PAL Blu-Ray settings

[Daniel Ludwig]

hi charls,
if your blu-ray need to play in PAL and NTSC-land, the best way is to go 1080p24 or 1080p23.98.

you need to conform your 25fps-material, because 25/50 frames wont be played in most US-BD-players.

I have created a workflow using apples cinema tools, but you can do it as well with adobe AE:

https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com/1080i50-2398p-workflow

I would encode the BD in H264 and would take a Bitrate arround 25MBit target-rate and max. bitrate arround 30MBit.

never had any problems with this settings.

cheers

danny

[Charles Hennegrave]

Thank you Danny for this precision… however, it is all getting very confusing… My source footage is 4k QT uncompressed, progressive @ 25fps Dolby Surround 5.1.

I thought blu-ray was progressive anyway weither it is PAL or NTSC(is it not?). So if I convert my source to 23.976 fps progressive, won’t I get a slight shift image/sound?

I am working on a Windows 7×64 based workstation with the Adobe Master collection CS5.

To make it even easier I have the same source to output to DVD both PAL and NTSC. Would the same principle apply?

Sorry again to bother you and thanks in advance for your answer.

Best,

Charles

Charles Hennegrave
Vice-President of JC Dream none profit association
London

[Daniel Ludwig]

hi charles,
blu-ray-spec is 1080i50, 1080i60, 1080p23.98, 1080p24, but 25/50frames wont work in most US-players as I mentioned before.

so you need to do a frame-rate-conversion. I would go to 24p as it is a common workflow.

there are 2 possibilties:

1. converting from 25 to 24fps with the same duration/running time
2. conforming from 25 to 24fps while the film will get 4% slower and longer

you can use AfterEffects to do both ways, but keep in mind that you need to slow down your audio as well if you´ll conform from 25 to 24p.

one good thing is, that you´ve got progressive 4K, so you won´t need to deinterlace the material anyway.

as AE have a good scaling-algorithm you can use it to downscale your 4K to 1080 as well. another possibility is to use MPEG Streamclip (freeware) to do so – just google for it – it´s the swiss knife in every editors toolbox.

good luck for your project.

cheers

danny

[Charles Hennegrave]

Thanks Danny, you’re a star!I believe you’re in the States… what a pity! I think I would definitely benefit from working with experienced people… I love my job as a VFX artist but as always, experience is the key to success!

Thanks again for all your tips and have a nice day!

Best regards,

Charles

Charles Hennegrave
Vice-President of JC Dream none profit association
London

[Daniel Ludwig]

hey charles,
I´m not in the US, I´m in based in good old germany.

good luck

cheers

danny