Lots of progress with Blu-ray format on DVD+R

[Bligmerk]

There has been a lot of progress with putting HD video on DVD+R single and dual layer in Blu-ray format that are watchable with the PS3 as well as other stand-alone Blu-ray players. This is mainly for people that have HD camcorders and it is a quick and cheap way to store HD clips without having to invest in a Blu-ray burner or Blu-ray writeable media, which is still pretty expensive. It is also useful for storing HD clips grabbed from HD TV broadcasts that can be received and grabbed with very cheap ATSC and Clear-QAM receivers for PC's, like the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR:

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr950q.html

In the US, there are over-the-air (OTA) broadcasts of the Discovery Channel, a lot of sporting events and network television shows that are in 1080i. These are usually grabbed as MPEG-2 although there are now more coming out storing in AVCHD-MP4. The two big free tools are tsRemux and TSMuxer. They have both added 1080p Blu-ray export and also can save out as AVCHD- MP4. The Blu-ray formatted structure can be burned to DVD+R, single if it fits or dual layer up to 8.5GB in full 1080p. The two tools also do a great job of upscaling and will take 720p to 1080p with very impressive results. The individual AVCHD MP4 files can be a lot smaller in size with virtually no loss in quality, burned to a DVD as a Data Disk and copied to the PS3 hard drive. More info later.

[A-SIN]

Sweet, I have tons of HD video on my PC. But, is there a special way of burning the video to a DVD disc or is it the same (just use nero or roxio)?

If there is a special way, could you please share?

thanks

[Bligmerk]

Sweet, I have tons of HD video on my PC. But, is there a special way of burning the video to a DVD disc or is it the same (just use nero or roxio)?

Yeah, the easiest and most direct way is Nero 8 with UDF 2.50. Imgburn (www.imgburn.com) is free and also supposed to work but haven't tried it yet. There are a lot of other Blu-ray burning apps out there but they are usually very picky about detecting a Blu-ray drive and Blu-ray media where Nero isn't. There are a lot of 720p MKV out there and they will usually fit on a dual layer DVD, some even on single layer, so it is a good way to have the whole movie stored on a cheap media without having to take up hard drive space. 720p looks good but having it on physical media lets the PS3 upscale it to 1080p or some HDTV will upscale 720p to 1080p. tsRemuxer also does a very good job of upscaling 720p to 1080p but that usually takes the filesize beyond DVD capacity. Haven't tried MKV yet but have done a few WMV-HD, probably the same path just replace WMV-HD with MKV. This is the path:

720p WMV-HD -> tsRemuxer or TSmuxeR -> Blu-ray format output -> Nero 8 UDF 2.5 image burn -> Blu-ray format DVD

[d94]

is there a more comprehensive guide anywhere on how to make a 720/1080p movie into the BR format onto a single/dual layer dvd?

[ONQ]

I have been burning HD videos to DVD for months now!

to

[ONQ]

I have been burning HD videos to DVD for months now!

to play on my PS3 I

[Bligmerk]

I have been burning HD videos to DVD for months now!

to play on my PS3 I

The main thing is to be able to burn in Blu-ray format. Of course, being able to put a AVCHD-MP4 on a DVD DL has been doable for a long time but then this is seen by the PS3 as a Data Disk. People can put this in a PS3 and select the movie to play. But when it is in Blu-ray format on a DVD DL, then it autoplays as soon as it is inserted into the PS3 plus it can be played on stand-alone Blu-ray players. I put together some Quicktime 1080p demo clips and burned them in Blu-ray format on some DVD single layer to several people I know that are now new to the PS3 and HDTV and they were actually wowed by the quality they could get, especially after they rented some Blu-ray movies that weren't the best transfer and were commenting to me how they didn't see what the big deal about HD was. Giving them that cheap little demo turned their comments around from "Meh" to "WOW".

[crozz]

I'm a little confused, I thought Blu-rays were not only capable of storing more information, but could also have much higher data transfer rates. With blu-rays I see the video bitrate sit in the 20mbps+ range, while with DVD it usually sits around 5mbps. I thought this was due to a limitation of the DVD. Am I wrong?

[mrNem]

I have a few questions about this:
* Does subtitles work well (no need to encode them into the video stream)?
* Is it possible to put the blu-ray structure on an external HDD and get the same functionality as burned on a DVD-R(except autostart) ?

[Bligmerk]

I'm a little confused, I thought Blu-rays were not only capable of storing more information, but could also have much higher data transfer rates. With blu-rays I see the video bitrate sit in the 20mbps+ range, while with DVD it usually sits around 5mbps. I thought this was due to a limitation of the DVD. Am I wrong?

