Blu Ray Burner or DVD Burner - Which one to use?

[Ronniebootwest]

I have had so many different opinions on this topic so I thought I would ask the experts on this forum to clarify the position.

I want to convert my PTE slide shows to HD and play them on my HD television via my Sony Blu-Ray player. I want to buy some blank blu-ray discs (because of the 25gb capacity) and I will then burn my HD slide shows onto these discs. Do I need to have a Blu-Ray burner and, if so, which one is recommended please?

I must confess that I am a little confused by this topic, so any advice and assistance would be very much appreciated.

Ron

[goddi]

I have had so many different opinions on this topic so I thought I would ask the experts on this forum to clarify the position.

I want to convert my PTE slide shows to HD and play them on my HD television via my Sony Blu-Ray player. I want to buy some blank blu-ray discs (because of the 25gb capacity) and I will then burn my HD slide shows onto these discs. Do I need to have a Blu-Ray burner and, if so, which one is recommended please?

I must confess that I am a little confused by this topic, so any advice and assistance would be very much appreciated.

Ron

===========================

Ron...

Putting PTE HD's on Blu-ray has been on my mind too. However, buying a burner and discs seems to be a bit on the expensive side and more time consuming, at the moment. I have gone with the WD HD media player (the European version seems to be the Medion Media Player?) to play my PTE HDs on my HD TV. The results are outstanding. So I am wondering if anyone has been able to compare the results between these two methods, PTE's on an HD media player vs. on a Blu-Ray disc. Playing them with something like the WD HD media player seems to be more straightforward and, in the longrun, less expensive since you can play them off of any memory stick. But...if the quality is improved, maybe going with Blu-ray is worth it. Has anyone seen any difference in the quality?

Thanks... Gary

[Carol Steele]

It all depends on the size of the shows Ron and whether you wish to splash out on a BD burner.

I use Pinnacle Studio to author my shows and the Studio software allows me to write HD shows in AVCHD format to ordinary DVD disks. You can use the compression within Studio to create shows of around 45 to 50 mins without any serious deterioration in quality. If you want the ultimate in quality though, you are restricted to shows of around 20-25mins if going via the AVCHD route on plain vanilla DVD's unless you want to go to full Blu-ray disk burning.

Top rated burners include either the new LG BH10LS30 burner at around £133 or the Pioneer BDR-205 burner at £163. Although these drives are rated at 10x and 12x burn speeds, this is rather pointless until BD's of this write value become available and affordable. The best value Blu-ray media can be obtained from MaxMedia Supplies Ltd where you can buy 4x full face inkjet printable disks from just 99p/disk (in large quantities) or £1.11 +VAT if bought in smaller quantities - but as he is a wholesaler, his minimum order is £50.

If you don't wish to get into disk authoring to produce a professional looking BD with proper menus etc, then you can (as Goddi has pointed out) use a media streaming device to connect your TV to your computer and view the files directly. I have an Xstreamer for this (around £90 on ebay - search on Xtreamer) as the Xtreamer is capable of dealing with many more file types than the WD Streamer - however, I do get better quality when viewing my BD or AVCHD disks.

Hope that helps

[Conflow]

Ronnie,

Apart from Blu-Ray ~ you say you want to convert your existing Slideshows to shown on your HD-Television ?.

This might sound stupid but correct me if I'm wrong:- I thought your Slideshows were in 4:3 Size Format ?.

But your 'Sony HD-Television' is in 16:9 Size Format ~ your 4:3 Slideshows will look awful in 16:9 Format

as you will have big Black-Pillars on the side of the Screen and long Horizontal-Borders on top and bottom

somewhat like a 'square-box' parked in the middle of a Wide-Screen.

Would you be satisfied with that ?? ~ because that's what you will get after a lot of hard work and expense.

Just thought I'd let you know before you fall into the HD-Wide Screen trap...before even using Blu-Ray.

This really is something serious to consider before you get into 'Blu-Ray Technology'. You might like to contact

Gary and discuss what the two of us were doing over the past 2 weeks, Gary will let you know the pitfalls etc,etc;

on a one-to-one basis.

