Larry Applegate
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Tom,
Thanks for the complete report. I agree that it is always a good idea to encode your assets outside of the authoring application, that is what most experienced authors always do.
As for menu navigation errors, my impression is that they occur when trying to use overrides, playlists, or other of the more complex functions. Basically, the Blu-ray implementation is unfinished, to say it kindly. And the kind of “niceties” that you can do in DVD Studio Pro, such as help the viewer along by choosing a menu button based on the path he or she has taken through the navigation, is impossible even for DVD, because there is no scripting or “if this, do that” concept.
But for straightforward navigation and ease of menu creation it can be a very effective tool, the integration with Photoshop is much better than DVD Studio Pro.
I am not a PS3 expert, what is the XMB? All of my burned BD’s, from any authoring package including Scenarist, always show the media type and not any disc name. I’m at home and don’t have any commercial Blu-ray replicated discs at the moment, but my commercial DVD’s just start playing without showing anything, and if I remember correctly that’s what happened with BD’s as well.
Regards,
Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com/ -
Hi Tom,
The question is did Encore build a correct UDF 2.5 directory for the disc? There is another thread on this forum where the poster says it did not. Whereas BluStreak and Toast always work correctly. But if you use either to open an existing bad image, it will just copy what is already there.
The advantage of using BluStreak for burning is that it is not also an authoring application, whereas the Toast interface is more complicated, and they keep changing it.
The other possibility is that Encore did not transcode your assets correctly. It is a very flaky program. Also the US PS3 does not play 50 Hz material, though most European players, including PS3, will play everything. So there are a lot of possible failure points.
The title (folder) name of a Blu-ray disc does not show up in the player, it is not important. For example, the titles for the two Wall-E discs are “QUACK_1” and “QUACK_2”, which may have been a joke by Disney’s subcontractor, and nobody noticed and millions of copies were replicated. The only time you will see the disc name is in the Finder or Windows Explorer. I just use whatever names I want, and have never had that be an issue with the players. BluStreak Premaster will force all premaster fields to be spec-compliant.
Regards,
Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com/ -
Hi Emre,
Use BluStreak Burner (free) or Toast to build your disc image.
Regards,
Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com/ -
Hi Tom,
What BD-R media are you using? Verbatim have been absolutely reliable for me.
Use BluStreak Burner or Toast to burn directly, instead of relying on Encore’s disc image. In Encore, choose Build Blu-ray Folder. Then open that folder in BluStreak and choose Burn Disc Image.
Disk Utility is not able to create Blu-ray or DVD disc directories.
Regards,
Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com/ -
We are now giving away BluStreak Burner, an alternative to burning Blu-ray with Toast. This application burns playable Blu-ray recordables from build folders and disc images, and is a subset of BluStreak Premaster, our replication program.
Just go to the home page, click on BluStreak Burner, and download the .zip file at the bottom of the page.
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com/
Regards,
Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com -
I use VMWare Fusion, more stable than Parallels which destroyed the internal Raid on my Mac Pro, but admittedly that was a couple of years ago. But if you want to do gaming on Windows, boot it natively or you will be very disappointed with performance.
Regards,
Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com -
Hi Kevin,
Yes, the Apple share function creates encodes that pass the Sony verifier, and you can replicate with my product, BluStreak Premaster. Commercial warning, yes, I profit from sales of BluStreak applications.
For impartial information on Blu-ray authoring and replication see the non-profit IDMA web site:
Regards,
Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com -
Yes, Alessio, if you keep your navigation simple, you can make very nice menus. But be careful of the more advanced Encore features, they don’t work at all for Blu-ray, in either CS3 or CS4.
I can recommend John Geddes, who posts frequently on the Cow Encore Forum, and his web site:
He has published work-arounds for some of the Encore bugs.
Regards,
Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com -
Hi Jason,
I was waiting for someone else to answer this post, but since no one has, I’ll give you my opinion. Encore is not usable for Blu-ray, unless you keep it very simple and avoid about 2/3 of its features. They just haven’t bothered to program it properly for Blu-ray, but have apparently assumed that the commands are similar to DVD, which they are not. Many things just don’t work for Blu-ray, even if they do for DVD. These bugs have been reported on this forum many times since Blu-ray support first came out in CS3, and most of them were not fixed in CS4.
To properly make the type of typical semi-professional DVD you are describing for Blu-ray, the least expensive option is NetBlender’s DoStudio for the PC, list price $2995. This is true whether you are trying to replicate thousands of discs or just duplicate a few dozen.
Regards,
Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com -
Hi Juan,
I’m afraid I have bad news for you. Multi-angle video is a very difficult to do even on DVD, and the only Blu-ray commercial tool that can do it is Sonic Scenarist, which costs tens of thousands of dollars, and has a steep learning curve.
The problem is that the video parameters for each angle much match down to the GOP level where an angle change could occur, and the video and audio must be interleaved so that the play head doesn’t have to skip very far over the other angles.Then you must make sure that the combined bit rate of all the angles doesn’t exceed the maximum, so the encoding must be very efficient, since in your case you would be dividing it by 5. Even with the right tools, it is a professional undertaking, especially for Blu-ray.
I did the programming for “The Quick and Dirty Guide to Pilates”, which had only 3 angles and was done with DVD Studio Pro on the Mac. The director had to use the BitVice MPEG-2 encoder to get the angles to match, it was not possible with Apple’s Compressor.
I also have worked with MX Production Services in San Francisco, who are known for their multi-angle work in DVD and now Blu-ray, and have done many titles for well-known musicians. They use Scenarist. Believe me, it isn’t easy.
Regards,
Larry Applegate
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com