[Paul Gregory]

More for just the exercise to see what would happen I had a go at opening adding an iso file to Blu-ray current menu.

I downloaded a freeware utility that created the iso file onto a 64GB USB 3 drive. I took the drive to a friends who has windows 8.

All I had to do was to left click on the iso file & select mount. The mounted iso file was now back in my PC with current project. From my menu I created a sub menu. Onto this I dragged the 5 files from the stream of the old Blu-ray. I ended up with a menu page with the new icons for each file on them. In preview I can play each one at a time but they weren’t linked so I tried using end actions. The only thing that I don’t appear to have at this time is the ability to jump to next chapter & I don’t know what file within the iso file has this and/or how to extract it. Do you know where it is?

The Optimize function in DVDA shows all files don’t need re-compression. I have yet to see if I have any problems when I go to prepare & burn disk. I always seem to find that the ‘prepare & burn’ function always wants to do to previously prepared projects even though my current project has a completely different name.

Thanks in advance

[Paul Gregory]

If you can import from an iso file how is this done?

Thanks in advance

[Paul Gregory]

Thanks for the reply. Just for the record should I be able to just drag in an old ISO file as well as a DVDA project file DAR?

Thanks in advance

[Paul Gregory]

I made the 2 seperate streams in Vegas 10 & have them now in DVDA & have used the Blu-ray template. I have created menus & even done a preview & could burn a disk as it stands,since it hasn’t gotten any problems.

Since current project was so small I thought that I might try to put a previous project on same disk since projects are related & disk has plenty of spare space.

Thanks in advance

[Paul Gregory]

I would agree with you inasmuch as all formats seem to be just transient. Blu-rays never sold enough to warrant the investment. Both Blu-rays & DVD’s will eventually completely make there exit as people are finding it easier to create home networks & have media players.

I also agree that the Blu-rays are very slow to start & can sometimes be very noise until they start playing.

It would be a pity though to loose the features of Blu-rays like chapter markers,multiple audio tracks & subtitles that you can turn on/off. MKV allow for some of these features to be retained & played by a media player sourced from DVD’s.

I seem to recall reading that there is also some programs around that can do the same thing with iso files for both DVD’s & Blu-rays but I can’t recall its name. The good thing about this is that you might be able to keep all of the features like motion menus & scene selection menus.

As for my problem disk I had a lot of problems erasing it. I thought it might be best to just give the project a new name & just re burn it. I found that DVDA just wanted to use my old ISO files. I eventually copied the project & the preview said that the disk would be erased. It didn’t erase correctly since I had part of current project & older data as well. I erased the disk in Windows & another authoring program as well & DVDA still said it wanted to erase, but I finally had it burn OK. Presumably I had a faulty disk.

Thanks in advance

[Paul Gregory]

The other had originally been written onto the same Blu-ray disk & when it worked OK I just burned it onto a normal disk.

Thanks in advance

[Paul Gregory]

Thanks for that information.

A follow up but related question if I may. I know how to get files from an old DVD as explained above but can the same trick or another one be done with Blu-rays?

I always reckon that you can’t have too many copy’s/backups of your old DVDs just in case something goes missing. I have found that many of my Blu-rays aren’t anywhere near there total capacity so it might be good when making a new project to include an old one on the same disk for just in case.

As for importing older DVDs through Vegas for inclusion onto a newer Blu-ray project the procedure whereby you use the Video_TS ifo file it says that chapter markers are retained. It might be nice to also include the original screen menus from the DVDs but the only way I can think to do this would be to do some sort of screen capture of the original. This picture would then be the new background in DVDA onto which you can drag your files onto & you could make the button locations coincide with what was on the background. Unless you have an easier way?

Thanks in advance

[Paul Gregory]

I was wondering that if my input is the lower figure & I then rendered out using the higher that appears what would be the results. Would the program be trying to somehow upscale the original or would I just be giving the PC more work for no benefit & what if anything different would occur when the file is imported into DVDA.?

Thanks in advance

[Paul Gregory]

I think that the problem might have been because for the first time ever I had used a theme for which all I altered was the default text. I looked where you suggested but found nothing that I could change. Rather than waste time I just restarted the menu from scratch & it worked OK.

At the moment I’m trying to do a test burn onto a re writable Blu-ray disk but the programs tells me that there is still data on it that I will have to erase. I have 2 programs which say that there is nothing on the disk so as you can see its always something. So I’ll just have to wait & see how it turns out

Thanks in advance

[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