Brian (Conflow)

[potwnc]

There's something we seem to overlook on this forum when we discuss this topic and that is the bitrate at which data can be delivered from the physical disk. This is equally as important as the other parameters.

The DVD standard (and here I mean the physical disk itself, independent of what is burned onto it) guarantees at least 8 megabits per second from the disc and the player it is being played in (you cannot, legally, use the DVD logo if your disc/player doesn't meet this standard). That may sound like a lot and for DVD-quality video playback it is more than adequate. But for very good HD-quality playback it's just not enough.

I say this from personal experience. I've burned lots of PTE shows onto DVD disc in AVCHD format at this same, 8Mb/s, bit rate. At 1080p and played back in a high-end Blu-ray player connected via HDMI cable to a high-end HDTV the quality is not very good in my opinion.

Ron, you have one of these discs that I burned for you, so you be the judge.

But the same PTE shows rendered at around 12-15Mb/s and played back from my hard drive using Media Player Classic look stunning. You could, of course, try burning content, that has been rendered at a higher bit rate than 8Mb/s, to AVCHD format on a standard DVD disc. In my experience even high-end Blu-ray players can't play them - your mileage may vary.

There's a reason why the Blu-ray standard (and again I mean the physical disk itself, independent of what is burned onto it) guarantees at least 25 megabits per second playback: for the best quality 1080p video you need that kind of data delivery capability. And this is just as true whether your show is 30 seconds or 2 hours.

My recommendation for anyone choosing the AVCHD-on-standard-DVD option would be to lower the resolution to 720p and render at no more than 8Mb/s. If you have a hard drive that can support faster bit rates do some experimenting first with files rendered to your computer's hard drive and play back the content using Media Player Classic, VLC Media Player etc.

[Ronniebootwest]

Carole,

Many thanks for your comments, they are very useful to me.

I have emailed the HD disk supplier that you mention, to see if they will let me purchase a smaller quantity, after all, I just want to experiment at this stage. This whole subject of using blu-ray discs seems to be a little daunting. Please see the post from Potwnc below. Are you actually burning to blu-ray? or are you using the AVCHD method?

Ron

[Ronniebootwest]

Ronnie,

Apart from Blu-Ray ~ you say you want to convert your existing Slideshows to shown on your HD-Television ?.

This might sound stupid but correct me if I'm wrong:- I thought your Slideshows were in 4:3 Size Format ?.

But your 'Sony HD-Television' is in 16:9 Size Format ~ your 4:3 Slideshows will look awful in 16:9 Format

as you will have big Black-Pillars on the side of the Screen and long Horizontal-Borders on top and bottom

somewhat like a 'square-box' parked in the middle of a Wide-Screen.

Would you be satisfied with that ?? ~ because that's what you will get after a lot of hard work and expense.

Just thought I'd let you know before you fall into the HD-Wide Screen trap...before even using Blu-Ray.

This really is something serious to consider before you get into 'Blu-Ray Technology'. You might like to contact

Gary and discuss what the two of us were doing over the past 2 weeks, Gary will let you know the pitfalls etc,etc;

on a one-to-one basis.

Hi Brian,

My older shows were allways in the 4:3 format because the size of all images were at 1024x768 in those days. However, I have now come up to date and produce almost all of my shows at 1920x1200 which is 16:10 format. If I know that I am going to view on my TV set, then I produce another exe file (of the same show) by resizing the images to 1920x1080. This avoids the black border bars that you mention.

Brian (Conflow)

[Ronniebootwest]

Potwnc,

As always, your comments are very useful and I thank you for taking the time to reply to my post. I note that you are not very enthusiastic about the quality of your AVCHD recordings and this surprises me a little because I thought that the DVD that you very kindly sent to me was rather good. I will digest all of your comments and do some more experimentation with AVCHD to see if the technology has moved any further forward.

Maybe I should wait a little tonger before moving into the blu-ray scenario.

Ron

[Ronniebootwest]

===========================

Ron...

