Toast 9 and XDCam HD
 

Playing around with burning our 30 minute shows in Blu-Ray format onto standard DVD-R media. Works REALLY well and looks great BUT... when I encode and burn XDCam HD final master Quicktimes to SD DVDs- no issues. When I encode and burn masters in Blu-Ray to DVD-Rs, it can't recognize the need to make the 1440 x 1080 into 16 x 9. I found the custom encode options and it was set to 4 x 3 by default so I changed it to 16 x 9- didn't make any difference.

Anyone fooled around with this scenario? The Blu-Ray on DVD-R, while limited in running time, is a great cheap alternative to BD media but I can't figure out why it doesn't like XDCam HD. EX-1 footage works fine (native 1920 x 1080) which makes sense but still if the same program automatically stretches the 1440 x 1080 when making an SD disc why can't it work for a Blu-Ray encode on the same media?

Dan- what is your workflow, do you use FCP in any of this?

Yes. FCP Suite 2. Edit natively at XDCam HD 35mbps VBR. Export as self-contained Quicktime and drop that into Toast. Been doing it for over two years without a hitch (Toast 7 & 8). Still works fine with SD and DVD-R but for some reason, the Blu-Ray encoding Toast 9 is doing is ignoring the stretch to 1920 x 1080.

I have taken a number of 1440 x 1080 HDV files and exported them as MPEG2-HD using Compressor. They play fine on my Sony Blu-ray using Toast 9 and DVD5's.

Yeah Fred I can do the same or run it through Sorenson Squeeze but I didn't used to have to do this step. If you take a Quicktime in XDCam HD 35mbps VBR 1440 x 1080 and just drop it straight into Toast it will encode it to a DVD-R 16x9 MPEG-2 standard def. Do the same in Blu-Ray encode and it keeps it 4x3 regardless of whether or not you tell it you want 16x9.

Has anyone been succesfull dropping an XDCam HD QT directly into Toast 9, letting it encode and burn in Blu-Ray format onto a DVD-R and come out 16x9?

Sounds like toast is not recognizing the 16x9 flag, They need to release a update.

I've had this happen with some apps on my Mac also. They read the wrong resolution info in the QT header.

-gb-

I'm sure that's it but it's really strange that burning a standard def DVD-R recognizes the flag in Toast 7, 8 & 9 but Toast 9 doesn't recognize that same flag when burning Blu-Ray codec. Guess I've seen stranger things...