premiere cs3 (windows) to encore to blu ray

Al MacLeod

Al MacLeod

Well-known member
Just ordered the Videoguy's Blu Ray burner...any body doing win Premiere cs3 to encore blu ray ?
 
I've mastered plenty of Blu-Ray discs in Encore CS3 from content created in Premiere Pro CS3.... Is there any specific question you had?
 
I'm looking for settings or any practical advice on speed vs quality. Some one posted about a high bit rate that far too long to render. Any bumps in the road that I can avoid I guess, don't want to reinvent the wheel and all that.
What encoding settings do you use that hit the sweet spot?
 
Really depends entirely on the length and type of content. Can you give some examples of the content itself and then the total length? I'd be able to make a recommendation for the encode for the Blu-Ray for that, also specify whether you're going to single or dual layer; but since you have CS3, unless you're burning elsewhere, you'll need to stick with single layer, as CS4 added support for Dual layer Blu-Rays along with pop-up menus on Blu-Ray discs (as an aside, I'd highly recommend Encore CS4 if possible if you're going to be doing a lot of Blu-Ray output, for the Pop-Up menus alone even, it's a key factor of the format and very useful in doing some neat stuff, also a given to upgrade if you're mastering dual layer BD-Rs). I actually use printable Panasonic Dual Layer BD-Rs often these days for distribution of long form content review and highly recommend them, they're sold a bit cheaper in 5 packs as well (I encode to them in standard definition at that, you can fit a whole lot of nice looking SD mpeg2 content in 50GB minus overhead).

Also, keep your bitrate for burned Blu-rays under 25mbps if you can in both h264 and MPEG2 if you want to insure compatibility with some finicky players. Generally speaking, h264, properly encoded, will give you about the same quality that MPEG2 would at half the file size (though not always true). It will also take a lot longer to render. If you want a fast and 'dirty' (not neccesarily bad looking) render go for HD MPEG2 using CBR and use a bitrate calculator to see how much you can fit on the Blu-Ray disc.

If you don't already have some, get some BD-REs, both single and dual layers, and most players will play them back just fine with BDAV file structures on them and will allow you to test bitrates / encodings on those players without wasting a relatively expensive BD-R each time. The best way to learn about all this is trial and error, and that takes the cost out of it.

Honestly, the only time I ever worried about rendering for speed though was for HD dailies distribution on blu-ray, so none of my recommendations would factor that in, I'm always just about getting the best quality fit for whatever amount of content you have, regardless of render time. Someone else would have to chime in on that.

I'm by no means an expert compressionist, so those are the only 'general' recommendations I can think of relating to blu-ray in encore at the moment. Remember, just like DVDs or any compression, the cleaner the source footage is (lower noise), the better it'll compress without artifacting at a lower bitrate.
 
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I just shot a wedding and reception in La Jolla...a little over an hour. 720 24 pn. Looks nasty on DVD. Didn't know Encore would only do single layer. Of course quality is the only real concern...I'm trying to find the point of diminishing return for lengthy renders.
MPEG vs H264...Blu Ray does both and they are compatible with players?
 
Yes, all blu-ray players should be compatible with both MPEG2 (in SD and HD on a BD disc in the BDAV file structure, as output by Encore) as well as h264.

Oddly enough, I just delivered a wedding shot in The Immaculata in San Diego on Blu-Ray today.

You can fit a lot of great quality HD on a single layer disc, especially if you encode in h264, so play around with it a bit with smaller sample clips of your content and I'm sure you'll find a lock soon enough that'll work.

And as for an hour of content, you can deliver at top quality on in either format on Blu-Ray and be fine on space on a single layer disc.

I always output and test on a BD-RE disc before burning any deliverables though. A good habit to get into given the age of the technology and the inconsistancy in some players due to varying profiles, etc.
 
I had a heck of a time working through the DVD bugs with different players and with the cost of Blu Ray disks I want to avoid as many hurdles as I can. This Videoguy bundle has a rewritable disk so I can try stuff out cheaply. Most of the collective experience on this board is Mac based so I do appreciate your windows tips. I hate change....especially expensive change.
 
If you come up with any specific questions, feel free to post them or PM me and I'll be happy to help if I can. Like I said, I'm not an expert, but I have used it a lot for a lot of varied projects successfully and have picked up some tricks along the way.
 
Oh, and since you're a wedding guy. I highly recommend the Panasonic Printable Discs. They come in 5 packs in both single and dual layer format and you can pick them up at Fry's in San Diego (I'm assuming you're around here since the wedding was in La Jolla). Had great compatibility results all around with them.
 
Thanks again...it's my hope the burner gets shipped quickly and I don't get sucked into the software upgrade vortex. Time will tell.
 
On the upside, if you're on a 64bit platform and you're on Windows and have over 4gigs of RAM and use Premiere Pro, you'll love the CS4 upgrade providing all your plugins are compatible.
 
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