HVX to Blu-ray...is it worth the investment right now?

F

FUBARFilms

Active member
I work with FCP on a Mac Pro...all the HD footage I shoot is through the HVX. I've been recently contemplating investing in this for my editing bay - http://www.mcetech.com/blu-ray/

Now on the surface this seems like it would be a no-brainer as I am a very proud Blu-ray user. However, I have heard many negative things about burning HVX footgae to Blu-ray and I've also heard that certain Blu-ray players are unable to play BD-Rs. Not to mention the fact that DVD Studio Pro doesn't even support Blu-ray

I was wondering if there were any other HVX users out there that export to Blu-ray and if there experience has been positive enough to recommend it to others at this point in time.
 
We've been shooting DVCProHD footage for 30 months.

I have authored blu-ray™ discs in both Encore CS3 and Toast 9 and played them from a Pioneer Elite blu-ray™ set top to a Pioneer Elite 42" plasma.

I took the same footage and encoded to SD and played it off a upconverting HDMI Pioneer SD DVD to the same plasma.

At ten feet, my clients cannot tell the difference.

At three feet, the blu ray discs showed sharper lines, etc. But nobody is going to be viewing large screen plasmas that close.

I just see a sufficiently discernible difference between SD and blu ray on a solid upconvering HDMI to a solid plasma or LCD.

Toast has really issues with 24p/720 DVCProHD footage, particularly pN.

Both Toast and Encore CS3 use MainConcept's encoder. For h.264, it doesn't look good to me.
 
Last year I shot a short horror/office comedy called "Cube Zombies"

www.cubezombies.com

The short was shot with an HVX and I edited in Adobe Premiere with Raylight. (At the time, Premiere support for DVCPRO-HD was not there)

My own Blu-ray player (Samsung BDP-1200) would formerly play BD directory structures burned to a DVD-R. Unfortunately, a subsequent firmware update disabled this wonderful feature. But while editing, I had no proper HD monitor connected to my PC so every few days I would use Adobe Encore to burn the movie to a "Blu DVD." It worked very well.

Adobe Encore also lets you create one project at HD resolution and output to either Blu-Ray or downsample to DVD. However, not wanting Encore to re-compress my already compressed video, I actually created two projects and exported two different MPEGs from Premiere. That way, each encode is only one generation of compression removed from the DVCPro-HD original.

(I used Blu-Ray MPEG2 rather than h.264 because MPEG is what I am familiar with, but the Adobe Media Encoder also offers h.264.)

I created final Blu-Ray and DVDs for for my cast and crew, and I sell the DVD on Amazon through CreateSpace. I have been waiting for CreateSpace to add Blu-Ray distribution but they have not yet -- I'm assuming that player compatibility issues with BD-R may be what's preventing it.

I also projected the completed Blu-Ray at a local movie theater for our short's premiere party. I ended up taking my own Blu-Ray player into the projection booth and connecting the HD component outs to their digital projector. The result was pretty sharp on a 25-foot wide screen, and even sitting in the back of the theater I thought I saw better resolution than the DVDs I've seen projected on the same system -- but I'm not sure anybody else could tell the difference.

For me, it was worth it. Of course, I haven't been able to distribute the Blu-Rays, and the film festivals that have played the movie have done so from DVD, so most people have only seen it at DVD quality.

But I am happy anyway to have a full-resolution BD of the film for myself, and I was also happy that my local movie theater was willing to work with me on getting HD onto the big screen. It did feel extra cutting-edge, though, and I think it will be a few more years before Blu-Ray is widely accepted and we're able to pass around blu-rays like we do currently with DVDs.
 
Right now it seems like the issue for prosumer Blu-ray is the encoding and burning software...MCE's internal burner seems like a solid piece of hardware, I think I'm going to take the gamble that the encoding and burning will catch up soon enough.
 
Adobe Encore does a good job encoding and authoring, and there are plenty of drives on the market. (I have a Pioneer, and I know that Sony makes drives as well.)

I just don't understand why Apple has been so hesitant about Blu-Ray. Apple really led the way with DVD, but they are more than a year behind with Blu-ray, considering they still don't offer any software or sell a Mac with a built-in burner.

Well, at least you have the Adobe products on Mac now.
 
I guess we disagree.

The h.264 encoder in Encore when coupled to 24p/720 footage produced some serious flickering lines, etc. which should not appear in blu ray production. Overall, the footage just wasn't sharp.

It was unsatisfactory to me. Interestingly, the same footage taken SD did not show the flickering. That footage was encoded in Compressor and BitVice.

I worked extensively with the product manager for Encore and was unable to produce better results.
 
As I said earlier in the thread, I have not used h.264, only MPEG2. So I can't comment on your specific complaint.
 
I don't know if I would use the adobe products, rather wait for a DVD SP upgrade...in the meantime, how is Toast 9 for Blu-ray video buring? Can it burn h.264 and MPEG-2 video files created in Compressor?
 
Don't hold your breath waiting for Apple to do any Blu-ray updates to DVD SP. From what I hear (and this is my opinion based on informal conversations) they are content to wait for enough bandwidth to allow the download market to takeover and thus not even bother with one more generation of physical disc. Your mileage may vary. Hope I'm wrong as this position does not seem defensible.

imo biggest problem is still lack of widespread and robust consumer players. There's too much uncertainty over whether or not your burned disc will play. Another big problem is the muxing. Another big problem is the budget hit for the encryption licensing you are required to take if you want to have your discs manufactured by a third party. For me, Netblender solves the authoring stuff. If you are burning your own discs, then the licensing thing is not a problem, but this increases the playback failure risks. imo, Createspace and other 3rd parties have not figured out how to handle the encryption licensing stuff and so are not playing in this market yet.
thx
JB
 
Hi,

I bought one of the MCE recorders a couple of months ago and I did want to point you to this thread that was going on at the time:

http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/55/859959

I did have a few issues with the purchase. I was in a bit of a hurry when I purchased the drive as I needed to do a quick turn around with a disc for a client.

Because of the installation issues, I was not able to do the work for a client but have since made a few discs.

The drive from MCE is a LG drive. I don't think that is actually mentioned on their website.

If I could do it all over again, I would have simply bought from OWC as I have never had a problem with them.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Panasonic/SW5583BKTMP/
 
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