" Using the blu ray burner AND regular DVD, I should be able to get 20-30 minutes of 1080p footage and have it playable on blu ray player, correct?

aquaholik. I think you may be mixing processes here and you may be very disapointed with the results. (Or I misunderstand what you want to do).

A pure Blueray burner will NOT burn a regular DVD because the regular DVD recording layer is not where the Blue laser can focus. But if your Blueray burner is a combo burner and has a red laser AND a blue laser, then by sensing the disc it will change to the proper laser. Therefore, check whether your burner is a combo burner or a pure Blueray.

The burner itself does not determine the disc file structure. It is determined by the authoring program.

Since you evidently have already a regular red laser burner, try it first in making BD5's. And, if your chosen burner is only Blueray, you can still burn cheap BD5's in your regular burner and full, expensive Blueray disc in your Blueray burner.

Yes, that particular burner is a combo burner. Thanks for clearing it up.

One other question,how do you edit the index file to make the BD5 disc created by DVDA5 playable in most Sony Player.

I am confused by the BD5 format and AVCHD format, they look very similar.

I also have that LG Blu-ray burner and it works fine for burning from DVDAS5 to Blu-ray, DVD and BD5 disks which all play fine on my Sony Blu-ray player and my friend's LG Blu-ray player.

If you look up AVCHD "disk" on Wikipedia you will see it has a particular format whereas the BD9 format (which includes the so-called BD5) is a Blu-ray compatible disk burned with the red laser. It has never been actively promoted by Blu-ray player makers, probably for political and financial reasons. They will do whatever it seems to take to prevent people from copying commercial releases. VMS 9 and 10 can make BD5/9 disks by selecting the proper output configuration but Sony also does not promote this format. I wish it were actively promoted and supported because it makes home video much less expensive to distribute.

Ken,

Did you get a firmware update for that burner by installing the software or did you use it "as is"? I am going to install the burner tomorrow and bypass the software installation since the only thing I want in that software package is the blue ray disc playback software. If it burns blue ray just fine then I will not install the software since Birk has a problem with it until he installed it under the F8 option.

Thanks for the email reply Ken, very much appreciated.

Some follow up questions here;

Birk, your warning seemed rather ominous. I think you are referring to a 64 bit system since I just swapped out my DVD burner with the LG BD burner on my 32 bit system with no problems.

Melacrino, A pure Blueray burner will NOT burn a regular DVD A pure Blu-ray burner? Where would you find one of those? I have only seen Blu-ray burners that also burn DVDs and CDs. Not that it really matters. It just seems rather odd to me.

My system is Win7-64 but I believe all Windows 7 versions require signed drivers.

Installing the LG drive was no problem; it worked A-OK after I installed it and so did my other optical drive, a DVD/RW drive. The problem occurred when I attempted to install the LG software. At that point Win7 refused to install the LG drivers but nevertheless it (the LG software) managed to hose both optical drives and rendered them unusable until I discovered the F8 trick.

You did not say whether or not you attempted to install the LG software. If you did, and it installed OK, my guess is LG has fixed it.

My system is Win7-64 but I believe all Windows 7 versions require signed drivers.

Installing the LG drive was no problem; it worked A-OK after I installed it and so did my other optical drive, a DVD/RW drive. The problem occurred when I attempted to install the LG software. At that point Win7 refused to install the LG drivers but nevertheless it (the LG software) managed to hose both optical drives and rendered them unusable until I discovered the F8 trick.

You did not say whether or not you attempted to install the LG software. If you did, and it installed OK, my guess is LG has fixed it.

I'm getting one of these LG WH10LS30K units very soon. What is the least expensive Blu-Ray media you have found (25GB) that is reliable? My customer DVDs are inked in an HP printer and I hope I can find white inkjet printable BDs as well.

Thanks,
Chip

I ordered 10 Verbatim 4x 25GB writeables for $22.85 and one Sony 2x 25GB R/W for $11.50 along with my LG drive. I got everything at Amazon because they had the best overall price for all 3 items.

I just rechecked my "Super Multi Blue Install Disk" for the WH10LS30 and I could find no drivers on it. As far as I can see, it only installs the Cyberlink software suite. I installed the suite soon after installing the drive and then uninstalled it - nothing interesting there and the one app I was interested in, PowerProducer, would not install. Emailed Cyberlink and they said it was demo software - so no replacement disk was offered. Looks to me like I could just throw the disk away or give it to GoodWill.

AFAIR, I did not have to install a driver for Win7 32 bit. No issues - I'm happy!

I bought 25 Ritek 4X Blu-ray Inkjet printable disks for $50 usd from Rima.com and made 6 BDs of my granddaughter's wedding. They look very good to me.

Thanks for the media tips. The show I have right now wasn't sold as a BD project but it is looking so good during the edit that I want to be able to play it in HD. I'm not trusting the LTH blu-rays quite yet (mainly for longevity reasons) but I can make some test burns and see how long they last.

The lower cost LTH BD media is not universally supported. It's bad enough that the mfrs don't guarantee it will play all BD-R/RE (burned, rather than pressed) disks. The lower price is tempting but until it is supported rather universally by Blu-ray player mfrs I won't use LTH media and don't recommend them.

My Sony BDP-BX2 supports LTH and, IIRC, the LG WH10LS30 will burn LTH. Here is a topic on LTH media:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=155169

KenJ62:

I don't mean to be obsessive/compulsive about this, but what version of the "Super Multi Blue Install Disc" do you have? Mine is Ver. 1.1a and lists the following Cyberlink software: PowerDVD, Power2Go, Media Show, PowerProducer, and YouCam.

