Anybody ever released their indie film on Blu-Ray?

T

Tom Films

Active member
Like the title says, wondering if any DVXuser's have ever released their indie film on Blu-Ray? In other words been through Blu-Ray replication.

I am in the process of doing this and quickly finding out what a HUGE hassle it is. First off as an Adobe Encore user, I am unable to author a BDCMF / BD-J compliant master. Same goes for other so called HD compatible authoring programs (Roxio, Nero, etc). Sure they can burn a BD-R, but not a master compatible for replication. So unless you have a spare $20,000 lying around for a high end authoring program or a cool $10k for a replication company to do it, you're out of luck.

Next up is the cost. 1000 copies with all AACS licensing fees will run you in the neighborhood of $7000. Which is still doable if there was an affordable authoring solution.

So has anyone on here successfully replicated Blu-Ray? Like to hear your experience!

Thanks
Tom
 
I was gonna ask the same thing, Has anybody done any Blue Ray ANYTHING????

have you looked at CS3 premium? they calim to be able to burn Blue Ray Disc right out of the box.
 
Tom, Its not as expensive as it used to be, ive got quotes from companies in the low thousands, very low thousands, if you plan your assets and your structure, and deliver everything straight up you can get a replicable disk for that price. I believe the places ive contacted are using Sony's Blu-print software, which is around 50k for a license. or 10k for a 1 year license.

Ive not done any of my personal work, but we are publishing titles being done by the place ive contacted about placing our HD materials we are licensing onto a Blu-ray disc.

this is for my educational software / dvd publisher job in san jose.
 
Unix said:
I was gonna ask the same thing, Has anybody done any Blue Ray ANYTHING????

have you looked at CS3 premium? they calim to be able to burn Blue Ray Disc right out of the box.
Click to expand...

It can, but home burning isn't practical for anything you plan to sell in quantity. For many reasons.
 
Adobe software will allow you to burn BD-R for home use, but nothing compatible with replication. Neither will Roxio's software.

Now let me get into the license fees...

Content Provider Fee: $3000
AACS License Keys: $1700
License to use Blu-Ray Logo: $500/year
Order Fulfillment fee: $1000
Royalties: $0.04/disc

So before you even replicate one Blu-Ray disc you're looking at fees of $6200.

Considering that the AACS protection has already been cracked and provides virtually no protection, this is the biggest racket out there. What a scam.
 
Nic Aragon said:
Tom, Its not as expensive as it used to be, ive got quotes from companies in the low thousands, very low thousands, if you plan your assets and your structure, and deliver everything straight up you can get a replicable disk for that price. I believe the places ive contacted are using Sony's Blu-print software, which is around 50k for a license. or 10k for a 1 year license.

Ive not done any of my personal work, but we are publishing titles being done by the place ive contacted about placing our HD materials we are licensing onto a Blu-ray disc.

this is for my educational software / dvd publisher job in san jose.
Click to expand...

Nic, 90% of the replication companies out there are just middle man who source jobs to the VERY few companies who have actual replication equipment. Look at my post above. You're looking at over $6000 before you produce 1 disc if you are going by the book.
 
I burned that one disc that came with my BR burner/player just to see if and how it works. Works nice out of CS3/Encore.

But that was it. The discs are too expensive - I skip mass production unless one of my clients is willing to spend that $6000 on fees.

And I guess that will not happen so soon.

I had some requests and when the heard the price they say:
"What? Are they insane? No way, we go DVD"

Frank
 
Postmaster said:
I burned that one disc that came with my BR burner/player just to see if and how it works. Works nice out of CS3/Encore.

But that was it. The discs are too expensive - I skip mass production unless one of my clients is willing to spend that $6000 on fees.

And I guess that will not happen so soon.

I had some requests and when the heard the price they say:
"What? Are they insane? No way, we go DVD"

Frank
Click to expand...

So that begs the question. If in-home burns and becoming more widely compatible (especially with PS3) and you only need a niche, short run, what are the legalities behind selling in-house burns without any AACS licenses?

After all your burn won't have any copy protection, so how could the AACS require their licenses on a disc that doesn't use their protection?
 
Tom Films said:
Nic, 90% of the replication companies out there are just middle man who source jobs to the VERY few companies who have actual replication equipment. Look at my post above. You're looking at over $6000 before you produce 1 disc if you are going by the book.
Click to expand...

For us its getting the disc mastered, my quotes are well below 6k to have a single master disc that is replicable made, then its off to get them made per disc, but we dont make a disc unless its sold already by our sales people, which makes making the discs profitable, not a cost. Once we get an order in, we approve the printing of the discs
 
Yeah it looks totally crappy from an indie perspective. I'd stick with a nice H.264 or DIVX download. As good as blu-ray quality and no licensing fees to deal with. There are many services that allow the secure delivery of digital goods. That seems like a much wiser way to go for indies than Blu-Ray. Because even if you've gotten all the way through the replication mass- where are you selling them? If it's on the net mostly anyway might as well stick with a download.

Noah
 
According to this article, blu-ray sales amounted to 7.4 million discs in the first six months of 2008. Compare and contrast that with the 412 million discs sold in total (405 million on standard-def DVD) and that'll pretty much tell you the market viability of releasing on blu-ray. Overall, blu-ray is taking about 1.7% of the market.

Among the blockbuster releases the numbers are closer, it's about 93% DVD vs. 7% blu-ray. But that's just counting the top-10 or top-20 titles. Looking at the market overall, it's 98.3% DVD, 1.7% blu-ray.

At the exorbitant prices they charge for discs and authoring, and the astonishingly tiny sliver of market space blu-ray occupies, I doubt we'll do any blu-ray mastering any time soon. Probably not for at least four years.
 
shot all my surf movie in hd with blu-ray release in mind . well just not going to happen. not worried about being copied. if i could make ablu-ray copy and replicate it at a reasonable rate i would . but does not look like that will happen in the near future. so it will be dvd for me . to bad the shots look great in hd. it,s just not the same.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top