Bluray on regular DVD?

[Jeff Harper]

I seem to recall it is possible to burn very short projects as bluray on a SD disc (with a bluray burner of course). Anyone tell me how it's done? I've never burned bluray anything before. Thanks in advance.

[Adam Stanislav]

You can burn anything to anything. That does not mean you can always play it.

There are two things when it comes to Blu-ray (or any other disc type). One is the hardware thing, the physical disc. The other is the file system, which is nothing but a stream of bits. You can burn any stream of bits to any physical type of disc (assuming, of course, that it fits there). So, you can burn the Blu-ray file system to a DVD or to a CD, even to a hard disk or any other storage device. It’s just data.

Now, to play it back, the player has to be able to read the physical disc format and understand the structure of the data on the disc (the file system). So, a DVD player could read the DVD you burned a BD file system to but will not know how to interpret the data.

A Blu-ray player (drive) is not required to understand the physics of CD and DVD, but I have never heard of one that could not do it anyway (since no one would buy it otherwise). And of course such a player understands the BD file structure. It is still possible that whoever engineered the particular Blu-ray player never dreamed that someone might want to burn a BD file system to a DVD, so it may expect the DVD to have a DVD file system. In that case, the player will get confused and will not play the BD on DVD.

So, the key is to remember that even if you can do it and even if your payer can handle it, there is no guarantee that any of your clients’ players will. So, if you want to do it just for yourself, try it and see if it works. But I would never ever give a BD burned to DVD to a client, especially not if he is a paying customer.

As to how you can do it, just have your software produce an ISO file and then burn the ISO to the DVD.

[Jeff Harper]

This is for me only. Thanks Adam.

[Dale Guthormsen]

Jeff,

I have played around with this for a couple years. I have found the sony br players will read these but so far my other readers do not. Even the Sony can not play the odd one properly, not sure why but the hang up and stutter which makes me wonder about bit rates. It would be nice to take the time and do multiple renders at various rates and see what actually plays best. It has been said you can get 17 minutes on a DVD but I have never been able to get that much time. I bought a bunch of br r/w discs and jsut use them now.

[Jeff Harper]

Dale, thanks. This project is a 3 minute video, actually for a neighbor, it's a photo/video shoot set to music, just for fun.

Dale, for normal BRD burns, what is the ISO business? Do I render a file out using Sony AVC then make an ISO file out of it using another program?

[Adam Stanislav]

You could use DVD Architect to make the ISO file.

[Gregory Barringer]

I've done it. It must be played in a BD player. Mine is Sony and it works well. A DVD holds up to about 15 minutes of HD 1080 60i @ 15 mbps

[Jeff Harper]

OK, Adam, so I just render out to AVC then use Architect to make a ISO file, I'll try it tomorrow.

[Roy Alexander]

I have put HD videos onto standard DVD's ever since Blu-ray burners became available with no trouble at all. Problem is that the DVD can only be played pack on a Blu-ray player. I have managed to put 30mins of HD onto standard DVD, that is without a load of transitions. The more effects on the video the less time you can put on the DVD. I simply edit on VMS 10 platinum then select make movie and select Blu-ray when given the choice between DVD and Blu-ray. When prompted to do so click on go to DVD Architect and follow instructions. It's quite a lengthy process but worth it if you make a lot of videos and want to save on the price of BLu-ray blanks which are quite expensive. Not much good if you are sending discs to people who haven't got a blu-ray player. Also my LG burner is particular about the make of DVD blank it burns HD on.

[Jeff Harper]

You know Roy, I tried the Vegas Bluray thing, but it doesn't offer a 720p setting, which is what I need. And there seems to be no way of changing/customizing it.

[Dale Guthormsen]

Jeff, was the material shot in 720?

Most blu ray players play mp4, so you could render to that and regulate your aspect ratio. I have not done that myself so take the advice with a grain of salt. Sence I always go to blu ray I usually shoot 1080 i. If its progressive it gets transcoded to interlaced anyway.


Dale

[Jeff Harper]

Yes, Dale, it was shot in 720p, which is what I need to shoot in now for my cameras to match.

[David Stoneburner]

Does it not work if you just burn to disc from the timeline? I've done that with a few different projects and the DVD plays back on my Samsung B-Ray and my PS3. I've even adding chapter points that the players read, but I am shooting 1080i as well so I'm not sure if there is a difference on the burn. I've got almost 50 minutes that still looks look on a standard DVD.

[Roy Alexander]

David. If you have 50 mins. on your DVD, then it has burned as Standard definition and not in High Definition. It is utterly impossible to burn that many minutes HD onto a standard DVD.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Not utterly impossible at a low enough bitrate... although it will probably look like it should have been SD! There are ways to reduce file sizes, but there are tradeoffs.