Does DVDA 5 allow MPEG-2 as BD on DVD media?

Yes, so long as the MPEG-2 satisfies the DVDA BD requirements. If the requirements are violated, the video is recompressed. I have already successfully burned 1280x720 60P DVD+RW.

What is correct:
yes, you can bun BDMV-structures to DVD and DVD-DL. That is fine so far.

What is not correct:
no, you cannot play such a BDMV-DVD in your PS3. The PS3 does not recognize a BDMV-DVD at all, due to a firmware restriction. What you can do is to play the file on the disc, but you cannot play the menus. By the way, for 50 Hz of PAL that is a nightmare, since the playback takes place at 60 Hz - what means that for NTSC it is not so bad.

For many other Blu Ray players a 002-BDMV-DVD is fine, as prepared by the DVDA5. However, be aware that for mpeg2-HD some players need a reduction in the data rate, due to restrictions in the loader of the player. So, for BDMV-DVD it is a better idea to use AVC, even if the Sony AVC codec shows a little bit reduced quality, compared with the mainconcept mpeg2 encoder in Vegas 8b.

I'm testing it now, and so far it's disappointing. I tried to burn 1080i MPEG2 transferred from my cable DVR (without 5c flags of course) and all I threw at it needs to be recompressed. Since the source is heavily compressed already, I really don't want to recompress any further.

I'll have to check later what's the story with AVCHD streams from my Camcorder.

Check pg 25 of the manual for BD on DVD

"I tried to burn 1080i MPEG2 transferred from my cable DVR (without 5c flags of course) and all I threw at it needs to be recompressed"

you might want to check out what type of video stream you have, & if it can be modded or repaired to a compliant video file.

"I'm testing it now, and so far it's disappointing. I tried to burn 1080i MPEG2 transferred from my cable DVR"

For such a footage, the DVDA was never the best choice - also not for SD. Sony wants here always to stay on the complete secure side - so for compatibility reasons that footage will be recompressed. As long, as you are not able to enalbe recompressoin manually, and nobody knows if that is an option in future, that will not work.

Maybe Uleads Moviefactory 6+ with HD pack is the better choice for such a material.

The DVDA manual states very clearly that the Playstation 3 will NOT support AVCHD / BluRay interactivity, and refers you to loading each stream file manually if you want to see the video. They specifically state that menus, chapters, subtitles, etc. are NOT supported.

No problem if you don't mind buying a $350 burner and $15 blank disks to send home movies to the family and friends. Exactly the way Sony wants you to..........

Once again, Sony pokes a finger directly in the eye of its customers and supporters. My Sony FX-1 $3500 camcorder and Vegas suite are the very last Sony products I will EVER purchase.

Larry

Yes the PS3 does play AVCHD disc's with menu's the whole works, I have made several AVCHD disc's on my regular 4.7 and 8.5 DVD discs and played them back in my PS3, they included menu's chapters , everything, I just used other software such as Pinnacle , Nero , to creat them ..no need to open any files, it started just like any normal dvd disc would...Now with the release of A5 I will be able to use it as well.....

"Once again, Sony pokes a finger directly in the eye of its customers"

Did you write that now four or five times?
:)

Frankly spoken and again: there is a difference between 001 AVCHD-DVDs and 002-BDMV-DVDs. The PS3 reads 001 AVCHD-DVDs only (with menus), but the DVDA writtes only 002 BDMV DVD. That is a difference, and unfortunately a fact at the moment.

001 AVCHD-DVDs can be created by Uleads Moviefactory 6+ with HD pack, by Nero, by Pinnacle Studio 11.... and mayby other tools. But NOT by the DVDA, but also not by Encore CS3.

A possible reason for the fact, theit neither Encore CS3 nor DVDA5 supports 001 AVCHD DVD, could be, that AVCHD DVDs are not really professional solutions, but something similar to SVCDs or mini-DVDs, as we had them at the beginning of the DVD. Not, that AVCHD-DVDs are bad solutions - but purchase a Samsung 1400, and you will be able to play AVC based BDMV-DVDs.