Putting PTE HD's on Blu-ray has been on my mind too. However, buying a burner and discs seems to be a bit on the expensive side and more time consuming, at the moment. I have gone with the WD HD media player (the European version seems to be the Medion Media Player?) to play my PTE HDs on my HD TV. The results are outstanding. So I am wondering if anyone has been able to compare the results between these two methods, PTE's on an HD media player vs. on a Blu-Ray disc. Playing them with something like the WD HD media player seems to be more straightforward and, in the longrun, less expensive since you can play them off of any memory stick. But...if the quality is improved, maybe going with Blu-ray is worth it. Has anyone seen any difference in the quality?

Thanks... Gary

Hello Gary,

I agree with you that the WDHD, from Western Digital, is a good way to go for quick and easy display of slide shows on a television. BUT, to be able to produce a DVD with similar quality would be a step forward in convenience especially if you need to produce DVD's for sale.

You posed the question of whether any other forum member had been able to compare the quality of WDHD with that of a blu-ray disc - I would be interested to know the answer to that question as well.

Ron

[Carol Steele]

Carole,

Many thanks for your comments, they are very useful to me.

I have emailed the HD disk supplier that you mention, to see if they will let me purchase a smaller quantity, after all, I just want to experiment at this stage. This whole subject of using blu-ray discs seems to be a little daunting. Please see the post from Potwnc below. Are you actually burning to blu-ray? or are you using the AVCHD method?

Ron

Hi Ron,

Yes, I am burning both to Blu-ray disk (in which case I use the BDMV [AVC] format when producing the files for burning) and DVD disks burnt to with the AVCHD format (these will only play in BD players). I can see a small difference between the two types (which gets larger once the quality drops below 50-60%), but if one didn't have the other to compare it to, then I doubt if most people would notice. I also produce a standard definition disk from the same files and the drop in quality is vast and very easy to spot (when viewed on a 46" plasma TV) - but these look reasonable when viewed on a 26" TV and played back via an ordinary domestic DVD player.

If you are really interested I can send you copies of both a Blu-ray disk and an HD AVCHD burnt DVD disk so you can compare the two.

Carol

PS. For experimentation, I would recommend that you buy a couple of BD-RE disks (the rewritable ones) as you can use these many times over. Once you are happy with the results, only then burn to the standard BD-R disk (the write once type). It has saved me many more times the amount I paid for them - especially when the BD-R disks were selling for over £5/disk at the time.

[potwnc]

I note that you are not very enthusiastic about the quality of your AVCHD recordings and this surprises me a little because I thought that the DVD that you very kindly sent to me was rather good.

Ron, I suppose everything is relative. Certainly my view of AVCHD on DVDs is that it is much better than standard DVD video when played back on a HDTV using the right equipment. But compared to what can be achieved with a higher bitrate than DVD discs can deliver there is no comparison.

I will digest all of your comments and do some more experimentation with AVCHD to see if the technology has moved any further forward.

Maybe I should wait a little tonger before moving into the blu-ray scenario.

The technology of AVCHD on DVDs has not moved forward since I sent you that DVD. My point about bitrate is that it (8Mb/s) is the DVD standard and has been from day 1. It's not going to change. There were some experimental technologies, that I mention in my HD Appendix of the unofficial PTE guide, that tried to push the bitrate limit but they all died as non-starters once Blu-ray won the format war against HD-DVD.

But you don't need to actually burn your shows to Blu-ray discs to see for yourself what the quality improvement is at higher bitrates. (I also don't have a Blu-ray burner yet.) Remember that Blu-ray discs are just a convenient way to deliver content. You can produce that same content on your hard drive and, once your PC is hooked up to your HDTV, see what it would look like if you were actually playing it from a Blu-ray disc via a Blu-ray player.

If you want - and when I have time - I can post some example files that will show the difference that bitrate makes.

Ray

[Ronniebootwest]

Hi Ron,

If you are really interested I can send you copies of both a Blu-ray disk and an HD AVCHD burnt DVD disk so you can compare the two.

Carol

A very kind offer Carole, I would like to see the samples you mention. I will PM you with my address details.

Thankyou for your consideration.

Ron

[Ronniebootwest]

Ron,

If you want - and when I have time - I can post some example files that will show the difference that bitrate makes.

Ray

Thanks Ray, Please see my PM that I sent to you today.

