I'm preparing my first Blu-ray disc with Sony DVDA 5, the default template sets the bitrate to 18Mbps, HDV is 25Mbps, will I encounter any playback problems if I use 25Mbps?

Are you encoding to H.264 or MPEG-2 for Blu-ray? Bit for bit, H.264 is more efficient than MPEG-2, meaning that at the same data rate, H.264 offers superior quality. At lower data rates, the difference will be very noticeable, while at high data rates, MPEG-2 can look excellent and the H.264 advantage is somewhat lost (H.264 takes much longer to encode, so is it worth the time??).

The Blu-ray spec will handle up to 40Mbps, so don't be afraid to crank up the data rate if you have room (the program is not too long to fit the disc at the chosen data rate). Keep in mind the law of diminishing returns though, will anyone notice a quality difference between H.264 at 20Mbps vs. 30Mbps?

Back to the original question, no playback problems at 25Mbps, perfectly safe.

Get yourself a ReWritable Blu-ray blank and encode some short samples using both MPEG-2 and H.264 at various rates and make your own visual tests to see how you want to proceed.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers


I'm preparing my first Blu-ray disc with Sony DVDA 5, the default template sets the bitrate to 18Mbps, HDV is 25Mbps, will I encounter any playback problems if I use 25Mbps?

Jeff thank you for response! I'm currently encoding to MPEG-2 (quite happy with reduced encoding time), that's why 18Mbps seemed rather low. I actually don't have a BD burner at the moment so can't do any of my own tests however have been editing/rendering/storing all my projects in HD for the last year, I want to prepair my projects for Blu-ray now so that when I get a burner and find some thermal printable discs that I can send them out.

Bluray burners are relative inexpensive these days.

Newegg.com - LG Black 6X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 6X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner 6X Blu-ray Disc Burner & HD DVD-ROM Drive Model GGW-H20L - Blu-Ray Burners (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136155)

I paid $340 for this thing a little over 1.5 yrs ago.

At 18Mbps I would forget about MPEG2 and use AVC. Also note that if you are using HDV1080i it is 1440*1080 - a resolution that is only supported using AVC on BD. If you used MPEG2 you would have to upscale to 1920*1080 or go down to 1280*720. Have a look at Blu-ray Disc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc) for supported formats. Hope this helps.

At 18Mbps I would forget about MPEG2 and use AVC. Also note that if you are using HDV1080i it is 1440*1080 - a resolution that is only supported using AVC on BD. If you used MPEG2 you would have to upscale to 1920*1080 or go down to 1280*720. Have a look at Blu-ray Disc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc) for supported formats. Hope this helps.

That is incorrect. HDV is 1440x1080. You can author 1440x1080 Bluray with either MPEG-2 codec or H.264 codec.