Or use other tools to generate 001 AVCHD DVDs.

Or use a Blu Ray writter - the PS3 is able to playback BD-R/BD-RE without an issue.

I was planning to mess around with that, too... I didn't realize there's a format difference between AVCHD on DVD (eg, the Blu-Ray like file structure written by all those AVCHD camcorders) and simply dropping a BDMV file structure onto a DVD. Any ideas just what... I mean, is this an IFOEdit class problem, or something far more dramatic?

About that whole PS3 BD-R/BD-RE thing... are you certain. Particularly, with the latest software (V2.3)... you have actually played BDMV/BD-R on the PS3? That would be something of a relief....

I obviously haven't had DVDA 5 long enough for a great deal of experimentation. But I happened to have Nero around, and after burning a few BDMV/BD-R discs, I'm getting no love at all from the PS3, and also from a few other BD players.

Ok, now sure, some BD players simply don't support BD-R. It's really stupid of Sony (the BD Group, whoever) to have let this happen... it was stupid with DVD, though at least in the DVD days, a good portion of the compatibility issues were firmware related.

But Sony explicitly states compatibility between the PS3 and BD-R/RE. And yet, my test discs are rejected. I suppose there are a number of explanations, and as usual, I found many online. And certainly, it could be the Nero software (and yeah, I've asked them and I'm waiting on a reply). It could be the media itself... I didn't exactly buy the MOST expensive cakebox of 25 printable BD-Rs I could locate.

But it might also be that the PS3, and BD players in general, are now being instructed to simply not play BDMV on BD-R/RE anymore. There are many claims of this floating around the global rumor mill, and I have yet to hear a real answer. This would, of course, be really, really bad new for those of us who do small productions (I have sold many hundreds of videos on DVD-R, never enough of one title all at once to justify a glass master)... hoping BD isn't starting to smell in the aftermath of the format's victory.

Ok, now sure, some BD players simply don't support BD-R. It's really stupid of Sony (the BD Group, whoever) to have let this happen... it was stupid with DVD, though at least in the DVD days, a good portion of the compatibility issues were firmware related

This I will put squarely on the player maker. If you make a player that doesn't read BD-Rs and BR-REs your development manager is so amazingly incompetent it would be better for the entire world if he had a serious car accident. After all the problems there were with DVD, DVD-R, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW and DVD+R(RW), you't think they were not dumb enough not to test properly.

When it comes to DVDA missing AVCHD creation, well, I would currently put the SCS development manager or product manager or whoever he is, in the same category. This is astonishingly incompetent. It is incompetence at a level I have difficulty understanding. I mean, where are these people? Does SCS have them stuffed in a cave somewhere in Montana with no access to the rest of the world? I find it amazing that toy products like Ulead are a significant improvement over DVDA in many areas of Blu-Ray creation. Must be because Ulead was one of the drivers of this format and that Ulead has the best selling Blu-Ray player in the world, a player that incidentally doesn't support BDMV on DVD. Oh, no, that would be Sony.

As I have said before, there are some serious signs of rot in SCS, and even though I am really happy DVDA 5 is out and that it lets me create the Blu-Ray disks that I have wanted to create, I am gobsmacked by the incompleteness of the product.

Well crap!!! I just finished burning a BD-RE disc using Nero and my PS3 will not read the disc video, I hope when I try DVDA5 I have better luck.....

You will warrior!

Thanks for the heads up, by the way I think I found my problem, stupid me!!!! I believe I burned it as a Data disc,Duh!!!! Just got my Bluray LGH20 Burner so I am getting the hang of things...Great Burner by the way....Its just burning a BD-RE 25Gig disc at 2X can take forever , about 1:15 Minutes Per disc....(Ouch!!!!)....

Its just burning a BD-RE 25Gig disc at 2X can take forever , about 1:15 Minutes Per disc....(Ouch!!!!)....
------------------------------

Well, something wrong with your burner. It takes me 42 minutes to burn 25GB of data on BD-RE with my Lite-on BD burner.

