Blu Ray Disc option with FCP 7 Intel Mac upgrade

[Stucker]

I would love to hear from anyone as soon as they have tried the new Final Cut Pro 7 upgrade (for Intel Macs only) that has the new Easy Export feature that will supposedly export directly to an external Blu Ray Drive onto a BD, with custom backgrounds and even Chapter (Marker) Menus??

 

Would love to hear if the quality is full BD, and as easy as Apple is claiming. Am quite happy with Toast 10, but am considering finally bailing from my PowerPC G4, and finally moving (up?) to the Intel based Macs for this added feature, since Apple still has ignored DVD Studio Pro and Blu Ray,

and is now completely dumping any relationship with PowerPC users!

[tsantee]

Have you also posted this request in Apple's Final Cut discussion group. Also, check out kenstone.net to see if anything is added there.

[Stucker]

Have you also posted this request in Apple's Final Cut discussion group. Also, check out kenstone.net to see if anything is added there.

Yes, I did post on the DVD Studio discussion group, and 1 response so far that he/she had ordered the upgrade but wasn't sure when they would try a BD burn with it.

But it looks like Apple has restated their position on Blu Ray...which is no position, and it's likely

that Snow Leopard will be a similar stake (in the heart of PowerPC users).

[robjr]

I would love to hear from anyone as soon as they have tried the new Final Cut Pro 7 upgrade (for Intel Macs only) that has the new Easy Export feature that will supposedly export directly to an external Blu Ray Drive onto a BD, with custom backgrounds and even Chapter (Marker) Menus??

 

Would love to hear if the quality is full BD, and as easy as Apple is claiming. Am quite happy with Toast 10, but am considering finally bailing from my PowerPC G4, and finally moving (up?) to the Intel based Macs for this added feature, since Apple still has ignored DVD Studio Pro and Blu Ray,

and is now completely dumping any relationship with PowerPC users!

 

I'm a FCP7 user and am interested in tinkering around in Toast 10 Pro. Not because I don't like FCP, but because I haven't used Toast in a while and it's looking really nice.

 

I use FCP7 "Share..." to export HD video for HD playback on my PS3. I haven't found a way to adjust bitrate using that method, so to control bitrate, I just export to Compressor. (Essentially the same thing but with more control / options).

On my 8 core mac (10.5.7) it takes 20 minutes to create the AC3 file and 5.5 hours to create the H264 file from a 2.5 hour video. I have a blu-ray burner as well but I haven't tried to go straight to Blu-Ray yet.

 

You can't do much with the separate h264 and ac3 files so you have to multiplex them.

So I then use TXMuxer on mac http://www.smlabs.net/tsmuxer_en.html to create a M2TS file to stream to my PS3.

The resulting file size is approx 22 GB at roughly 18mbps bitrate. At 10mbps average bitrate it was 11.99GB.

TSMuxer has a button to create M2TS, Blu-Ray disk, TS, AVCHD disk, as well as Demux.

 

I haven't tried the custom backgrounds or menus or chapters in FCP7 yet. For chapters, I assume both Toast and FCP7 will need to create a .MPLS file (playlist file) but I'm not sure. I'm working on proof of concept one step at at time. I want to try chapters next. (which is one reason I'm in this forum right now).

 

Oh. The quality is fantastic on 720p and 1080i. Video goes through my Sony Bravia XBR4 tv. I haven't tried working in 1080p in FCP so I can't comment on that. I use a BlackMagic Intensity Pro capture card, FWIW. Playback is jittery using VLC 1.0.1 but I think that's the case with everyone right now. Playback on PS3 is smooth as silk.