Wts(jmanz)
Forum Replies Created
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That was an August post, I haven’t seen any actual release of a Mac burner from a reputable company–but I sure could be wrong.
The Blu-Ray burners for PC’s came out earlier this summer–but no real software to author, and no reliable way of watching recordable discs on set top players. Basically they offered little more than a means of high capacity optical data storage. Just because there is a “Mac” burner, doesn’t mean you can actually make Blu-Ray discs for set top playback. My previously posted reservations still stand.
Jim
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Tip,
Could you tell me what software would play the blu-ray disc on the Mac?
Paul,
Burning HD discs for consistant, consumer playback on either platform is NOT ready for prime time. It’s barely ready for the Hollywood big boys.
I have made and played several HD-DVD’s by burning HD content onto standard red laser (which is not the blue laser media that will come out with the HD-DVD burners some time next year) media and have played them on the Toshiba player. They use mpeg2, which is basically a direct transfer of the m2t(which is a mpeg file format) files from an HDV camcorder. They will also play on an Apple, since the Apple software dvd player will playback HD-DVD discs (not Blu-Ray).
There are no Blu-Ray burner interfaces that I know of for the Mac currently, although I am sure they will be since Apple is a major player in the Blu-Ray format. There are no authoring apps on the Mac side that will author a Blu-Ray disc. There are some entry level applications that come bundled with the Blu-Ray burners to create Blu-Ray recordable discs–but then again you are limited to a very few number of computers that actually have a Blu-Ray burner on them; and just about as few Blu-Ray set top players that from reports don’t play back recordables, or are at least unreliable.
IMO, I wouldn’t invest a ton of money on either of the formats hoping that you picked wisely when stuff starts rolling out early next year.
Jim
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Apple’s DVDSP creates HD-DVD content that with a Mac mini hooked up to a HD screen you can watch HD content in just the same way, with some pretty sophisticated, high resoltuion menu templates.
For one’s own personal use, I think either of these options allows one to watch their own hi-def content before the burners arrive to market. With that said, I think there are still going to be a few bugs that need to be ironed out before any of these solutions allow the ‘minion’ to get their HD content to optical media for distribution.
I agree that the HD content can be quite stunning. I have made several HD-DVD’s on standard def recordable media that the video will play back on my HD Toshiba. The problem as you noted is the lack of HD-DVD burners until next year. In the mean time, other business models might crop up that leap frogs optical media and allows viewers to download to hard drive and watch from there–much like one watching their own HD content on a hard drive hooked up to their system.
Jim
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Do you work for Sony? 😉
Did you play your disc on a set top player? If so, which one?
Jim
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You will always lose some quality if you transcode a file. In this case you would be transcoding from a more compressed format (mpeg) to a less compressed format (QT). So you should keep that in mind before getting started, and not expect too much.
With that said, StreamClip is shareware/freeware that can accomplish what you want.
Jim
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Can you describe in detail the steps you are taking when ‘adding’ the image file for your dvd output?
Jim
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Bob,
No need to apologize, I’ve done exactly the same thing.
Jim -
I’m not sure about your question, but I’ll take a stab at it. I’m assuming you didn’t note the beginning of that paragraph? My reference was in regards to dual layer recordable discs and playback on set top players. The (-) media is clearly inferior in this regards. I think (-) media has a slight edge over the (+) media for single layer projects and playback on set top players.
With all of that said, how any particular disc performs on a given set top player is independent of how a replication facility would prefer to have the project delivered.
Jim
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You’ll probably get as many opinions on this as people you canvas for an answer. If you ask the question on a Mac forum, most would lean towards (-) media; on the PC side it’ll be split down the middle. The first Mac’s didn’t allow for burning (+) media, but they all do now.
This is my opinion. With today’s set top players, they both perform well. If you are outputting to single layer media, the (-) media has an edge. The reason for that is that there are still some players that won’t read the (+) discs unless the bit setting is set to ROM (which not all burners and or burning software can do). If you have a burner that does the above (and the software to set it); then the (+) media should work just as well.
With dual layer projects, the advantage goes to (+) media. In fact, I would recommend NOT using (-) media for anything other than using it as a means for optical storage of data. The (-) does not work well at all for dvd video.
Jim
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Have you tried Streamclip. It might ‘see’ the file and allow you to export to aiff.
Jim