There is a mode on Blu-ray burners where it writes a sector and then immediately reads it back for verification. Naturally, this takes twice as long. Certain burning software will allow you to shut this off.

"I didn't realize there's a format difference between AVCHD on DVD ... and simply dropping a BDMV file structure onto a DVD."

Have a look to an AVCHD-DVD, as generated by Nero, Uleads Moviefactory 6+ or Pinnacle studio. And compare that with the 002-BDMV structure as generated by Vegas 8 or the DVDA5. The difference is in some files - for example in index.bdmv and MovieObjekt.bdmv where you find the strings INDX0200 or MOBJ200.


"Ok, now sure, some BD players simply don't support BD-R."

I think only the very old one - for most players you have firmware updates that supports now BD-R.

And BD-R are supported on the PS3 - a lot of people reported that.

That solved my problem with the earlier burn , PS3 now played back the Disc perfectly...Burn time was much faster as well, only took about 45 Minutes this time from my desktop, had the External burner connected to my laptop earlier ,that may have been the reason....Anyway all is good...Ran the footage through Vegas with Bluray Template, DVDA5 then burned the Disc without any recompression ....I am a happy camper.....

This I will put squarely on the player maker. If you make a player that doesn't read BD-Rs and BR-REs your development manager is so amazingly incompetent it would be better for the entire world if he had a serious car accident. After all the problems there were with DVD, DVD-R, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW and DVD+R(RW), you't think they were not dumb enough not to test properly.

Well, I don't entirely agree... it was quite possible for the Blue Ray people (Sony and whoever else has actually been responsible for advancing this as a standard) to REQUIRE BD-R/RE compatibility. After all the problems with this on DVD, that should have been a no-brainer.

Yeah, if a company releases a player and simply doesn't test BD-R/RE compatibility, they're fools. But there are players on the market that explicitly state they're not compatible -- that implies testing and perhaps even intention, or at the least, "it just wasn't important to us". And while those "oops" guys might well release updates that fix this, if you're listing incompatibility as a feature, I sure wouldn't hold my breath on it being "fixed", because they're not claiming it's a problem.

Also, there's the whole trend of the CE industry toward non-support. One of the big reasons I got a PS3 as my livingroom BD deck is the fact that Sony's doing regular firmware releases, with improvements, bug fixes, new features, etc. Meanwhile, there are at least a few dedicated BD players that are already not getting updates, and as the next crop of new players hits the market this year, just how long do the older ones get bug fixes, even?

This isn't a big concern to me as a consumer... I'm smart enough to do my homework... also why I waited until January to jump on the Blu-Ray train, even though I had everything else HD over a year ago (even an red-laser DVD player with HD capability). But as a videographer, I want to know that a disc I make for a client has some reasonable chance of being useful to that client. Not requiring BD-R/RE compliance, and assurance that BDMV on BD-R is a mandatory format to support, is essentially saying that only Hollywood, Inc. actually matters.

I find it amazing that toy products like Ulead are a significant improvement over DVDA in many areas of Blu-Ray creation. Must be because Ulead was one of the drivers of this format and that Ulead has the best selling Blu-Ray player in the world, a player that incidentally doesn't support BDMV on DVD. Oh, no, that would be Sony.

Well, it's not just that... Sony is also a bigtime purveyor of AVCHD, even if it's not supported by DVDA5. They are, after all, by far the largest seller of DVD-media camcorders, and all AVCHD DVD camcorders produce AVCHD discs. It would seem fairly natural for a consumer using one of these to want to edit something back to the same format, but of course on a full sized DVD. Now, maybe it would make sense to not bother with AVCHD in BluPrint, but DVDA isn't all THAT high end... this is a Prosumer-level application (at best). It ought to produce a red-laser high-def DVD that plays on the PS3 (and with some assurance on most BD players). I suspect the level of support needed in DVDA is close to trivial, given everything the app already does.

what's the big deal...

how hard can it be for sony to implement BDMV on DVD either in DVDA 5 or on the PS3???

it's one company yet i can't even watch my own videos filmed with a sony AVCHD handycam.

DVDA 5.0b please... or new firmware for the PS3 - thanks