What’s the future for Blu-Ray

[Greg Laves]

Originally Posted by Chris Rackauckas

Ok, well here's some input from the newer generation that has never seen a beta in his life.

Movies are watched on the computer. I know a lot of people who just watch dvds right from their laptop daily. Put it on the tv every once in awhile, but usually people just don't do that anymore. Also, a lot of the video watched is directly from Youtube.

What does this mean? Everything is digital. Pure digital. I know a ton of people that wish their dvds could just all be on their ipods. What will the consumers buy? It's going to head all digital.

Chris, I am one of the dinosaurs and I think input from someone who has never seen a Beta tape is vital information. And no doubt your generation will be still be buying and creating products long after I am gone. From my point of view, I don't want to watch movies on my computer unless my computer is hooked up to a home entertainment system. My edit computer has a 24" 1920 x 1200 monitor and I don't want to watch movies on it either. I want to sit back in the recliner with a drink in one hand and popcorn in the other and I want to be able to relax and get lost in watching something entertaining in a big picture format and I want to listen to a theater surround sound system. I can see very little need to have movies on an iPod unless I am going to be traveling somewhere and have hours to kill, where I would be completely idle and bored without it. Otherwise, I am not interested. While an MP3 player is great for music while you are jogging or traveling, I am not going to watch an iPod while working out. And if I shoot a corporate video, I really doubt that my client will ever see it on an iPod or display it at a trade show on a typical computer monitor, for that matter. But you have made me think about aspects that I have not really considered before. And that is a good thing. Thanks.

[Chris Rackauckas]

Originally Posted by Greg Laves

Chris, I am one of the dinosaurs and I think input from someone who has never seen a Beta tape is vital information. And no doubt your generation will be still be buying and creating products long after I am gone. From my point of view, I don't want to watch movies on my computer unless my computer is hooked up to a home entertainment system. My edit computer has a 24" 1920 x 1200 monitor and I don't want to watch movies on it either. I want to sit back in the recliner with a drink in one hand and popcorn in the other and I want to be able to relax and get lost in watching something entertaining in a big picture format and I want to listen to a theater surround sound system. I can see very little need to have movies on an iPod unless I am going to be traveling somewhere and have hours to kill, where I would be completely idle and bored without it. Otherwise, I am not interested. While an MP3 player is great for music while you are jogging or traveling, I am not going to watch an iPod while working out. And if I shoot a corporate video, I really doubt that my client will ever see it on an iPod or display it at a trade show on a typical computer monitor, for that matter. But you have made me think about aspects that I have not really considered before. And that is a good thing. Thanks.

No problem. But it truly is something you should consider since I saw the change myself. About 4 years ago group projects were done in front of a TV (you know how that goes). Now, someone pulls out a laptop and is sharing Youtube videos or they just put the dvd in there. Actually watching a big TV screen is an event these days which involves popcorn and a pretty decent group of people :P.

Now, when I edit music, I always play it in uncompressed on a set up monitor system, even though I know it's going to be heard in MP3. I think the same goes with video: you shouldn't change your editing practices, get it perfect for the big screen, but just realize that my age (senior in high school) group, which is a pretty big group for this, is just watching it where it's convenient, so portability means more than quality sometimes (look at MP3 vs something like FLAC and you see the difference).

Also, I don't think it's a trend, I see it as a new habit. Even teachers are showing youtube videos... sometimes fun, sometimes educational, but it's all of the computer. So I think that video people, although getting the best highest quality product possible (that means, BRD for some applications), need to begin to tailor somewhat to the internet. I'm not endorsing the habit (I only watch youtube videos while with people... though I have friends who watch 70+ videos a day *I calculated it*), but it's pretty institutionalized now.

Even with all of this, the big screen still has its spot.

Oh yeah, and thanks for the thanks. I was hoping I wasn't just slack here :P. I really only know music gear (I come from gearslutz if you know that website), so I gave some advice in audio, but I'm glad to know I could give some information somewhere else. I'm having fun in this addition to my repertoire.

[Mark OConnell]

Could someone who has the Western Digital box let me know if you can set it to repeat a movie, like for continual playback?

Thanks!

[James Strange]

Great thread.

I personally own a Sony BDP-s350, I waited till it came down to under £150 before I got it (and I got 5 blurays with it)

I agree that the 'generation' gap is a huge factor.

I make wedding DVDs, I shoot in HDV, and have only in the past few weeks looked into HD delivery (whether its Bluray, usb drives etc...) and I am still undecided as to what is the best option.

I dont have a Bluray burner yet, but will no doubt get one in the very near future.

I have only just ver recently (this morning) figured out how to bluray onto a standard DVD-R - using encore cs3 and nero to burn a udf, had to search ages online and a few trial n errors, but I got there, and the qulity is stunning.

Of course, you can only get about 20 mins of bluray on a single DVD-r (when i press the display button on my BR player, it says the disc is 'DVD-R AVCHD), but after seeing the quality compared to upscaled DVD, i'm 99% convinnced about getting a bluray burner, and offering that as an option to my couples (clients)

The other (or additional) option is creating a HD data file.

I dont have a WD media drive (although it does sound good) but I have an xbox360.