Ron

[Carol Steele]

...................But you don't need to actually burn your shows to Blu-ray discs to see for yourself what the quality improvement is at higher bitrates. (I also don't have a Blu-ray burner yet.) Remember that Blu-ray discs are just a convenient way to deliver content. You can produce that same content on your hard drive and, once your PC is hooked up to your HDTV, see what it would look like if you were actually playing it from a Blu-ray disc via a Blu-ray player..................

Ray

That is OK if you haven't authored the show to include menus, titles etc Ray. If you have a completely authored show then it needs to be played back in a BD player (unless you have a copy of Cyberlink Power DVD or similar software installed on your PC). If you are simply playing back the m2ts files from the 'Stream' folder via Windows Media Player, then you cannot see the titles or menus to check if everything is working as it should.

[coopernatural]

Ronnie/All

I have been following this with interest as I too have been disappointed with standard dvd creations in pte. Ronnie, it seems you are going to have a go at some Bluray Discs, so it would be good to hear of your findings down the line.

As a new technology these Bluray players are shipped out with the paint still wet. Keep checking for firmware updates if you do get one.

It might be interesting to hear of the process, preferences and other software used to make Bluray compatible dvd or Bluray disc. I am not sure whether it’s AVI or HD Video In the ‘Create’ selection of PTE being worked with. A walkthrough from there would be appreciated.

For Carol.

Would it be possible to use double layer Dvd to extend or at least reduce compression on an AV?

Regarding the difference in quality between these Bluray compatible dvds and Bluray discs, is there a difference between static images, or is it more apparent in the transitions?

Davy

[Carol Steele]

.................For Carol.

Would it be possible to use double layer Dvd to extend or at least reduce compression on an AV?

Regarding the difference in quality between these Bluray compatible dvds and Bluray discs, is there a difference between static images, or is it more apparent in the transitions?

Davy

Hi Davy,

Yes, I have used double layer DVD's to reduce the compression, but these disks are almost as expensive as the BD's which I buy, so I don't tend to use them and you could also have problems with some BD players. However, it is certainly something worth considering if you don't wish to plunge into buying a BD writer at this moment in time.

I have a Wedding Sampler which is 48mins long and although I have not had problems with the static images, I have had a few problems to overcome with transitions (oddly enough I had to switch back to Pinnacle 12.1 to eliminate the problems - but that's another story ). However, I wouldn't want to go much past this time limit - but having said that, I would think that most slideshows made in PTE would be comfortably within this time frame. Hopefully Ron will post his observations of the disks which I have sent him in this thread as I might be too blinkered now (I've watched this Wedding Sampler umpteen and 10 times and I now tend to switch off after giving them a brief run through) - but I think he will report back excellent image quality from the BD and AVCHD DVD disks with the standard definition disk being far inferior in quality.

[coopernatural]

Hi Carol,

I have just ordered some Verbatim dual layer discs as the price has dropped to about £22 for a spindle of 25 (free delivery).

For dual layer discs I would only use only Verbatims.Having tested scores of single layer discs as well the Verbatims and Taiyo Yuden discs gave good burns with low errors and reliable performance.

Bluray discs are still unproven and with the higher densities involved,I could see reliability maybe raising its head with the cheaper media.

This wasn't supposed to happen with dvdr discs,but it did.

I think the hardest part of the encoding process is the transition fades (with blacks),but I don't know a lot about that.

Will be good to hear from Ronnie on the different discs.

Good to hear from folks on the cutting edge.

Thanks,

Davy

[potwnc]

Carol,

I'd be very interested to know at what bitrates you render when you produce (a) standard DVD; ( AVCHD on DVD and © BD.

Thanks,

Ray

[Carol Steele]

Carol,

I'd be very interested to know at what bitrates you render when you produce (a) standard DVD; ( AVCHD on DVD and © BD.

Thanks,

Ray

Hi Ray,

I tend to go with what Pinnacle defaults to with these formats i.e.

DVD is set to best quality which equates to a 7,500Kbits/sec bitrate

AVCHD is set to custom and for a 48 min video slideshow I have to knock this down to 14,000Kbits/sec to fit all the show on a standard DVD (the bitrate can be progressively increased if the show is smaller)

Blu-ray disks are created using Pinnacle's Best Quality option which equates to a bitrate of 40,000Kbits/sec (from the same project).

