How to create HD quality Blu-ray disks with VS X4?

[Juddster27]

Am using the rather ancient VideoStudio Pro 14.3.0.5 (its stable for me and includes a blu-ray plugin out of the box) and up until now after creating my project I would go to Share > Create Disk > DVD, run through the menu wizard and then choose “Create disc image“ to create an iso file. Once I had the iso file I could then right click it in windows explorer and choose to “Burn disc image”, thus creating as many DVD copies as I needed. 15GB worth of none HD 720x576 AVI files typically taking less than 1 hour to create an approx. 1 hour ripable iso file.

My aim now is to create better quality (HD) 1 hour long “movies”, to distribute to non-internet connected family. Looking to upgrade my video camera to a HD one and also start burning Blu-ray discs to achieve this, and as a test I plucked some HD files off my Fathers videocam to play around with.

After creating my new project, I ran through Share > Create Disk > Blu-ray and then the menu wizard, this time the ONLY selectable options are “Create to disc” or “Create Blu-ray folders”.

Whilst merely testing, not wishing to start creating coasters I chose “Create Blu-ray folders”

The first issue I came across was that the 75 minute, 4.6GB worth of 1280x720 HD avi file footage took close on 9 hours to create the Blue-ray folder, with the CPU at 95%+ for much of the early part of that process.

Typical avi files non HD videocam
Frame width 720
Frame Height 576
Data Rate 28,795 kbps
Total Bitrate 29,818 kbps
Frame rate /sec 25
Audio bit rate 1,024 kbps
Channels 2 (stereo)
Audio Sample Rate 32.000 kHz

Typical avi files from HD videocam
Frame width 1280
Frame Height 720
Data Rate 7,000-10,000 kbps
Total Bitrate 7,000-10,000 kbps
Frame rate /sec 29.97
Audio bit rate 385 kbps
Channels 2 (stereo)
Audio Sample Rate 48.000 kHz

Q1 Why does it take so much longer to create the Blu-ray folder versus the DVD iso, are there settings I need to change or do differently to speed creation up?

Q2 Once the VideoStudio Blu-ray folder creation has finished, is there a quick way of creating a physical Blu-ray “HD quality” disc, complete with all the menus I created in VS, from the resultant files? I could of course create a physical Blu-ray disc from the output step of VideoStudio, but if I wanted a second Blu-ray disc a week later, wouldn’t that mean having to go through the whole X hour render\burn process again?

With thanks.

[ehbowen]

Once you create the folders, either for Blu-ray or DVD, in VideoStudio, look at using Imgburn to actually burn the final DVD or Blu-ray to disc.

[Davidk]

Re the time taken matter, I think that you have jumped a step and made things a bit more complicated.
First, you seem happy with the idea of creating an image file to check using VLC before burning it, so why not continue that practice for bluray? It works just as well with a BR file as a DVD file.
Second, an avi file is much larger than later formats, such as mpeg2 - the DVD standard file format - or mp4, so the disk creation/burning process even to an iso, is first of all converting the avi source files of your project to a bluray compliant format like mp4. Those formats deliver the same resolution as avi, but in much smaller file sizes, because they use compression techniques to get that result.
Third, to achieve a higher resolution result the file formats record and process material in comparable higher detail, per frame. An mp4 HD file is typically 4x the size of a DVD/mpeg-2. See the attached image for a relative size of pixels versus the format you may want to use, and bear in mind that the more data process for a better resolution image, the longer your computer will take to do it. The more frames you specify for the output (eg, 50fps versus 25fps) to improve resolution quality, the longer the disk creation process will take.

Seriously consider the correct recording format you use for the result you want - some like avi or mpg simply will not record in the degree of detail you want in an HD result. Using avi or mpg source files to produce BR may make the result look quite washed out.
Fourth, as part of the bluray disk setup, you can create a menu with an introduction, text editing and labels etc. It sounds like you haven't ventured into this part of making a disk yet.
Fifth, lastly, once you are happy with the content of the iso file, use a disk burner program to burn from iso. That could be VS (feature available on the Tools menu), or one of several free from on-line sources.

[lata]

Burning your DVD as you have done is correct.

Video Studio likes DV.Avi finding it easy to edit, converting to Mpeg2 to burn the disc is also easy for Video Studio, the frame size and frame rates being the same makes completing the render in a reasonable time. 720 x 480 x 29.97fps ntsc --- 720 x 576 x 25 Pal
Your HD 1280 x 720, surprised at then being avi, I would have expected MP4, however are more difficult to convert to Bluray compliant
Which will use 1920 x 1080 x 29.97 x 25000kbps, the data rate may be even higher at 35000kbps.
This will be the difference in render times

You show some frame rates – 25fps and 29.97 fps, those are a mix of Pal and NTSC, I assume you are in USA and using NTSC at 29.97

When you purchase a HD camcorder as you are intending to burn Bluray then consider a camcorder that records to Motion Transport Stream MTS, ( AVCHD Camcorder) those recordings will be Bluray Compliant and could if needed be burnt to disc without any further conversion. If your source videos are MTS then burning a Bluray disc will be easier to do and faster to complete.
Typically 1920 x 1080 x 29.97 x 20,000kbps

As ehbowen reply use ImgBurn to burn the OSO and BDMV to disc.

If you wish to view the final video properties used to burn the disc, open the BDMV to locate the Stream folder, there you will find the files converted by the burn process, drag to Video Studio timeline to check the properties.

View this we page for a few hints on burning DVD and BD
http://lata.me.uk/corel/all.htm