How to make Blu-Ray disks?

B

bbinnard

Well-known member
I have Vegas Movie Studio and I want to put the output onto a Blu-Ray disk with lead-in menus, scene navigation, etc. The version of DVD Architect that comes with Vegas MS cannot make Blu-Rays; it only makes regular DVDs (which I have done.)

I just spent an hour looking for Blu-Ray authoring products and can't find any that look reasonable. Power Producer is way too simple and limited (maybe I got spoiled by Vegas) and the version of DVD Architect that does support Blu-Ray is bundled with Vegas Pro and not available separately.

As an amateur I can't justify the expense of Vegas Pro (MS suits me just fine) but its frustrating to have all this 1080P video and not be able to put it on disk.

Mac solutions (if there are any) won't work for me since I'm a Vista-64 user. Did I miss something someplace? Do Blu-Ray writers come with software that can make complete disks? The ones I've seen appear to be just bare drives.
 
Thanks Perrone - I had not found that one before.

$500 to cut a disk from piece of software for which I paid $85? This makes no sense. Plus it's not like they have to develop the code from scratch - even my $85 Vegas MS has the code in it to burn Blu-Rays, just without the menus and "nice pretty stuff." But all the code for that is already in DVD Architect. Which is free.

Maybe I should volunteer to make the necessary coding changes myself.

Its situations like that that make me wonder how the marketing folks end up with so much power. Sony gets a piece of every Blu-Ray disk sold on the planet. But will they make it easy (inexpensive) for end users to make their own disks? When its a technical no-brainer to do this? And no new development is needed? Good grief.

End rant.
 
DVD Architect isn't free.

Consumer software isn't meant for high-end uses, as you well know. If you want a professional product, you need the professional mojo. Wondering why consumer software can't do certain things is like wondering why a Hummer can't deflect a bullet when a Hum-Vee can. There are just certain things it's meant to do, certain thing it's not, and if you want the high-end stuff, you have to pay for it.

Sure, it would be nice to be able to do anything the pros do on a sub-$100 piece of software, but is it reasonable to expect it? Not really.
 
A freeware authoring tool option that allows for simple menus is multiavchd

As Perrone suggested above, to make a real spec compliant blu-ray disc (i.e. replicated) you need expensive software such as cinevision or blu-print; streams authored by DVDA or Encore won't pass verification, but are good enough for "homebrew" blu-rays and will play on most standalone units
 
Exactly, PDR.

There are three levels at work here, just like there are levels in NLEs....

You have the Big Boy stuff that costs $2500+

You have the mid-range pro stuff like Sonic's DVDit ProHD, DVD Architect, Adobe Encore, etc.

And you have the freeware/consumer stuff that can do some things, but can't do a lot of things.

Really just depends on what you're doing and what you need.

If you are deriving income from your shoots (Weddings, events, etc.) then the mid-level stuff is fine. If you are doing studio grade work then you're playing with the big boys and they are buying your tools, even if indirectly. If you're a weekender shooting your kids games or birthday parties, then your options are limited for the moment while things trickle down.

Everyone want's something for nothing. Like David, I can remember when if you wanted to cut on an NLE, you ponied up $20k for a Media100 or $50k for an AVID and you did it. There were no $100 editing programs for the little guy. That's why you had "edit in camera" features like fade to black, fade to white, etc.

We're so spoiled now...
 
Yeah. Send this thread back 5-6 years to when this board began, which is hardly ancient history.

The response -- you're shooting 1080p video on a camera which cost less than $2000, editing it at home on software which cost less than $100, you can make Blu-ray discs with it, and you're on a "rant" because it would cost you a couple hundred extra to make fancier menus?

To do what you're doing now, at the time (again, only 5-6 years ago), would have cost you as much as your house. Patience, grasshopper. Future versions of VMS will undoubtedly contain better Blu-ray menu capability, but right now, take a breath and appreciate what you have.
 
And just to put things in perspective, do any of you folks remember when DVD came out?

It was a nightmare too - and it took a few years before people understood the specs and proper authoring tools came out (open source and otherwise).

We are starting to see improvements in blu-ray tools too, so in a few years I'm sure we will have better software, and we will see trickle down effect, much like we saw with DVD
 
Yes - early adopters pay the price. This is true for any field, especially tech / consumer electronics.

Look at the price of storage on hard drives, flash (NAND) ram prices etc.... You can get 1.5TB HDD for ~$100 USD now. Even a few years ago a 40GB HDD was $300

Have a look at blu-ray studio encoding tools like Blu-Code and Cinemacraft HD - these are 1/2 the price they were just a year ago!
 
Of course you are all correct and I fully realize that. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. And I do remember the "old days" too - my first home PC cost $3300 (in kit form) and it had a whopping 16K of memory, one 5/14" floppy disk, and a serial and a parallel port. Period.

And before that I recall buying memory for a system at work the was $1M per megabyte. And I bought 2 of them.

My point was simply that once the software is written it costs little more to make it available than to not. The significant difference between the "big boy" users and amateurs like me is not the tools they use, but the talent they have. For instance, I fully realize that even though I can imitate what Ken Burns does, nothing I do will ever be even in the same ballpark as his work. And that's fine with me. But that doesn't mean I don't want to play with his toys.

Besides, at my age, waiting becomes an unattractive alternative.
 
Not sure what to say, then. You're asking to "play with" a pro's "toys" but don't want to pay pro prices. It's just too much to expect. What you're already able to do is astounding compared to even a few years ago.
 
bbinnard said:
But that doesn't mean I don't want to play with his toys.

Besides, at my age, waiting becomes an unattractive alternative.
Click to expand...

Ok, then buy the tools that Ken Burns buys. Simple. You think he's sitting around complaining that Avid or FCP don't cost $100?

Let's take a different tack here. WHY do you need to burn Blu Ray at all? If this is for personal use, just buy a $100 popcorn hour or WD Player, put your hD files on it, and play it. Done.
 
Yes, I'd like to make full HD disks strictly for my personal use and to give to some friends & family. I bought a GH1 & Vegas MS specifically so I could produce HD output. I can play my HD videos straight off the camera or, after editing, from rendered Vegas files, using my PS3, but normal people don't have PS3's. The best they can do is get a Blu-Ray player. So that's why I want to make Blu-Ray disks.

I know I can burn individual files to Blu-Ray straight from Vegas MS, but again, normal people are used to DVD menu systems and would be confounded by the need to select individual files. For instance, I just completed a DVD (because I can't make Blu-Ray) from a day long trip to Disneyland. It has 8 different chapters (is that the correct term?) and all told is about 50 min. long. (I got the entire Small World ride in one take and my kids think that's terrific.) Using DVD Architect I created a simple menu that lets people play each chapter or all of them in sequence. This makes a nice package and my kids and grand kids will be able to use it easily.

My frustration/rant is simply that all the tools are already out there that would allow me to do exactly the same for Blu-Ray. And the only reason I can't use them is that Sony won't release them at a consumer-level price. Even though they have all the code required and it is in use and debugged.

I'm certainly not suggesting I want to do the fancy stuff systems like Avid do. All of that is way over my head, and I am not in that league nor want to be. My point was that Sony is missing the boat here - if they made it easier for people like me to make Blu-Ray disks they would sell more disks and those disks would generate more sales for BD players.
 
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