Blu-ray lesson with the HVX200

J

Jim Anderson

Well-known member
I recently learned the hard way that the default MBS setting for transcoding to Blu-ray (BD-R) should be left at 15mbs (At least when using the Pioneer BDR-202). I thought increasing the mbs to 30 would make it play really crisp but my poor system had to transcode for 24 hours to burn 2 & 1/2 hours in real time DVCPRO-HD uprezzed to 1280x720 from 960x720. Never again, unless I leave it transcoding while I go on vacation. LOL
 
I haven't done any Blu-Ray projects yet, so I am wondering whether the 30mbs encode yielded substantially better final results than 15mbs (assuming you did some test renders to compare the two). If so, it seems to me that a one-time 24-hour render might well be worth it if the project is an important enough one.
 
Im interested, my self in Blu Ray as a means of storing footage, instead of a external hard drive. How are you finding the technology for that purpose if you are even using it for that purpose? And do your clients have blu ray players?
 
I'm coming up on two years experience burning HD to Blu-ray.

I back up my files to multiple HD's and LTO-3 tape.

I wouldn't consider archiving to BD unless I had a lot of time on my hands (and nothing better to do with it).
 
For archiving, I still think hard drives are the way to go in terms of $$ per GB. More and more requests are coming in for Blu-ray for client playback. Corporate clients are also using HD monitors with Blu-ray players for other clients or even projection.
 
The 15mbs looked fine and took about 18 hours to transcode. It had a TRT of about 140 minutes which was compressed to 19gb. When the settings were changed to 30 mbs, it rendered much slower and I had to cancel the transcode after almost 35 hours. I never was able to compare the 2 rates. Maybe a short trailer or something would be worth it for the added time.
 
Jim, what burner do you have? and how much did it cost. I know ps3 is a blu ray reader but i dont think clients will have a ps3 at there office.
 
I have the Pioneer BDR-202 with the enclosure so it is only a USB 2.0 interface instead of SATA which would surely speed up the burn time. The BD-R discs I use only can be burned at 2x's. I hear the newest model at NAB is a little faster. Consumer playback decks are around $300.00 now and do a good job of increasing regular dvd quality as well since HD sets are used more and more.
 
I'm getting more HD projects myself now, and have not burned a blu-ray project yet. Interesting thread. But I assume HD takes quite a while when preparing for blu-ray. I'm just wondering If Apple G5 towers will be able give you that luxury of preparing for Blu-ray oppose to using the Pioneer burner. But I guess the Pioneer is most popularl unit at this point, or is it?
 
Jim Anderson said:
The 15mbs looked fine and took about 18 hours to transcode. It had a TRT of about 140 minutes which was compressed to 19gb. When the settings were changed to 30 mbs, it rendered much slower and I had to cancel the transcode after almost 35 hours. I never was able to compare the 2 rates. Maybe a short trailer or something would be worth it for the added time.
Click to expand...

18 hours. ouch, i was thinkinking of using this as a replacement for tapes. I was gonna burn a bd-r from a laptop on location and hand it off to the client.
Unless you are referring to burning off a NLE timeline That i can understand because of effects etc. But if its just raw file footage then thats a problem.
 
Forget that idea. Way too long to transcode. I bought a sony MC5 which is just under $200.00 and can burn an SD dvd with or without burned in timecode for the clients using the rca video/audio ports from the camera in real time. When you're finished shooting, it just takes a few minutes to finalize the disc and you're done.
 
Eljoninjo said:
I think you can speed up that time alot. I dont remember the price but check:
http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/compresshd/

cheers
Joel
Click to expand...
sorry if this sounds silly but im a little confused, So the idea is that this card sits inside my computer tower and it exports the clip raw footage from my card or harddrive straight out through an HDMI cable into a blu ray recorder, and it does this faster than realtime? have i got it right or am i totally wrong?
 
For client hand-offs, why not give them BD-R's with raw DVCPRO footage on them? If they just want copies for the edit bay, they're not going to want BR anyway...
 
It would still have to transcode to BD-R at a snail pace unless you were using a Matrox card and/or SATA interface. The Sony MC-5 would be much faster since it would burn just SD from the camera. It would just be for logging/reference anyway.
 
Hard drives tend to be rated for about 3 years of working operation. Plus, you need to keep them on and magnetized to ensure your data doesn't get corrupted. Even then you might develop problems. If you are storing footage on a hard drive, be sure to turn it on at least once per season. Nothing is guaranteed though.

DVD's and Blu-ray discs . . . I wouldn't trust them for anything critical and especially long term.

LTO-3 tapes for serious archiving is the way to go. 400GB of uncompressed (800GB compressed) storage per $40 tape. Those tapes are rated to sit on a shelf for 30 years. This is typically what the big boys use to archive their "digital negatives."
 
Agreed that hard drives are bad for archiving. I've seen almost no problems with stored archival CDRs and DVDRs, but almost the opposite with hard drives - at least partial file damage in about 2/3rds of cases when left the drives were left untouched for a year or more. Just like cars, drives need to be "driven" periodically.
 
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