Compressor To Toast 10 For Blu Ray

[Sweet Tea]

I am putting together a blu ray disc for a client and this is my first time with blu ray. I started in final cut and did a send to compressor 3.5. I know that h264/mpeg 4 is the best codec to use for viewing but it seems everyone uses mpeg2. I thought I would give it a try and use h264 so I set up a custom setting in compressor:

 

file format --> H.264 for Blu-ray

Extension--> 264

Stream Usage--> Blu-ray

Video Format--> Automatic

Frame Rate--> Automatic

Avg Bit rate-->15.00Mbps

Max Bit rate-->25.00Mbps

Multi-pass-->selected

 

 

 

I left everything else defaulted but I made two other duplicates of this with a 25mbps avg 35mbps max and 30mbps avg 35mbps max. So i have 3 different settings and I put a 30minute video for each of the three. Each video I used a dolby digital 2.0 ac3 extension. I then let compessor do its work and then placed all three videos in a blu ray folder I created and renamed each ac3 audio file to match exactly to the name of the video

 

example

 

sweet tea 15mbps.264

sweet tea 15mbps.ac3

 

sweet tea 25mbps.264

sweet tea 25mbps.ac3

 

sweet tea 35mbps.264

sweet tea 35mbps.ac3

 

I dragged and dropped the .264 files into toast 10. I found out that even though you don't bring ac3 files over into toast 10, it is needed in the folder so that you have audio for the video. try it. and they need to have same name or it does not work.

 

I opened the more button to look at the options and went to the Encoding tab and selected mpeg-4 AVC and selected Reencoding: Never. Made sure audio format is set to Dolby Digital

 

I left the Avg Bit Rate to 8 and max bit rate to 16 and motion estimation to best and everything else to default(automatic)

 

I burn each video on one disc on a Verbatim 25gb 4x speed.

 

I watched each video on my Samsung blu ray player and to be honest I did not notice a difference in quality in each of the videos. I shot all of this on a canon 5d markii and 7d.

 

QUESTION: If I select Reencoding to never does toast 10 titanium pro go through the process of making everything in the Encoding tab i.e. video format, avg bit rate, max bit rate, motion estimation, field dominance, etc? I would think since I select reencode to never that everything should just gray out. Can someone explain this to me?

 

Since I didn't notice a difference between the 3 videos it makes me think that it reencoded within toast.

[tsantee]

Toast reports if it is encoding or if it is multiplexing when you click the burn button (or choose Save as Disc Image). If it is encoding you'll also see the encoded files appear in the Roxio Converted Items folder (by default in your Documents folder). One way to check if the three recordings are different is to compare the file sizes.

[Sweet Tea]

It must of worked!!! Checked the stream folder of the blu ray and the file sizes were different and tiered from 4gb to 6gb. No encoded files in the Roxio Converted Items folder. So my question is if you select "never" for the Reencoding in the more options of toast 10 does all of the other selectable items matter i.e. video format, avg bit rate, max bit rate, motion estimation, field dominance, aspect ratio, and the audio options? From what I am getting is that if you select "never" you are telling toast not to touch the files that are being brought in....only to author them onto the blu ray. Is this right?

[tsantee]

It must of worked!!! Checked the stream folder of the blu ray and the file sizes were different and tiered from 4gb to 6gb. No encoded files in the Roxio Converted Items folder. So my question is if you select "never" for the Reencoding in the more options of toast 10 does all of the other selectable items matter i.e. video format, avg bit rate, max bit rate, motion estimation, field dominance, aspect ratio, and the audio options? From what I am getting is that if you select "never" you are telling toast not to touch the files that are being brought in....only to author them onto the blu ray. Is this right?

Those specific settings only apply if Toast is doing the encoding.

[Sweet Tea]

Thank you Digital Guru. As I looked all over the web to find a workflow that works, I have found something that has worked for me and to use .h264. Wonder why everyone is having problems with that delivery codec on blu ray. I read somewhere that the duration of the movie matters when trying to use this codec as a delivery. As for now I don't see any my projects going over an hour for one movie. I think I might post my workflow on other sights so people can use something current. Why is no one doing this? There is a great workflow that I emulate and tweaked that worked for me....here it is.

 

 

To make mpeg2 blu ray here is good workflow for final cut users

http://www.theatticdoormovie.com/blog/2009/mac-bluray/

 

How to make custom menus in toast 10

[mooblie]

Very interesting, Sweet Tea. Have you done any direct comparison between the Compressor-encoded .m2v and Toast's own BD-encoding?

 

Any quality difference?

Much difference in time taken to encode?

 

And isn't there an H.264 Compressor-Blu-ray preset now? Have you tried that?

[Sweet Tea]

I have not done a comparison. Since the h264 looks good I didn't see a reason to compare. It took about 2-3 hours to encode a 30 minute film. I duplicated the High Def preset and customized to the settings stated at the beginning of this post. I was tempted to increase the bit rate but did not want to chance it with clients since their set top box may not have the same reaction to mine....even though 30mb/s looked good on my samsung. I left it at 15mb/s with a max of 25mb/s.