[Ronniebootwest]

Hi all,

I thought that this thread had finally run out of steam but I have one more final question that is bugging me.

I want to make some tests to compare visual quality of a PTE slide show when burned to a DVD disc. I have created a small (5 slide) show and created an mp4 (H-264) file in PTE.

I then used 'EmicsoftAVCHD' software to convert this file to AVCHD.

At this point I had to use Nero Vision to actually burn the file to a DVD-r disc and this was counterproductive because Nero does not now include Nero Vision.

So, my question is this, having created the AVCHD file, what software can be used to actually burn the disc? This software does not have to be 'free' (although that would be an advantage) I would like to know about any software that will do the best job.

Thanks for any suggestions,

Ronnie

[Ken Cox]

Ron

see

http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/burn_avchd_with_nero_burning_rom.cfm

http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&source=hp&q=AVCHD+file+--+how+to+burn&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=AVCHD+file+--+how+to+burn&gs_rfai=&fp=eed88dc81d4593e2

ken

[Carol Steele]

................So, my question is this, having created the AVCHD file, what software can be used to actually burn the disc? This software does not have to be 'free' (although that would be an advantage) I would like to know about any software that will do the best job.

Thanks for any suggestions,

Ronnie

Hi Ronnie,

The AVCHD files should be contained in a folder called 'BDMV' - and this should contain sub folders i.e.

BDMV (main folder)

->Backup (sub folder)

->Clipinf (sub folder)

->Playlist (sub folder)

->Stream (sub folder)

->index.bdmv (file)

->MovieObject (file)

You can use ImgBurn to create an ISO image file of these folders (point it to the BDMV main folder). Once you have created the ISO file you can use ImgBurn to write the ISO file to your DVD.

Simples - as the meercat would say

(Apologies to readers not in the UK - it refers to a rather quaint but charming set of TV commercials)

Carol

[Ronniebootwest]

Carol,

I will need to get my head around all of that although I think that I understand what you mean.

I still think that Nero 9 is the way to go because this will create the AVCHD file and also burn it to a DVD. Goddi did say that Nero have now decided to to exclude the AVCHD feature from version 9 so I contacted them for confirmation. This is thier reply:

[Carol Steele]

Carol,

I will need to get my head around all of that although I think that I understand what you mean.

I still think that Nero 9 is the way to go because this will create the AVCHD file and also burn it to a DVD. Goddi did say that Nero have now decided to to exclude the AVCHD feature from version 9 so I contacted them for confirmation. This is thier reply:

You might well be right in sticking with Nero, but from your message I thought you had switched to another AVCHD creation program. To clarify the file structure I have posted an attachment below. Once I have created the AVCHD from Pinnacle, it creates all the files with the necessary file structures in the folder I assign to it (in the case shown below this is the "Wedding Sampler AVCHD 2010 (AVCHD)" folder. I then point ImgBurn to this folder to create the ISO image file, which is subsequently used to burn the DVD from ImgBurn.

[goddi]

Carol,

I will need to get my head around all of that although I think that I understand what you mean.

I still think that Nero 9 is the way to go because this will create the AVCHD file and also burn it to a DVD. Goddi did say that Nero have now decided to to exclude the AVCHD feature from version 9 so I contacted them for confirmation.

======================

Hi Ronnie...

My Nero 8 does not have the menu to create an AVCHD file. After reading your previous postings, I had called the Nero tech people to find out what was going on. They told me that Nero 9 would have this capability but I would have to purchase an 'AVCHD plug-in' for $9.99 to make it work. And this 'plug-in' would not work with earlier versions. I did download the trial version of Nero 9. If I remember correctly, the AVCHD did not work...maybe because I did not purchase this plug-in. I did not like the behemoth size of Nero 9 or the need to buy a plug-in just to be able to try out the AVCHD process, so I just dumped it. Maybe Nero 10 would go smoother but I'm not ready to jump on board with it yet. Please let us know your experience if you do. I'll have to research it a bit more.

Thanks... Gary