OT: can I burn Blu-Ray to DVDR

nolonemo wrote on 2/20/2008, 9:34 AM

Somehow, I haven't been able to find a clear answer to this:

Is it possible to author Blu-Ray, either as BDAV or BDMV to a DVDR, playable on a Blu-Ray settop box, analogous to burning a 3x HD-DVD? (I'm not limiting the question to Vegas.)

Comments

Laurence wrote on 2/20/2008, 10:38 AM

This has been covered a time or two on old threads, but to recap:

You can burn Blu-ray format to DVD+-R in either BDAV or MDMV formats and it will play on some Blu-ray players just fine but not on others. If you try a disc like this on a PS3 for instance, it will show up as a data disc. You can still play the video by going to the correct folder within the disc and selecting the media files, but this is hardly a good solution.

A better way is to format the DVD+-R as an AVCHD disc. Unfortunately you can't do this from Vegas, but you can do it from Ulead Movie Factory Plus with the HD plugin pack. The resulting disc will be recognized properly by all the Sony Blu-ray decks including the PS3 and playback perfectly with DVD style menus (sorry, no pop-up style menus yet). This is the solution that I use.

The only problem I have found so far is that the Samsung BDPS-1200 will not recognize AVCHD discs (though it will BDAV or BDMV burned to DVD+-R).

The AVCHD format (separate from the other Blu-ray formats) is now officially part of the Blu-ray specification and was designed for consumer grade AVCHD camcorders, so you can be reasonably confident that all new Blu-ray decks should handle this format.

A side note: Be aware that this format is not DVD+-R specific. This is good news in that you can use it on other media as well. For example, some Blu-ray decks (like the PS3) have card reader slots. If you format a memory card like it was an AVCHD disc, it will play back with menus when you insert it in the player.

Upper bitrate is 15mbps, which while not state of the art, looks very nice and will allow up to 75 minutes of playback time on a dual layer DVD+R.

nolonemo wrote on 2/20/2008, 10:48 AM

Thanks, Laurence. Extremely helpful, and I appreciate your taking the time to do the recap.

Douglas Cleary wrote on 2/20/2008, 11:31 AM

Interesting. I had been creating HD-DVDs from DVDR-DLs using ULead and was wondering where to go now.

MozartMan wrote on 2/20/2008, 12:09 PM

I wrote the guide:

How to author MPEG-2 to AVCHD on DVD5

Here is my post on AVS forum that has attached PDF file:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13065746#post13065746

douglas_clark wrote on 2/20/2008, 12:23 PM

Regarding where AVCHD can be played, I've seen the phrase "AVCHD-compatible DVD players and all Blu-ray players" on web sites for recent AVCHD camcorders. Are there actually any DVD (non-Blu-ray) players out that will play an AVCHD disk?

4eyes wrote on 2/20/2008, 2:02 PM

MozartMan,
Nice tutorial. I've also been doing the same for awhile.
The avchd disks with mpeg2 video I've made work nice in a PS3.
If I try to play them in one of the Sony BD players they stutter, like a bad burn, but the burn is good.
I can only think this is happening on the consumer BD players maybe because of the Max Bit Rate limit of avchd, I think it's 18MBS for optical media and 20+ more for harddisk or other (MTS format).
I didn't bother to re-encode the mpeg2 video down to 18mbs. Then they probably wouldn't stutter.
They work great on a PS3 though.
So on the BD Players the avchd video played good, the mpeg2 video stutters.
In the end decided to stay with avc/h264, but I still believe the hd-mpeg2 is the best.
The avc/h264 also looks great

Do yours stutter on a consumer BD player? Maybe I'm making the the avchd disk wrong.

MozartMan wrote on 2/20/2008, 2:28 PM

Thanks 4eyes.

I didn't try my AVCHD disks with MPEG-2 on other players. I only have PS3.
I made some disks with HDV files (25 Mbits CBR), and some disks with TS files (19 Mbits VBR max). PS3 plays them perfectly.

What did you have on your AVCHD/MPEG-2 disks that stuttered on Sony player? HDV or TS.

My guess is that BD players other than PS3 may have tough times playing HDV from DVD disk at 25 Mbits CBR. But TS files at 19 Mbits max VBR (which is almost the same bitrate as AVCHD - 15 Mbits) should be no problem.

And yes, PS3 is the King. :-)

4eyes wrote on 2/20/2008, 4:10 PM

What did you have on your AVCHD/MPEG-2 disks that stuttered on Sony player? HDV or TS.I made mixed avc/h264 & hd-mpeg2 video. Some are all hd-mpeg2.
The HDV were TS@25MBS, I exported them from Vegas and Muliplexed them in MF6, MF6 converts just the audio from mpeg2 to Dolby 5.1@448kbs. The resultant file(s) that multiplexed into the STREAMS folder is what I used to make the customized avchd disk.

Laurence wrote on 2/20/2008, 8:20 PM

All you need is http://www.ulead.com/dmf/plugin.htmthis[/link] $19.99 plugin. When you render from Vegas, use a 15mbps AVCHD encode instead of the 25mbps mpeg2 one you've been using for HD DVD compatible 3x DVDs.

After the plugin is installed, when you start a new project you have new BD-R and AVCHD disc options. Choose the AVCHD disc option, use your AVCHD Vegas render and everything will be just peachy keen!