Any one else wonder why DVD Studio Pro still can't do Blue-ray yet?

I have also wondered the same thing. At NAB what was discussed is that Apple is on the Blu-Ray board and there is movement. But no date as to when they will start supporting Blu-Ray devices and encoding Blu-Ray in Compressor. For now I know that you can manipulate some settings in Compressor to achieve an encode setting that will work on Blu-Ray. At some point you will still have to use Adobe Encore or a Vegas product to author Blu-Ray DVDs.

You would think that Apple would be all over it considering HD DVD got it's final nail in the coffin on around Feb 19th.

I saw this video last week and thought it was quite interesting. The ability to burn Blu-Ray discs with a red laser from a standard DVD burner playable in Blu-Ray player. This is coming from Larry Jordan.

studiodaily.com/main/videosplash/

We made a Blu-ray DVD with Encore a few weeks ago and it worked great. I did the encode inside of Compressor because I had heard that the Main Concept compressor had issues with Blu-ray (sync, etc.).

Then, I just imported the video and made an image file and was able to burn back to a REGULAR DVD which played fine in the Blu-ray player I had access too.

I can write up detailed instructions if anyone is interested.

I am very much interested. Here is a explanation from Bruce Nazarian, MPSE, “the Digital guy” CEO, Digital Media Consulting Group, Inc
President, DVD Association, Inc. (DVDA)

some links

www.Adobe.com - Encore CS3 information
www.Roxio.com - Toast 9 info, forums
www.Recipe4DVD.com
www.DVDA.org
www.blu-raydisc.info - license info, aps
www.AACSLA.com - AACS licenses, fee info

I would like a play-by-play as well. Thanks for the tip.

Here is a tutorial on compressing for Blue-ray in Compressor.

www.pixelcorps.tv/macbreak_studio002

I basically followed that tutorial from Pixelcorps (which, is a great podcast I'd recommend subscribing too, Macbreak Weekly Studio), but they don't tell you anything about putting it to disc, which was the weird part. I promise I'll write this up, as soon as I find a second, but here's the lo-fi details and you can probably figure it out from there:

-Compress using the settings recommended in this tutorial
-Open Encore and "author" a BD disc.
-It will open the MPEG-2 and ac3
-Burn the BD folder to a disc image
-Burn the image with disk utility.

This will NOT work unless it is a high-bitrate MPEG-2. No fancy h.264, etc. But crank that bitrate up, the spec can handle a peak of 40mbps for goodness sake!

It really is as simple as that. I'm not saying it will play in all 100% of Blu-ray machines, but it definitally played in the one we tested which was fairly new but did not have any of hte firmware updates yet, so there is hope.

There is also a method for using DVD Studio Pro to do something similar for HD-DVD players (those of you that actually bought one). I think they only play in the Toshiba players though.

I think the reason we haven't seen an update to DVD-SP in years is largely because Steve Jobs believes optical media is dead and that the future is download only. I totally disagree. I think when it comes to movies, people like to own tangible items, plus they enjoy the added value that come with a disc (special features, commentaries etc).

I suspect we'll eventually see a minor update to DVD-SP that supports BD-R HDMV on Blu-ray (like Encore) but I think it's unlikely we'll ever see a powerful BD-J, replication-ready Blu-ray authoring tool from Apple. However, I'd love to be proved wrong.

Also, for the record, compressor does not currently make Blu-ray compliant MPEG-2 streams. They will work in most cases, but the streams will fail professional replication ready verification. We've found the most compatible consumer encoder to be the Main Concept MPEG-2 encoder built into After Effects and Premiere. We use After Effects to create many of our Blu-ray compatible MPEG-2 streams. However, the Main Concept AVC/H.264 for Blu-ray is not yet compliant, so avoid it for now. We do use Compressor to create the AC3 files for BD, and they work fine.

We just completed our first full blown BD-J Blu-ray title, "Emma Smith: My Story", with both pop-up menus and full screen menus all created within the BD-J space. and I can say that the learning curve is steep.

Jeremy Neish
Rivetal, Inc.
801-818-2222

As I understand it, VC-1 and H624 files created in Squeeze will not pass high-end verification for replication. Though Squeeze created videos should work fine for Encore mastered BD-R/RE discs. That may have changed with the latest update from Squeeze, I haven't heard.

I cannot remember if it was creative cow, or another mag that had a really great article about the massive problems trying to originate blue-ray. it has a lot to do with licensing, more than it had to do with compression. They cited that reliability in blue-ray is really hard without paying through the nose. this is probably why Apple has stayed clear of blue-ray. I'm sure when the program can guarantee that the failure rate won't exceed 10% then we'll see FCP carry it. In addition "Episode" says it has a Blue-ray encoder in it's compression settings. i haven't tried it yet, I'm still fighting with the FLV settings.

Blu-ray is so complex. First off, the VC-1 and h.264 codecs are still problematic. Most discs are still being made with a high bitrate MPEG-2 compression.

Your comments on the costs are dead-on. Each time a blu-ray disc is replicated it costs $1500 dollars to license the encryption technology. That would even be if you only make 1 disc. Obviously, you can make them yourself, but blank Blu-rays are $26 a disc.

There is a rumor flying around about new Macbook Pro's being announced on Tuesday and that they will support Blu-ray. I am not sure if that is just for playback or recording...I'm assuming just playback.

Well, I always thought that Blu-Ray was superior, but Sony's business practices seem to get in the way. HDDDVDs were much cheaper to replicate. Mediafast here locally had (or still has) a replicator that also does DVD's. From what I understand it was a lot cheaper to by a machine that does DVD's and HDDVD's than 2 machines. Hopefully Sony will drop that technology licensing ridiculousness. But the format wars are over, so no sense crying over spilled milk.

No luck on the Macbook pro with Blu-Ray though.