VS 9 - burning bluray

[garjobo]

Is it true that you need to BUY a plugin to burn to bluray? I thought earlier versions of VS allowed you to do this - built in?

[Ken Berry]

Yes -- Corel introduced that with X8 and despite our complaints continued it with X9. I suspect they were working on the assumption that not many people burn BD discs these days. Since Corel has to pay a licensing fee of some kind to the BD developers, they cut their costs by requiring people who use BD to pay. It costs under US$10.

[garjobo]

Thanks Ken for the quick reply.

Thats a shame - had VS 5 and just this week updated to VS 9 - so wanting to remind myself - found out as much as possible before i start making dvds again.

If its only £5 or so i suppose ...but a bit annoying seeing as VS 5 had it!! Less people burning to bluray? where are they burning too..straight to online services etc? im more the old fashioned create a dvd cover type.

[Ken Berry]

Though I have a Blu-Ray burner, lots of blank printable BD discs and not one but two BD players, I have not burned a BD disc in nearly two years. These days I make AVCHD clips and store them on USB stick drives or external hard drives. Many HDTVs these days will play such files directly from the drive or at least from a BD player into which you plug the drive... And stick drives have fallen drastically in price...

[canuck]

Thanks Ken for the quick reply.

Thats a shame - had VS 5 and just this week updated to VS 9 - so wanting to remind myself - found out as much as possible before i start making dvds again.

If its only £5 or so i suppose ...but a bit annoying seeing as VS 5 had it!! Less people burning to bluray? where are they burning too..straight to online services etc? im more the old fashioned create a dvd cover type.

BlueRay is almost dead. My local Staples/BestBuy stores no longer even carry blank BD discs. Like Ken, I "burn" all my video to USB sticks and play them direct on my TV or through my streaming Media Player.

[garjobo]

May as well ask then...best 'stick' to copy AVCHD onto. New to me really..but any recommendations and...burn simply Avchd and this will work for most tv's? best method?

[Ken Berry]

I've used a variety of brands, but most of them el cheapo products from China. But all of them work. The only obvious thing you have to bear in mind is the size of the final clip you want to store on them. But AVCHD compression at least allows high quality with a file size lower than Blu-Ray mpeg-2. (Mind you, I have also produced that but tend to put that on a larger external hard disk...)

As for the production line, simply render your project to AVCHD in the VS editing module, and use Windows to transfer it to the USB drive like you would any other file.

The only thing you need to watch out for is if you have a PlayStation and use that as a Blu-Ray player. (My two are both PS3's.) And for them to recognise the stick drive or external hard drive, Sony requires the drive to be formatted in FAT32 as the PS cannot see NTFS. Unfortunately most external hard drives these days come formatted with the latter and it is not necessarily a simple matter to reformat them to FAT32, though it can be done. A further PS quirk is that you have to set up a folder on the drive labelled VIDEO (the upper case is important) for the PS to be able to find the video!

[garjobo]

as always Ken fountain of knowledge, thanks for input, may start moving with the times then...no need to use that paintshop pro x8 ive just downloaded then! dvd covers thing of the past.

[alanball]

Ken
I know you have been using memory stickd for s while now for your HD videods I was wondering how you store, label and organise them for future access. I have always used DVD, s and Standard definition
but would like to go HD if I could find an alternative way for storage.

[canuck]

In addition to burning to USb stick (for easier watching on a TV), I also copy the video to external hard drive for future access as well as backup.

[Ken Berry]

I do exactly as canuck does. With the price of 1 TB USB 3.0 drives now below $100, and 2 TB for under $150, you can do an awful lot of storage on them. After that it is just a matter of working out your own preferred folder structure. So I have one folder for all my New Zealand videos; another for Chile; another for China; and so on.

And as further back-up I also copy all my principal videos to the 500 GB hard drive in my wireless PS3... which is my main Blu-Ray player.

[alanball]

Thanks canuck and Ken for that info.
(I have just re-read my question - I must remember not to use my 7" tablet again for typing!!)
So I assume you both just reuse the USB stick and keep a copy of Disc image files (if you have used a menu structure) on your hard drives?

[Ken Berry]

I don't use a menu structure. Why? If you have things stored in folders and in alphabetical order, do you really need a pretty menu that plays for only a few seconds before you choose what to play?

[lata]

Hi Alan

We are not using the burner module to create a disc image.

We are rendering the project by Share AVC/H.264. selecting an appropriate template to for your video.

What are the properties of your original video files?

If your original video files are MTS using 50/60P then that could be used retaining quality.
Burning a disc would reduce that to 25 / 29 fps.

Depending on your original video properties you could use Same as First clip which should retain the original quality.

You will not have a Disc Menu just the video file to playback from Memory stick

Disc Images will not playback via Memory Stick, it least I cannot play back Disc Images.
Although there may be some playback devices that will do that , maybe PS3, Ken can answer that?


I have a Smart TV that has network capabilities so I can access my media files on my computer and play direct from there, I do have it hard wired not wireless which seems to work better.
Although I am still burning BD for the menu structure

[Ken Berry]

Disc Images will not playback via Memory Stick, it least I cannot play back Disc Images.
Although there may be some playback devices that will do that , maybe PS3, Ken can answer that?

No, that doesn't work. I just do as you do and convert a project to AVCHD in the Editing module, then simply transfer that to the USB drive. As I said above, using this method, I see no need for menu structures anyway... I very much doubt that BD players, and especially the PS3, would play an ISO on a USB drive. The PS3 sees the structure, but then offers to play the individual videos in the STREAM sub-folder i.e. 00000.m2ts; 00001.m2ts and so on. One of these would be the menu, but it could not be made to link to the other videos in the ISO.