Time to buy a "real" blu-ray burner?

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Level 3

769 points

Time to buy a "real" blu-ray burner?

I think I know the answer to this question but I don't want to waste the money if I don't have to. I do underwater video. I use either compressor 4.0.3 or Toast 11.0.3 to encode my videos to make AVCHD discs using my super-drive and regular DVD 5s. Most of the time they look great on my 65" Samsung LED-LCD TV. However, if I have a scene where there is a blue background ie. a turtle swimming out in the blue, I notice what I think are compression artefacts. The blue is not a uniform consistent color but has some mottleing in it. And apparently I'm the only one who sees it, but I know it's not supposed to be there. I have modified my settings in compressor to Stream Usage; AVCHD Video format 1920 x 1080, frame rate automatic, Average Bit rate 8, maximum bit rate 16, frame controls on, Output fields progressive (video was shot progressive with gopro and tv has 1080p capability), Resize filter: Better

Deinterlace: Better. I have also tried a bunch of other settings but they all look pretty much the sdame in the end. So the question is, if I buy a blu-ray burner and use blu-ray media, can I expect better results since I would be able to encode at much higher bit rates. If the recommendation is to get a burner, what would people suggest- I would like to use it with both my Macpro workstation and my Macbook pro so an external burner may be the way to go. If not, what internal burner for the work station would you guys recommend? thanks and sorry for the long windedness.

Steve

Posted on Sep 24, 2013 8:07 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 25, 2013 9:56 AM in response to Steven Cohen

Are you burning the encoded video as a Blu-ray onto a DVD and playing back the DVD on a Blu-ray player to your TV? If so, a Blu-ray disc won't give you better quality compared to the DVD. The only difference between the two is the length of the video that can be recorded onto the discs.

You can burn a (up to) 37 minutes Blu-ray video onto a regular 5 inch DVD. Blu-ray and DVDs are just delivery media's and the Blu-ray player doesn't know one over the other when being played back.

Your average bit rate is (might be) to low... see above graphic (default setting for Blu-ray). If you need more than 37 minute... a Blu-ray burner is needed.

Your settings:

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Answer 2

Steven Cohen Author

Level 3

769 points

Sep 25, 2013 12:00 PM in response to David M Brewer

Well, I've discovered the source of the artefacts out in the "blue". After trying 6 different bit rates, gradually increasing to 15 avg, 17 max and not seeing any appreciable visible change in the picture on my 65 inch Samsung TV, I decided to go back to the original source material. Lo and behold, that's where the problem is. Since consumer cameras by their very nature have to compress the original data to fit on tape, hard drives, cards etc. and they were not designed for underwater use, it's not surprising that less than perfect images are obtained under certain conditions. When I shoot out into the blue, you can see the defects. If I shoot on the reef, the picture is fantastic.

BTW, the reason I was encoding 8 avg, 16 max bit rates was this is the setting that Toast uses. At least in Compressor 3.5, the encode was not as clean (ie title edges were rough) as compared to toast. I do seem to get cleaner encodes in Compressor 4 however. The other reason is that if one uses rates that would be acceptable to a blu-ray burner on a blu-ray disc, most players will have difficulty playing a DVD 5 encoded with these higher bit rates. So the question still remains, if I buy a blu-ray burner and encode at much higher bit rates on blu-ray media, will my picture be significantly better?

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Answer 3

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Sep 25, 2013 6:01 PM in response to Steven Cohen

Just to throw in my 2¢ … David is absolutely right; your bit rate is way too low for an AVCHD disk. And while a DVD player may choke on the higher bit rates, a Blu Ray player won't' it's used to handling much higher rates.

Russ

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Answer 4

Steven Cohen Author

Level 3

769 points

Sep 25, 2013 7:26 PM in response to Russ H

Russ: I believe you are incorrect in this case. I have 2 different blu ray players. When using a DVD 5, if the bit rate is too high they will stutter and refuse to play back properly. I am not the only one who has noticed this. If using blu ray media, no problem. I think it has something to do with the type of laser used to read the disc but don't hold me to that. As for the bit rate being too low, that is actually the setting that Toast 11 uses to encode ACVHD discs on DVD 5 media: and the results are really quite good. As mentioned above, I did an experiment where I incrementally increased the bit rate up to 15 average, 17 maximum. The DVD played fine in my blu ray player, but there really was no appreciable difference in picture quality.

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Answer 5

Sep 25, 2013 8:25 PM in response to Steven Cohen

I just made two Blu-ray dics images of this...

One at 15 average/17 max(for DVD) and the other at 30 average/34 max (for Blu-ray). The one for Blu-ray was defiantly better (close to the original) than the one encoded for DVD.

One big draw back is going to be your camera. You can't make a video any better than what your camera gives you. If you can match the Blu-ray encoding to the original video your halfway there... Personally I make an imagine disc and burn my copies from that... You should make an imagine disc, a small portion of the video and test that first on your computer or hookup your computer to your TV. From there you can see if there are any artifacts in the video. Adjust the encoder bit rate if need be. (This will save from burning to to Blu-ray disc ($$$).

Can you post the video info from your camera...? Codec that is used (not the format but the codec)... xy size.... and the bit rate. Finally, are you using a video editor?

_____________________________________________________

The VLC app can playback a Blu-ray discs on a Mac:

http://www.videolan.org

Right click on the Blu-ray disc image and mount it onto the computer's desktop.

Open VLC... Menu... Open File (don't use open disk).

Navigate to the mounted Blu-ray disc.