It isn't possible to do a 1-to-1 comparison of data transfer rates between Blu-ray and DVD but Blu-ray 1080p video generally has a bitrate of around 12 to 20mbps (this can vary a lot depending on a lot of factors). Progressive 480p DVD is around 7 to 8mbps. But I think DVD bitrate is defined by the structure of the format, not the physical medium. The Blu-ray drive in the PS3 is Blu-ray 2X. This is roughly -- very roughly-- equivalent to DVD 12X. I think the DVD format bitrate is still set around when DVD movie players first started coming out and they were around DVD 2X. PC DVD drives kept increasing in bitrate speed but the need to stay compatible with stand-alone DVD players kept the format structure at the lower bitrate. At any rate, burning a Blu-ray format 1080p video to a DVD still has playback around 12 to 20mbps.

[Bligmerk]

I have a few questions about this:
* Does subtitles work well (no need to encode them into the video stream)?
* Is it possible to put the blu-ray structure on an external HDD and get the same functionality as burned on a DVD-R(except autostart) ?

1. Yes, although I haven't actually tried it yet. Here is a tutorial about it:

http://www.bitburners.com/articles/convert-mkv-files-to-blu-ray-or-avchd-for-playstation-3-using-tsmuxer/4019/

2. Yes, this is how you test your image file (it is essentially a Blu-ray image file). I use PowerDVD HD and just play from the folder.

[mrNem]

2. Yes, this is how you test your image file (it is essentially a Blu-ray image file). I use PowerDVD HD and just play from the folder.

Thanks for the link.

My question was actually if it is possbile to connect the USB HDD to the PS3 and play it from that media. Of course I have to format as FAT32 and split files bigger than 4Gb. I see this a potential better way of doing it because I can handle larger files not fitting into DVD-R single layer.

From the link given to the tutorial I see following in one of the comments:

I am having the same problem as dani and others concerning the outputfile being to big for DVD5.
I keep checking here to see if there is a solution posted, and in the meantime will use an USB harddisk formatted with fat32. Works perfectly. Remember: when the file is bigger than 4GB, split it.

This indicates that it may work. Someone that can confirm?

[Bligmerk]

Thanks for the link.

My question was actually if it is possbile to connect the USB HDD to the PS3 and play it from that media. Of course I have to format as FAT32 and split files bigger than 4Gb. I see this a potential better way of doing it because I can handle larger files not fitting into DVD-R single layer.

From the link given to the tutorial I see following in one of the comments:

This indicates that it may work. Someone that can confirm?

This idea is way out in left field. The PS3 is not a general purpose PC, so it does specific things based on specific interfaces. It looks to play Blu-ray format only from the Blu-ray drive. Plus this idea doesn't make a whole lot of practical sense. It is better to just take the video and turn it into AVCHD-MP4 to put on the external hard drive. That, and USB is not a fast interface. It is fine for something like DVD quality but may not keep up with full 1080p HD.

[mrnagy88]

Have you tried burning ratattoili (however you spell it) to a DVD to compare the quality of a near perfect transfer (if you can call it a transfer)?

How would you rate the quality over-all, and what kind of audio can you fit on the disc with it? Max 5.1 DD?

This sounds like it would be a good idea for Microsoft and the 360... But I doubt they would want to start a "partial" format war.

[Bligmerk]

Have you tried burning ratattoili (however you spell it) to a DVD to compare the quality of a near perfect transfer (if you can call it a transfer)?

How would you rate the quality over-all, and what kind of audio can you fit on the disc with it? Max 5.1 DD?

This sounds like it would be a good idea for Microsoft and the 360... But I doubt they would want to start a "partial" format war.

This really isn't a way to pirate full Blu-ray movies and get them on a DVD. The two tools referenced don't encode to an MP4 m2ts, the resulting file can actually be larger than the original. It is mainly a way to put something like a 1-hour HD TV show or HD camcorder video or other miscellaneous video in Blu-ray format on to DVD media, which is a lot cheaper than Blu-ray media and doesn't require a relatively expensive Blu-ray burner. The reason to do this is to conserve hard drive space on the PS3, just keeping those other types of videos on cheap, removable and storeable media that acts like a Blu-ray disc but actually isn't.

To do what you are suggesting, it is better to rip the full 1080p movie off a Blu-ray movie disk, convert it to a single AVCHD-MP4 and transfer it to the PS3 hard drive. I only do this with some titles, maybe Ratatouille.

[chartwel]

I have been burning HD videos to DVD for months now!

to

lol. me too. AVCHD is pretty nice. still not full blu-ray quality, but great nonetheless.