"so we all have this great HD video in our timelines but it turns out bluray is dead and downrez to SD defeats the point!!"

Huh??
Media players do HD as well. In fact for my personal videos I no longer do disk at all. I stream it all from my computer hard drive to my Boxee Box on my main tv and my WD Tv Live on my second floor tv.

Media players (these types anyway) are FAR more versatile than any kind of optical media device. They'll play just about any format. They even deal with DTS, ACC and DD5.1

Saying you see the death of BD & DVD is like back a couple years after VHS came out you see the death of VHS. Well, duh, of course it will be replaced, but decades after it became a standard I can STILL buy VHS VCR's & media for it! DVD "died" years ago but I can still buy DVD players & media. I can still by CD players and media!

The thing those physical medias have that the digital only one's done have is a set standard. A DVD made in 1994 can run on a player bought now. They're all pretty much the same, even the media file itself is still mpeg-2 with uncompressed, AC3 or DTS audio. That's a given. Digital media players change with the wind. I'm betting the DVD/BD/CD standard will far outlive any media player standard you have today (IE for Zune, iCrap, etc), even if the physical media doesn't.

EDIT: the people you associate with may use media players but that doesn't mean most other people don't. You accommodate to them, just like a client. If you brought something to me on an iPod I'd say "Why didn't you bring a BD so I could see it on a bigger screen".

I use this free DLNA server application to stream files from my computer to my PS3, works like a charm.

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

I also use a Western Digital WD-TV media player when I take stuff to show to clients (and friends) since most have HDTVs with a spare HDMI input.

I also still deliver Blu-ray projects intended for commercial distribution, in fact, I just finished authoring a Blu-ray project just before I saw this thread. With media players or DLNA servers you can't include a menu system on a single file and not everyone has a media player. If they have a Blu-ray player (and a surprising number of people do), they can play my HD content as it was intended. Blu-ray discs are also much cheaper to distribute than a flash drive and infinitely more practical than having them download a 10-50 gigabyte file over the Internet.

I haven't tried this with BD but with a DVD I copy both the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders to the media player which treats it like a standard DVD player by showing menu selection.

True many more users have DVD players than media players but are buying media player ISO buying BD player.

I have been putting most of my HD stuff on a USB hard drive as an ISO file, and playing it using my media player.

I am also planning to put a few projects that may have wider appeal onto a BD for portability reasons, but am hesitant to go ahead with this because of the skip (next/previous) buttons bug with multi-page menus in DVDA. The problem shows up with Panasonic and some other brands of BD players (but apparently not Sony).

I use Adobe Encore for my DVD and Blu-ray authoring, I've never had a complaint about any incompatibility. I occasionally use DVD Architect for the less complicated authoring jobs.

> use Adobe Encore for my DVD and Blu-ray authoring, I've never had a complaint about any incompatibility. I occasionally use DVD Architect for the less complicated authoring jobs.

John, what format do you render out of Vegas for Adobe Encore Blu-ray authoring? Any workflow quirks I would need to be aware of if I wanted to try this?

/jerry

In particular, can you export markers into Encore?

PeterDuke,
I used Encore at work, and I cannot find a way to import the Vegas markers.

Dave T2

Depending on the length of the program I need to fit on the Blu-ray disc, I'll either use high bitrate MPEG2 or h.264 (MP4) in Encore. I prefer to use MPEG2 since it renders so much faster and at high bitrates looks just as good as h.264. Encore is pretty forgiving as to what it will import, back when I was using HDV, it would even use HDV files without recompression.

Encore will not import Vegas markers, so I just place them manually. I've never considered that to be a dealbreaker.

I have been putting most of my HD stuff on a USB hard drive as an ISO file, and playing it using my media player.

Are there any media players that will play the menu of a BD ISO in the same way that many of them will play the menu of a DVD ISO?

Tim

What format are end users asking for?

Well I must get all the backerds folk cuz I'm plum tickled if they ask for BD.
I did have one customer that wanted a project on a thumb drive so they could mass produce to send out to schools but other than that it's 95% DVD...at least no one asks for VHS any more.

I've never been asked for anything but DVD output.

Check that; about 5 years ago one person wondered if I could deliver a single VHS tape so he could mail it to his parents.

Like John C, I also use a Western Digital Media Player (WDTV) especially for showings of videos. Works very well.

The two most common formats I use are m2Ts and MKV.

John

I've said this before, why do people passively wait for someone to ask for a Blu-ray? I took the more proactive route and marketed the capability.

I finally got an 1080p HD Plasma and a blu-ray player and all I can say is WOW! I love it and find myself wanting to see all of my favorite movies in Blu-ray. I've also noticed that Red Box DVD rentals are carrying more blu rays and so are all the stores that sell videos. I personally think it's going to catch on (though more slowly than DVD) since people like to have something tangible like a disc in a case.

I'm in a smaller population area and more and more people I know are becoming blu-ray capable. Some people I know have commented that the do not like the resolution they are seeing on there HD sets (too real etc.). But I suspect more often than not they probably have the TV in vivid or dynamic mode. I took the time to calibrate my HDTV and I don't even want to watch DVDs anymore.

About a year ago i did get a request to deliver 30+ copies on VHS instead of DVD. I was rather shocked and confused so of course i asked for clarification. The reason?

Turns out the client picked VHS because he thought it would be faster and cheaper for me to reproduce than making DVDs, so he was only thinking of what was best for me. I tried to set him straight and explained that DVDs were about 1/15th the price and about 4 times faster to make. If he really really wanted VHS i'd have to charge an extra $6 per copy and it would take an extra week or more. He was very confused and had to check with a few other folks before he would believe me. Then he said, "well, ok, but only if the DVDs will be close to as good as the tapes would be." I assured him they would look far, far better.

Then he said, "well, ok, but only if the DVDs will be close to as good as the tapes would be." I assured him they would look far, far better.

Dang Kelly, sounds like you may be dealing with more backerds folk than I am.

"Are there any media players that will play the menu of a BD ISO in the same way that many of them will play the menu of a DVD ISO?"

I expect that there are many that will but I know there are many that won't.

My Dune HD Base 3.0 is one that will. Futhermore, the skip (next/previous) buttons work after a second menu page has been accessed, with ISO files created with DVDA, unlike with my Panasonic Recorder, which won't (burnt to a BD disc, of course).

Look for more delivery using handheld devices that either stream or store the content. People are using the devices for easy access and portablility and playing back via their large screens. Call them what you want -- but they aren't bluray.

There is currently no universally popular handheld device that can play full 1920x1080 HD at 20-35 Mbps. I understand that convenience is appealing to a large segment of the population and I do provide programming to those that do, but I personally won't trade convenience at the expense of quality. I'm funny that way. For now, Blu-ray is the highest quality method to distribute better-than-broadcast HD video to a relatively large audience.

I do not have an interest in delivering audio-visual experiences via video streaming on the internet or highly-compressed packages on USB thumb drives. Many posters here remark about the ease of use and portability as advantages. Some have commented that this of great concern to a certain current audience segment - possibly to those individuals under 35yrs of age - more than those over 55. Maybe so. However, I only see esoteric and the most esoteric of all solutions as delivery methods to clients.

From where I stand in production scale I have invested many thousands of dollars in cameras, editing post-production, and software support. I can use a $79.00 Blu-ray burner to burn a complete 25gig disk of video and supplementary materials on a $.95 cent each piece of blu-ray media. A disc that will last forever and carry the highest-definition video available to the ordinary consumer. Until something comes along better than the value that that process provides I shall continue cranking out blu-rays.