thing about Blu-ray is that it can store the original quality in most cases. You could make any other flash memory or HDD format from the Blu-ray files. I have an HDV camera and AVCHD camera and Blu-ray’s can hold the original quality. Obviously some cameras these days have higher quality and higher frame rates so this is why I recommend storing the original files in addition to any delivery format like Blu-ray.

[Paul Gregory] “MKV allows for most of those features. What I have never heard of if it exists is any way to save all of these additional features, as well as being able to get menus & the other things that you can also see in existing disks? Does such a format exist and/or is it likely to arrive in the near future?”

I’ve never used MKV. I’m not sure what the support would be like in the future. There really is no solution other than to keep converting to newer formats which is why I said keep the original files. For example, I have a lot of VHS tapes that I need to capture before they don’t play anymore. Whatever format I capture them to (which will probably be DV) Im sure that will become obsolete and I’ll have to convert them again to be able to keep using them. You just have to be prepared to keep after it.

BTW, one additional problem is what platform will you be using in the future? I used a PC for over 30 years. I now use a Mac. The MTS files I captured to my PC won’t play on my Mac! So even keeping the original files might not be enough. It turns out that the Mac will read the MTS files only if you keep them in the original AVCHD card structure. Once I realized that, I now archive the entire memory card. The same will be true as you leave your PC/Laptop behind and only use a Tablet/Mobile Device in the future. Who knows what format you will need? 😉

~jr

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

[Jane Kong]

Can’t agree with you more. Many people just build thier own home net server so that they can enjoy the movies wherever they go. And any conversion will lose quality, so just keep the origianl videos then store them on some giant net server. It will be much convenient and safe. If you make them as BD, then you have to fact the damage of discs and missing , store problem.