Click Open.

________________________________________________________________

More than likely... your Blu-ray player is having a hard time tracking the Blu-ray DVD. You have all that video data on a 4 gig DVD... the DVD has to spin faster and track across the DVD faster.

_______________________________________________________________

I've seen some petty good underwater videos from the Go Pro camera. Not a Red camera but... hey.

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Answer 6

Steven Cohen Author

Level 3

769 points

Sep 25, 2013 8:48 PM in response to David M Brewer

David: only info I can provide on the GoPro Hero 3 is that it shoots H.264 format- It gets converted to ProRes 422 upon ingestion into FCP X. I also have a sony HC9 which shoots in HDV format. the sony produces some artefacts but not as many as the GoPro. I could see the artefacts when I put the original footage up on my new 65" Samsung TV. Here is the link to the video on Youtube; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCJo11_bzyc&feature=c4-overview&list=UUO91llmO0Ub KuDVVicLJFPQ. If you look closely at the blue background aound the turtle and then just off the reef (between 38sec and 48sec) you may be able to see what I'm talking about. The reason I used the GoPro on this trip is that it was a whole lot easier to travel to Indonesia with a 6oz setup vs my usual big rig. Obvious trade offs!

I am not a professional. I'm not sure what a viodeo editor is but I used FCP X to edit this video. In the past I have used FCS on my MacPro to edit. Thanks for your advice. I know that I can't make a disc of any kind better than the source matrerial. Except for the scenes where I'm shooting out into the blue, I'm pretty happy with the quality. (Except you really can't shoot macro easily with a GoPro- but then it wasn't intended for that).

Steve

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Answer 7

Sep 25, 2013 10:15 PM in response to Steven Cohen

Not bad at all... yes I could see the artifacts. When sending to YouTube make sure you have 'streaming' set to 'fast start' and turned off 'frame reordering'.

For a 720p video that you sent to YouTube I would set the bit rate to around 8,000 kbits/sec. You have to remember YouTube re-encodes the video. YouTube re-encoded your video to 3,000 kbits/sec. You might try 1080p on YouTube... encoded at around 24,000 kbits/sec. (Go have a cup of coffee while it uploads.) Send the best looking video file to YouTube and don't worry about the video size.

(Videos that I upload to YouTube that are around 2-3minutes long... I send the ProRes video. Bypassing converting the to h.264. Saves encoding time and the video can't be any worse than a h.264 conversion.YouTube has come along way in the last few years. You can now send 4k videos to YouTube. I've been using YouTube for eight years. Back in 2005 you could only send 320x240 (maybe it was 640x480) Flash fla video files at around 300 bits/sec. awful videos!!!)

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Answer 8

Oct 20, 2013 7:23 AM in response to Steven Cohen

Steven Cohen

I found your post very interesting as, about 6 months ago ,I had performed similar tests as you and for the very same reason ie was it worth getting a Blu Ray burner to burn real Blu Ray discs.

I was considering buying the Samsung SE506bb as it was keenly priced at about £63 ($85) and had seen some good reviews regarding it being Mac friendly.

First off I only have Compressor 3.0 so cannot produce MPEG-4 AVC only MPEG- 2.

Secondly I have Toast 10 which can produce both MPEG-4 AVC and MPEG-2 video formats for burning AVCHD/Blu-Ray.

I found that I obtained better results from MPEG-4 AVC than MPEG-2.

I assume that you were working with MPEG-4 AVC (H264.AVC ) in your reference to Toast 11 as this is what I believe Compressor 3.5 and 4 uses for AVCHD/Blu Ray burning, ie File Format H.264 for Blu ray as shown by David Brewer above.

Using Toast 10 I cannot see any diference in quality for AVCHD DVDs as I wind up the bit rate from an average of 7Mbps to the maximum of about 15Mbps.You can set the bit rate higher than this up to 26Mbps but I dont think you get higher than 15Mbps if you select DVD, only 26Mbps if you select BD.

BTW, the reason I was encoding 8 avg, 16 max bit rates was this is the setting that Toast uses.

You can set 8/16 in Toast 10 in Custom encoding settings but if you select Automatic encoding then I believe Toast 10 uses 15 avg.

I performed a Save as Disc Image for BD at the Automatic setting of about 26Mbps and was able to transfer this via SD card to my set top recorder (Free view HD in UK, Panasonic DMR BW 780 ) which apart from having a hard drive to record HD TV has a Blu Ray recorder/player.The point here is that even at this higher bit rate I could not see any increase in quality.

My tv is no where as big as yours so may be I'm not doing a fair comparison but I do scrutinise the pictures very closely.

Although I cannot see a difference between 7Mbps avg and 15Mbps avg with the TV that I have at the moment I am playing safe and using 15Mbps avg for AVCHD on DVD, which is as high as I can go with Toast 10.

Like you , the results I get are great.

Would be interested to know if you took the plunge and bought a Blu-ray burner. I may still get the Samsung I mentioned above as I am very curious to see the difference, if any.Hey.... Christmas not far away....

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Answer 9

Steven Cohen Author

Level 3

769 points

Oct 20, 2013 9:11 AM in response to thesurreyfriends

I did not buy a "real" blu-ray burner. Since the video banding that I'm seeing is in the source material, I decided it was time to upgrade my 5 year old HDV camera, so I just bought a canon G30 video camera. This of course necessitated a new underwater video housing. Hopefully this will decrease the artifacting that I'm seeing, give me even sharper images, and not cause buyers remorse. the technology spiral continues!

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