AndrewAction:

Interested in what automated burner you decided on and what sort of price the blank disks are for you. Buying 10 at a time here costs me $180US +tax

I bought Vinpower Digital's "The Cube". It has 2 LG burners, a 500gig hard drive and doesn't require a computer to operate. I burned 50 BD-R copies last week for it's first job and it work great. Time will tell how it holds up though.

I have been buying the inject printable BD-R's from the Primera on-line store for about $190 for 25. I am still shopping around though for the best price on these discs, so please share if you find a better source. The Cube does not print on the discs but I already own a Bravo II DVD publisher that I use for printing on the BD-R discs.

Thanks for the info on Encore. I am currently using the Mac CS3 version. I will check out Sonic Avid DVD and see if I like the program better. I have a XW8400 PC I that I can set up to try the program out. 

Matrix is a Lie:

My understanding is that for HD you'll want to choose 601/707, and for SD projects choose RGB.

For HD, I found that the results were in favour of RGB too. BUT the difference was almost negligible.

However, as we have discussed elsewhere, there can be variations in results depending on the original footage source, quality  etc.

Regards,
Douglas

PS. A big factor is, of course, whether we are talking MAC or PC.  I have no experience with MAC systems. So anything mentioned in my tutorials can really only be applied, with any degree of certainty, to the PC world.

Abeyta:

I bought Vinpower Digital's "The Cube". It has 2 LG burners, a 500gig hard drive and doesn't require a computer to operate.

FWIW I could not get Avid DVD to make the Blu Ray with the Menu structure I wanted, probably incompetence on my part. Having even less initial experience with Encore than Avid DVD I was able (eventually) to make the Encore multi video and multi menu Blu Ray work.

Here's my deal. i might have missed it in previous replies.. but.  this is for an HDV to Blu Ray set up.

here's my export settings.

1. Can't do QT ref. i get the LONG GOP error message. must "Send to QT movie"

2. can't do "same as source" which is great for SD... but again...LONG GOP error. must do custom.

3. Format options... here's where i'm confused. what codec? DNxHD? H.264?

4. Color Levels . i pick RGB. looks better.

5. FILE FIELD ORDER. been told HDV is UFF... Odd. which is correct?

6. Aspect... i pick 16X9... not native.

No sweat Hedeen --- I copied/pasted some of it from the first page (my comments about this with Gaijin aka Douglas)

"For HDV material, you are correct - you can should be able to go direct from Avid to Avid DVD without problems.  The option for Sorenson is open, BUT if the QT ref from Avid (in part 1) looks good enough then you can skip it and go straight to Avid DVD.  I'm basing this off other cst experiences I had with HDV into Blu Ray (the first guy I handled, went direct from Avid to Avid DVD --- didn't use Sorenson at all --- and ended up playing it on a PS3 --- that was another load of probs btw.. but it worked once we had the right info.)"

I'll chime my cents to your answers here (through the experiences I've been through).  For anyone new to this conversation, I mentioned this workflow was done using P2 material (but other input is welcome for Red Users, XDCAM, etc.)

-------------------------

Just did some tests ---- here's my revised answers below.  ALSO please disregard that private message I sent, since I was able to test this here.

Hedeen:

Here's my deal. i might have missed it in previous replies.. but.  this is for an HDV to Blu Ray set up.

here's my export settings.

1. Can't do QT ref. i get the LONG GOP error message. must "Send to QT movie"

---- Correct.  If you notice, when you turn on Clip Resolutions in the timeline, with HDV, it lists "HDV 1080i 60" as the codec.  You'll want to change this to DNxHD-TR 145.  I would transcode your footage to this DNxHD.

Once that is transcoded THEN you should be able to export QT ref from Avid ---> then go to Avid DVD.  The QT ref settings I use are from the pdf at the beginning of this page.  I'll leave the other answers however, just for those who wanted to read them.

 

-------------------answers to QT movie for export to Avid DVD ---------------------

2. can't do "same as source" which is great for SD... but again...LONG GOP error. must do custom. --- correct custom is what you want (this is also what happens when usign XDCAM HD material for the BD process).

3. Format options... here's where i'm confused. what codec? DNxHD? H.264? ---- I would choose DNxHD or Avid DV100 (which is aka DVCPRO HD).

4. Color Levels . i pick RGB. looks better. ----- this is completely up to you.  I've been told a couple of times, RGB is for SD, and 601/709 for HD (or for broadcast work).  Again, it's up to you.

5. FILE FIELD ORDER. been told HDV is UFF... Odd. which is correct? ----- I don't have a definitive answer on that, so I'm open to correction here.  My understanding was ----pending on the format you shot, whether it was interlaced or progressive, since there is now HDV in 1080/24 option now, you'll want to export Odd for progressive and Even for interlaced (59.94, 60i)

6. Aspect... i pick 16X9... not native. ------This is up to you, the QT export Aspect ratio will tell you what lines of resolution are there when you export (e.g. when you do native, it might say 1440x1080 for HDV)

Somewhat off topic here, but who is responsible for maintaining Avid DVD by Sonic?

I tried reporting a bug in button highlighting since late 2006 (http://community.avid.com/forums/p/27314/152367.aspx#152367) but nobody from Avid wants to respond, and Sonic has no support site for Avid DVD by Sonic.  It is an aggravating problem which, for me, makes Avid DVD by Sonic useless for any DVD / Blu-ray project that uses menus.

wmcole:

Somewhat off topic here, but who is responsible for maintaining Avid DVD by Sonic?

1. I do not know the answer to that question,

BUT

2. I have used Sonic/Roxio's DVDitProHD for many years now.
The official Tech Support used to work reasonably well.
The support forum is a user forum with little or no comments from the Sonic itself.
The support forum has always been slow with few responses to questions.
One ray of light was a Sonic tech staff member who did try and respond to questions.
He was always open to direct emails and gave me many tips.
He would send me urls to download newer updates of DVDitProHD. Updates which were never officially posted on the Sonic site.
However he left Sonic late last year and now Support is very very slow and the answers are not usually much help.

Who knows what is happening inside Sonic, as far as the further development of DVDitProHD goes.

It is, in my opinion, highly unlikely that Avid can be held responsible for the development of AvidDVD, as the product is a Sonic product (with the lable "AvidDVD") and is the responsibility of the development team at Sonic.

I am still using AvidDVD. It does what I want for the time being. I have not seen any special problems with the highlighting of buttons. Maybe you could post some more details and see if anyone can help you here.

In the meantime I am looking around to see if there is any newer product that will fill the place of AvidDVD, if I decide to move on.

Regards,
Douglas