The DVC Guide to Blu-ray

The DVC Guide to Blu-ray Authoring.

So you've finished your high definition edit - what are you going to do with it? Regular DVDs are standard definition only, and while you can downscale HD footage to SD quality to make normal DVDs, this won't make the most of your high definition material.

The obvious answer is a high definition disc format. For a while there were two options for making discs with HD content: Blu-ray (marketed by Sony) and HD-DVD (from Toshiba).
Unfortunately for HD-DVD, Blu-ray achieved dominance in the HD disc market (largely due to Sony's aggressive marketing, including the incorporation of Blu-ray drives into their Playstation 3 console), and Toshiba ceased development of HD-DVD in early 2008.

Blu-ray creation tools, in the meantime, have already found their way into home and business PCs.

SO WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT BLU-RAY?

The Blu-ray format is technically far superior and much larger capacity than regular DVD. A single layer Blu-ray disc is 25GB and dual layer discs are 50GB. 200GB discs are promised in the future.

The Blu-ray medium, capacity aside, is specifically designed to play HD video material, accessible through advanced navigation features and menu systems (including the ability to play several video streams simultaneously, for example to provide a picture-in-picture director's commentary).

In WHICH FORMAT IS THE HD VIDEO STORED?

Standard DVDs are based on the MPEG2 video format. The video on Blu-ray discs can be in either MPEG2, H264 (more advanced MPEG) or VC1 (a variation of Windows Media).

Most commercial discs are in VC1 or H264. Using the tools that are presently available for our own editing systems, we can only make discs in MPEG2 or H264. The advantage of H264 is that you can fit more on a disc. With HD MPEG2 on single layer Blu-ray disc, there is space for about 2 hours of footage. With H264 you could get 3 hours at the same quality. The downside is it takes longer - an hour of H264 will take 6-7 hours to encode, whereas MPEG2 would be 1-2 hours. Obviously the better the computer, the faster the encoding.

HOW DO WE MAKE OUR OWN?

Blu-ray writers are now generally available, and the prices are steadily dropping (they have reached the sub-£200 level at the time of writing). Single layer (25GB) writeable Blu-ray discs are about £7.00 each.

If you just want to play Blu-ray discs, BD-ROM drives for computers are widely available. In terms of standalone players, the Sony PlayStation 3 is one of the best ways to get a Blu-ray player and one of the most future proof as it can be updated with the latest feaures via the Internet. You can also buy decent set-top Blu-ray players for around £150..

WRITERS

The best value Blu-ray writer is from LG. This combines a dual layer Blu-ray writer with an HD-DVD player (of course it also reads and writes CDs and DVDs), and comes with simple playback and recording software. This drive is currently about £160 +VAT.

AUTHORING SOFTWARE

We have three comprehensive programs for authoring Blu-ray discs - Sonic DVDit Pro HD (also available in some Avid packages as Avid DVD), Adobe Encore and Sony DVD Architect. They all let you make a Blu-ray disc with all the features you would expect from a normal DVD - interactive menus, subtitles etc.

Encore is our favourite of these three programs, with Sony DVD Architect a close second.  To buy either you have to buy their respective editing programs - To get ENCORE you buy Adobe Premiere, and to get Architect you buy Sony Vegas.   Both are £500-£600.  If you have an old copy of Premiere it is possible to buy Encore/Premiere for £209 +VAT - and this is from practically ANY old version of Premiere.

You can also author simple discs with programs like Nero 8 and Power DVD producer, but these will be of the pretty basic play-all variety.

WILL MY BLU-RAY DISCS PLAY ON STANDALONE PLAYERS?

This is unfortunately a bit variable at present. The manufacturers’ paranoia about piracy means they are making it difficult to make proper Blu-ray video discs. Sony have updated the firmware on Blu-ray drives over recent months, however, so the situation keeps changing. Generally our homemade discs have worked, particularly those created with Adobe Encore.

SHOULD I GET INTO BLU-RAY NOW?

If you are already shooting in HD, yes, because you will naturally want a way to store the pictures that you have filmed in high definition at the same quality. Though you can make standard DVDs from HD sources, the full quality will be lost. Even if the Blu-ray format doesn't last forever, will still have master copies at full quality that can be converted into whatever future format exists.