I experimented with a few of the settings in adobe media encoder, made some samples in HD wmv format, the quality was very good, way better than upscaled DVD, but it was not as good as the Bluray DVD-r (regualar 4.3gig DVD-r) that I made.

The main problem i found with the wmv files was the dreaded 'motion judder', while tweaking certain settings made the judder better, it never eliminated it. I tried, 1080p, 1080i, 720p, interlace, deinterlaced, a whole load of tweakable options within Adobe Media Encoder, but I could not eliminate the judder in panning shots for example.

Getting back to the future of bluray, i think that an aspect that has been perhaps overlooked is the 'collector'

I am a movie fan, I have over 500 DVDs, and about 30 blurays (so far)

I like 'owning' a physical disc. I too have an ipod, use it more for watching tv/films rather than music, but only when I;m travelling, on the train etc...

I would rarely watch a whole movie on my computer screen when I can watch on a big plasma in the livingroom at equal or greater qaulity.

Perhaps the 'collector' aspect is also a generational thing (i'm 26)

I have no problem about not owning 'physical' music, I'll happliy buy an mp3 from itunes, have on my comp and on my ipod.

But I do like owning a physical version of my movies, was DVD, now its bluray.

So (selfishly) I kinda hope bluray does replace DVD, but I also want to be able to deliver to my clients in any way they want (bluray, DVD, data file on USB, HDD, Internet FTP etc...)

Any thoughts n the 'collector' aspect, and waht about motion judder when creating HD wmv files for playback on an xbox360 (I'm assuming it would be the same on the WD HDD player?)

Keep the duscussion goin!

James

[Dave Uriarte]

This has been an incredibly informative thread!

I thought I'd comment on the question from Mark re: the repeat options on the WD player. I was curious about this myself, and while I don't own one personally I tracked down the user manual on the wd website.

The answer is yes, you can set repeat functions for video. 3 functions to be exact:

1) Normal – The video file will only be repeated once. When playback is
completed, the previous browser screen is displayed.
2) Repeat One – The current video is played repeatedly until you press
STOP or BACK.
3) Repeat All – All the files in the current video folder/playlist is played in
sequence, and repeatedly, until you press STOP or BACK.

http://www.wdc.com/en/library/wdtv/ENG/UserManual.pdf - page 30 is where I found this info.

Thanks everyone for your comments in this thread - it has been very helpful!

Sincerely,
Dave

[Jon Geddes]

I work very closely with a Video Production Company here in Southern California. In fact, I use to be part owner of the company.

Lately, every single client has wanted a Blu-ray version of their video. As a matter of fact, several clients have gone with us over a competitor strictly based on the fact that we offered Blu-ray. You can no longer charge extra for it either, since an increasing number of production companies are offering it as standard. We use Adobe Encore to create our Blu-ray discs and using the templates I created, it makes the authoring process streamlined and extremely efficient. The best part is, the clients are blown away by the motion graphics of the menu before they even start watching the video, definitely setting the tone. We will probably be investing in the Matrox CompressHD to speed up the h264 encodes, since that is currently the process that eats up so much time (close to 36 hours for a couple hours of video).

Despite the increasing number people watching videos online, clients still like to receive a product that they can hold in their hands, and isn't at risk of being unavailable if the internet goes down. I think an online version of their video would be a great addition to a tangible product, but won't be replacing it anytime soon.

Presentation is also important. If you are going to be delivering Blu-ray discs to your clients, make sure you use the new Blu-ray cases. We get ours from Tapeandmedia.com, but I'm sure you can find them at other places. Since the new case is a different size, we designed a Photoshop action that converts all the elements of our Cover templates to fit the new specifications, which is extremely useful when needing to create a Standard DVD and Blu-ray version of your project. You simply create the cover once, and let the action create the 2 different sizes.

With so many of our clients asking for Blu-ray, we had to create a process that was streamlined and yet still maintained our extremely high standards of quality. Let me know if you have any questions about our process, I would be glad to help.

[Gary Barr]

Hi Jon,

I'd love to know how to create the action to convert a Photoshop template from standard DVD size to Blu-ray size. What are the Blu-ray dimensions anyway?

Many thanks,

Gary

[Jon Geddes]

Well basically I record an action that scales the elements down a little, then moves them into the correct position.

It actually involves a little more complex work on my end, since Photoshop seems to have a bug with it's action recorder where if you scale an object which already has a scale of lets say 75%, and you scale it to 90% of that size (so its now 67.5% of the original size), the action is recorded as 90% of the original size... so if you go back and play the action, instead of the object shrinking by 10%, it grows to 90% of the original size. So I actually have to do a calculation and change the size to 67.5% of 75%, and it changes the size to an incorrect one, however when the action is played back, it changes it to the correct one... a little confusing, but just a little extra effort I put in to make life easier for our customers.

You can usually download the specs of the blu-ray cover size from the place you purchase the cases from. For example, here is the link to tapeandmedia's page where they sell the nexpak blu-ray cases. At the bottom, they have a pdf of the specs:

http://www.tapeandmedia.com/detail.a...uct_id=BLU-RAY

[Simon Denny]

I was watching the Gadget guy here in Oz and he was explaing this new disc.
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