The disk label says nothing about any driver software, but in fact it is there. The driver stuff is actually 2 things: (1) the updated optical disk drivers and (2) a TSR that sits on the tray and checks for LG software updates. This software is named fwupdate.exe and gets installed in a directory named lg_firmwareupdate.

On my system I disable the LG update software but I left it installed just in case they ever manage to get signed drivers.

When I ran the Super Multi disk it put up a window that let me pick firmware update and/or any/all of the CyberLink software things. Oddly enough, even if I did not select the firmware update and picked only a couple of the CyberLink items it still attempted to install the firmware updates. This is how I became very familiar with System Restore. The 2 Cyberlink items I picked did install and run OK.

My system is Win7-64 Home Premium and my sense was all Win7 versions behaved the same way in terms of requiring signed drivers. But maybe that is incorrect.

Short version:

3 successful BD25 burns using Ridata 4x media and 3 different burning programs, DVDAS5, Windows 7 image burner, IMGBurn. All discs recognized and playable by the PS3 and the Cyberlink PowerDVD 8. I guess the original firmware is fine.

Long version:

Boot in F8, disable driver signing but decided against installing the software that updates the firmware since I want to see how well it works out of the box. The only software I needed was blue ray playback on my computer so I only installed PowerDVD 8. Reboot, just to be sure. The drive did not come with mounting screw and I didn't have any handy so I just replaced my DVD burner.

Reboot, authored some BD iso with DVDAS5 and strangely enough, PowerDVD 8 refused to recognized the mounted image(using Daemons Tool lite). I authored another short 1 title BD iso and the same result. I said to heck with PowerDVD 8 and went ahead and author my intended project. It consisted of three titles prepared by DVDAS5. One was standard SD mpeg, the other two was 16Mbps .avc rendered by VMS10 with the corresponding .w64 PCM audio. I created a simple menu and added chapter marks in the three titles.

I prepared the BD25 image and strangely enough, PowerDVD 8 has no problem playing back the mounted image. It was 22.75 GB.

DVDAS5 burned the image at 2x(I don't see any other option) and Win7 also burn it at 2x. They both took about 40+ minutes. IMGBurn it at up to 8x( I was a little worried since it is a 4x media) and was done in 13 minutes. I figured average burn rate was 6x. All 3 disc played fine although I didn't sit thru the entire disc. I just chapter skip them really quickly.

Oddly enough, even if I did not select the firmware update and picked only a couple of the CyberLink items it still attempted to install the firmware updates.

That is strange. I did not select the software to update firmware, only PowerDVD 8 and it install that and I believe another program that probably checks to see if my system can play blue ray, even though I did not check it. It did not install the software that updates the firmware.

Birk, KenJ62: I don't mean to be obsessive/compulsive about this You'll get a good run for your money on that <grin>.

This software is named fwupdate.exe and gets installed in a directory named lg_firmwareupdate. I went spelunking and found the folder, file and the service, which had been disabled. So - you were right, the disk does install an update utility and my disk version is also 1.1a, Copyright 2009.

Edit: Launching "LG Tool Kit" from All Programs brings up an icon in the System Tray which allows you to Update the firmware. Selecting About brings up "LG ODD Auto Firmware Update" with Model = WH10LS30, Version = 1.00, Program version: 9.01.1124.01. It reports No updates available.

In my explorations I also found a Cyberlink service named Richvideo which also installs as a service from a shared files folder which, although there are no Cyberlink apps on my PC now, still installs at boot time! Why must I have to take out the trash manually? <frown>

Lee, I see you got some of those Ritek 4X. I heard a rumor that Ritek BD media may perform good now but may not hold up in a year or so. Bad news if it's true but I haven't had a chance to check it out yet.

I guess I have less than good memory because I can't remember installing any drivers or update utilities for my LG burner. The LG updater is installed as I mentioned but the service does not start automatically.

-=Ken=-

KenJ62:

The best utility out there for managing started tasks is Autoruns which is part of a very spiffy utility suite created by a pretty smart Microsofter. Here's the link to get it:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

It has a somewhat intimidating interface at first, but all you have to do is uncheck the things you don't want to run. If it turns out you unchecked something you need just reboot, start Autoruns, and put the check back.

Autoruns is especially good for finding and stopping things you don't want running on your system. Depending on what you've got installed you may discover all sorts of tasks/services that you don't want. Google, Adobe, Intuit, etc. are (in)famous for putting this junk on systems without permission. I just kill all of it. FYI my system runs with 39 active tasks after it finishes booting, and some of these are for my trackball, keyboard, and a pop-up menubar enhancement I've got.

Just to check I did run the LG Updater thingy and I got exactly the same results you did.

Thanks for the link, Birk. I got familiar with those guys when Sysinternals was independent of Micro$oft.

What is bizarre is that while the LG utility has an entry in my installed programs, the Richvideo service does not. I want to be able to do more than preventing the service from running. I want to uninstall the /Cyberlink/Shared Files folder and all its apps. It looks like I may have to just do a little surgery. I am not happy with sloppy programming - and any app that leaves any junk behind is sloppy. Reading the info on Autoruns, it looks like it may help me get rid of that stuff - so I'll install it.

Revo uninstaller http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html is a very good, free program for clearing out unwanted programs, folder and registry entries.

Yes, thanks, that's my regular uninstaller. Even with the Advanced uninstall mode it sometimes misses things. There are no entries for Cyberlink nor Richvideo. Autoruns is great! I'll be spending more time with it.

Lee, you can have your thread back now.