[Tom Torrillo]

Are you building straight to a disc or a disc image?

I had problems authoring this way but found that if I build to a folder and then burn the resulting folders (BDMV and CERTIFICATE) to the root of a BD-R via Toast 10 Titanium everything worked just fine.

BluStreak burner can be found here:
https://blustreak.dvdafteredit.com/blustreak-burner

(note I am using CS4, not CS3)

[Tom Torrillo]

Interesting.

I would think that if you’re using a CBR, 16Mbps is 16Mbps whether it’s encoded using H.264 or MPEG2 but if you say that H.264 is better in that case regardless, then of course I will go with H.264.

And I agree, encoding at a higher bitrate than what the source’s max is sounds like a waste of space.

[Tom Torrillo]

>> Do you have a long motion menu with a loop point?

No motion menus, just four still menus.

I think I’ll just concatenate in Premiere and encode out, that seems like the easiest solution as it sounds more and more like the extra 10GB is a bug.

As far as H.264 vs. MPEG2, I know that H.264 delivers a higher quality at a lower bitrate but the trade-off is encoding time. Now, the footage I’m encoding is AVCHD at 16Mbps so there’s really no point in encoding it higher than 16Mbps correct?

I guess what I mean is that MPEG2 CBR 16Mbps is pretty much the same as H.264 CBR 16Mpbs if space isn’t an issue right?

Thanks again for helping me out with these questions, you’ve been en enormous help =)

Tom

[Tom Torrillo]

Larry,

The XMB is the “Cross Media Bar”, the menu navigation system on the PS3. If you set your PS3 to not automatically boot whatever CD/DVD/BD you put in, you can navigate to the video “tab” and in the case of a Blu-ray, it shows a little thumbnail and the movie’s name.

For DVDs it just shows “DVD” and for burned Blu-rays, it shows “BDMV BD-R”. I guess getting that custom thumbnail and description is something for more professional authoring.

My mistake in assuming you knew about the XMB.

Another weird issue I’ve been encountering involves creating timelines. If I add all my assets to one timeline (which is what I really want to do), the size of my disc goes from 18GB to 28GB for some reason. If I break it up into separate timelines, it remains at 18GB.

Have you ever heard of this? I think it’s a bug.

I’d like to keep everything on one timeline that way the viewer can use the previous button to go backwards but while you can specify an end action for a timeline, you can’t specify a previous action. If the user presses previous at the beginning of a timeline they just get a “Operation cannot be performed here” or something like that.

I’ve tried a bunch of things but now I’m going to re-encode with MPEG2 instead of H.264 and see if that is the reason for the mystery 10GB that show up when I put all my assets on one timeline.

I figure I won’t lose anything using MPEG2 since I’m using a CBR of 16Mbps anyways.

Thanks,
Tom

[Tom Torrillo]

Larry,

It seems the problem was using a disk image. I built to a folder then burned one with BlueStreak and one with Toast and they both played flawlessly in both my PS3 and set top player.

I also didn’t have any menu problems like I’ve read many others have had and I have four menus linking back and forth to each other and different timelines.

Also had my assets set to “Don’t Transcode” as I had them properly encoded out of Premiere.

Regarding the folder name, I had thought what you title the disc would be the, er, title for lack of a better term. Like when you put a disc in a PS3 and browse to it on the XMB it says “Wall-E” whereas if I load up my authored Blu-ray it just says “BDMV BD-R”.

Am I correct in assuming that having a custom title show up there is something I would need a more professional level authoring tool for?

Thanks for the folder tip, worked like a charm. First Blu-ray successfully authored.

Tom

[Tom Torrillo]

Hey Larry,

I used a Verbatim BD-R.

So instead of a disc image (.iso) you’re saying build to a folder instead and then select that folder with BlueStreak or Toast (selecting the BDMV option under “Video”)?

I had thought that if you mount the disk image and then open disk utility it could then just select the BD drive from the burn menu and it would just copy it.

Also, do you know what the limitations are for the title of a Blu-ray? I know for a DVD it’s something like 16 characters but I couldn’t find anything on the Blu-ray spec and I assume that it’s different. I also assume that this would be the title that would display when, let’s say, you select the disc on the PS3?

Thanks!
Tom

[Tom Torrillo]

Thanks, I will check out those threads.

Pretty sure there is no OS X equivalent of virtualdub though.

Tom

[Tom Torrillo]

John,

Yeah, it’s AVCHD footage using PP CS4 but on a Mac and those settings are indeed from Jeff’s excellent video. Thought I’d throw this question out there and see if anyone had any other workflows.

Regarding Cineform, that’s an encoding application?

Thanks,
Tom

[Tom Torrillo]

That’s what I’m thinking.

To be honest, I haven’t watched an SD-DVD in a couple of years so maybe I’m probably just used to HD.

I don’t remember it looking this terrible though.

I’m going to dig up an SD-DVD later and see if it’s as bad as my downscaled HD videos are.