Format Wars: HDV Output, Part 2

This article describes the hardware and software options for authoring and producing Blu-ray Discs to recordable media. In our last installment, I discussed these options for HD DVD videos, and compared Blu-ray to HD DVD from the perspective of the HDV producer.

While all HD DVD discs produced by sub-$1,000 authoring programs are identical, there are three types of Blu-ray Discs, and different players may support all three types—or, more usually, a subset of the three. Sometimes, players seem to change their playback characteristics, almost at random.

For example, I produced my first Blu-ray Disc in December 2006 with Sonic Solutions DVDit Pro HD and a Pioneer BDR-101A, and it played perfectly on a loaner Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc player that Sonic had provided. I liked the combination so well that when I sent the Samsung unit back, I bought another, only to find that the disc no longer played. In the interim, Samsung had “upgraded” the player firmware, excluding the type of disc that DVDit produced.

To get the disc to play, I had to find and install an older version of the firmware. It was right about then that I realized that Samsung, and other large Blu-ray set top vendors had their eyes focused solely on the consumer mass market and couldn't care less about smaller producers who were using their products primarily to play recordable media. This means that while you can certainly produce Blu-ray Discs, you need to know and control the playback environment much more closely than with HD DVD. Hopefully, this will become less important over time, but if you want your Blu-ray Disc to play on your customer''s player, you better pay attention.

Figure 1. This BDMV Blu-ray Disc has the same feature set as an SD disc.
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There are three types of Blu-ray Discs. At the top in both features and playback compatibility are discs produced with products that support the entire BD-ROM (Blu-ray Disc Read Only Memory), such as Sonic Solutions Scenarist. These titles are usually mass replicated, as opposed to burned on DVD recorders, and often have pop-up menus and interactive graphics and other content, usually falling into the HDMV (Movie Mode) specification. Since this is the mass market, all Blu-ray set- top boxes play HDMV discs.

Figure 2. Producing a BDAV disc in CyberLink PowerProducer.
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The next level is BDMV (Blu- ray Disc Movie), which are Blu-ray Discs with functionality of DVD discs, with menus, buttons and the like, but Blu-ray content and disc capacity. This is the level of functionality provided by Adobe Encore and Sonic DVDit Pro HD, which essentially extends their current DVD-authoring capabilities to Blu-ray. Figure 1 contains the menu from a BDMV disc that I recently produced with Adobe Encore.

From a design standpoint, the least functional level is BDAV (Blu-ray Disc Audio/Visual), which is offered by consumer programs such as Sonic Easy Media Creator, Ulead MovieFactory, and Cyberlink PowerProducer (Figure 2). BDAV discs don''t have menus, and consumers play video file via a file manager available in all Blu-ray players, rather than a custom menu created by the producer. This can make playback comparatively primitive (Figure 3) compared to BDMV options—at least until the video starts playing, at which point the quality of the high-definition video should be identical.

Figure 3.The BDAV player presents a list of titles, often with funky names (this disc was produced by a program that will remain unnamed but is not CyberLink).
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Note that the Sonic, Ulead, and CyberLink programs burn their BDAV projects to Blu-ray media, so you''ll need a Blu-ray recorder. In contrast, Pinnacle Studio can record AVCHD videos to legacy SD single- or dual-layer media, which is the only Blu-ray-on-SD-media option that I know of.

Interestingly, as much as we like fancy menus, BDMV or even BDAV would be more than adequate for most video producers except for the major problem identified above; not all set-top players play BDMV or BDAV—or even BD-R or BD-RE, which are recordable and rewriteable discs, respectively. For this reason, before buying or recommending a player, make sure that it plays the formats you''ll be creating. Before agreeing to produce a Blu-ray Disc for a client, you should define the playback environment to ensure compatibility.

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If you choose the Blu-ray route, you''ll need a recorder. As I learned when testing Adobe Encore, all software programs don''t work equally well with all recorders. For example, Encore worked fine with the LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive burner but not the Pioneer BDR-101A. Before buying a recorder, check with the software vendor to make sure that the recorder is compatible with the authoring program.

Other considerations include whether the unit supports dual-layer media (LaCie does, but Panasonic doesn''t), and whether it''s internal or external. Because I have multiple production machines in my shop, including Mac and Windows notebooks, I find the external version much more handy.

For those interested in learning the workflow for creating a Blu-ray Disc with Adobe Encore, check out my tutorial here.

Overall, though I still distribute the bulk of my DVDs in SD, it''s absolutely wonderful to be able to produce a high-definition disc, even if only for a limited number of players. If you''re an HDV shooter, now''s the time to start exploring these options.