Blu-ray authoring w/Mac Pro

Question

Blu-ray authoring w/Mac Pro

I use both iMovie6 HD and, later, FCE, for editing the kids' sports video from my JVC GZ-HD7U 1080i camcorder, but envision a day soon where I need to put my videos onto a Blu-ray disk (to show in my PS3). BestBuy currently is clearancing their BWU100A internal Blu-ray writer, and it's attractive because unlike many of the internal drives this one is EIDE (slower than SATA but possibly a direct replacement for the Pioneer main drive in the MacPro (I'm using the 2nd drive bay for a lightscribe drive). My question is has anyone else used this drive on a MacPro (the box only says Windoze) and is it compatible with iDVD? Also, can it serve as a 'bootable' drive or should I just consider an external box?
thanks in advance.

Mac Pro 2.66 and a bunch more Macs, Mac OS X (10.4.9), SH-S162L LightScribe, 1.5 TB HD

Posted on Dec 4, 2007 8:59 PM

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Answer 1

Ziatron

Level 5

4,186 points

Dec 4, 2007 9:41 PM in response to Joseph Armstrong

I have researched this issue as well.

To the best of my knowledge if you want to burn Hi-definition DVDs it must be done with Windows.

It also looks pretty clear that HD-DVD is out in front of Blu-ray, (HD-DVD players are less expensive and more movies are available in HD-DVD).

Star Trek on HD-DVD has caused many I know to buy a HD-DVD player.

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Answer 2

Dec 5, 2007 12:46 AM in response to Joseph Armstrong

Joseph Armstrong wrote:
... and is it compatible with iDVD? ...

No.

iDVD supports actually only authoring to the two SD standards NTSC and PAL ..
Toast8 claims to 'burn' BluRay, but still nobody dared to tell his/her experiences, how BR-standalone manage to handle such disks..

Apple is member of the BluRay consortium, so... on Jan 14th 08 is the next keynote.. 🙂 (speculations are not allowed on this board), and Steve is at Disneys board, which supports - tadaahh - BluRay..

so, the standard will be BR, or Apple does some 'Superdrive II' which supports both HiDef standards... (I guess Pioneer has such a drive..? I've read some news..)

... but, we still miss software, which does the authoring.. encoding in HiDef is easy, but the disks have some formats and file structure, which is actually not supported by any MacOs software..

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Answer 3

Dec 5, 2007 11:42 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

DVD Studio Pro has authored HD DVDs for some time and they play great on DVD-R as well. If you must have Blu Ray then you need to get a windows app like DVDit or Encore. The Mac version has alot of issues. Toast only offer burning data to BD not authoring.

Anyone can join the BluRay consortium - doesn't really mean a whole lot.

Message was edited by: Eric Pautsch1

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Answer 4

Dec 5, 2007 12:03 PM in response to Joseph Armstrong

Thanks. So what options does one have right now for a 'portable' means of taking 1080i HD video from iMovie6 HD or FCE to others' houses? A PB/MacBook with the DVI is one solution, but I was looking for ways to easily share HD video of our kids' sports with coaches, etc without having to go there and run the video myself.

Right now I've got everything in 1080i from my JVC GZ-HD7U (don't even get me started on THAT situation). Am I correct in assuming that regardless of the form of the iMovie/FCE file, creating a DVD in something like iDVD will bring the resolution down to 'regular' resolution?

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Answer 5

Dec 5, 2007 12:08 PM in response to Joseph Armstrong

Get DVDSP and author a HD DVD to DVD-R. Remember they only playback on HD DVD players. Other than that your looking at coming directly from the camera or using a windows Blu Ray authoring tool.

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Answer 6

Dec 5, 2007 11:54 PM in response to Joseph Armstrong

Joseph Armstrong wrote:
... So what options does one have right now for a 'portable' means of taking 1080i HD video from iMovie6 HD or FCE to others' houses? ...

a) create a standard DVD with iDVD.. 'other houses' very rarely offer any hiDef-playback devices (in my area..) , so a classical videoDVD is playable on any DVdstandalone or computer.. iDVD supports input from HiDef-iM-projects..

b) if you're using a miniDV/HDV device for recording, iMHD6 and FCE/P allows playout back to tape ..

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Answer 7

Ziatron

Level 5

4,186 points

Dec 6, 2007 9:53 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

'other houses' very rarely offer any hiDef-playback devices (in my area..)

I find HD-DVD players to be 'fairly' common, most people I know have a HD-DVD player.

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