Actually, if you move the BD's BDMV folder to the root, the structures are the same AS FAR AS THE A/V STUFF. The BD has extra stuff to support extra BD-only features, e.g., JAR for BD-JAVA.

The difference seems to be in the TS Headers.

Steve,

Sorry if my diagram wasn't clear enough. Actually the [BDMV] folder IS in the root on both discs. Just that the BD on DVD also had the [CERTIFICATE] folder in the root and all the additional BD stuff in the [BDMV] folder.

I have not explored/examined the header info on the discs to compare. You are probably right about that (although my Sony BDS301 blu-ray set top player identifies both of these discs as 'AVCHD' media). I do know that the Sony PMB s/w will play the true AVCHD disc but will not play the BD on DVD disc. Nero Showtime also plays the AVCHD disc but tells me I'm missing the HD plug-in when I attempt to play the BD on DVD disc.

I have not tried to rip the BD on DVD disc back to hard drive and modify the structure to match the AVCHD disc and re-burn. Not sure if I have the right tools to do that...

Bruce

Bruce,
You should be able to open and see the red laser DVD and drag the BDMV and Certificate folder from the DVD back to your desktop where you can alter them. Programs like ImgBurn and Nero will allow you then to burn a new UDF 2.5 disk if you own either of these programs.

Larry

Larry,

You are, of course, correct. I hadn't even thought of doing such a simple 'rip', lol. I do have Nero and know it will burn a UDF 2.5 disc so no worries there. Tonight I'll try your suggestion and see what happens. I can't test the PS3 side of things since I don't have one (sob, sob).

Bruce

What is a BD9 disc?

A BD9 is a prerecorded DVD-ROM disc designed for playback in BD players that contains audio and video authored in the same format employed in commercial BD-ROM movies (BD-ROM AV). BD9 is part of the official BD family and defined in the BD-ROM basic format (part 1), file system (part 2) and AV (part 3) specifications.

Physically, a BD9 is simply a 12 cm DVD-ROM disc with standard 4.7 GB (single-layer) or 8.5 GB (dual-layer) capacities but is fabricated to somewhat tighter specification for dynamic imbalance. It is also spun at three times the normal speed of a DVD resulting in a proportionally higher data transfer rate (33.24 Mbps vs. 11.08 Mbps).

In terms of its logical and application formats, BD9 employs the same file system (UDF 2.5), content protection (AACS, BD+, ROM Mark) and structure (BD-ROM AV HDMV/BD-J) used by commercial BD-ROM movies. As such BD9 offers identical features to BD-ROM although there are some restrictions arising from its somewhat lower performance (33.24 Mbps vs. 53.948 Mbps).

BD9 is intended to leverage existing DVD manufacturing infrastructure in order to potentially provide a lower cost vehicle for publishing budget and lesser quality high definition titles, short studio and independent movies and presentations, television shows, music albums as well as bonus content. However, given its lower capacity and the expectation of rapidly declining BD-ROM production costs, BD9 (like its HD DVD 3x-speed DVD-ROM counterpart) is not widely promoted and may remain a seldom-used curiosity. As of Mar. 2007, no BD9 titles have yet been announced.


Note the requirement for different media to support a higher spin rate needed to get high data rates.

I think this thread is "over" because clearly we can't produce BD-ROM's ourselves. Sad as this is -- and yet another reminder of how much better HD DVD was than is BD -- we have learned a lot.

Thanks again Tom. Even though I have (3) HD DVD players here as well, I feel compelled to migrate my collection over to the prevailing "new" format. I have a vast library of home video and photo materials which I started in the 1960s, at first using a 1/2" open-reel Sony EIAJ video recorder and black and white video camera, and as I moved on to Beta, VHS, BETACAM, 8 mm, Hi-8, DV, HDV, AVCHD, and all the associated still photographs with film and digital cameras, I have always kept my collection in the latest format. Now that I have pictures of grandchildren, children, and several prior generations of my family, I want to make a set which can be veiwed in the future with as little obsolte format as possible. My methods have survived the last 40+ years of my videography very well, although some of the earlier material has suffered from "generation loss" for sure. I loved HD DVD and was very sad to see it disappear, and also have a stack of a dozen or more unopened HD DVD disks which came with these players as they were being discontinued.

Only 1, my all-time favorite, The Big Lebowski, gets played over and over and over..........

So I really did need / want to find a compatible and high quality red laser solution, so this is where my interest springs from.

Again, many thanks,

Larry

Actually a lame protection method if that's really the intention because the video stream itself will still play if you navigate to the folder. At best, it's a not so robust protection for the far more important menuing content ;)

(cpistrip is impossible to find)

Well, last night I tried a short experiment to see what would happen if I took a BDMV on red laser media created by Sony Vegas/DVD Architect and modified the directory structure to match that created by Sony's Picture Motion Browser software which came with my AVCHD camera.

After updating the directory structure (removing the [CERTIFICATE] folder from the root and the BD specific folders from [BDMV]) I burned the modified structure to another DVD using Nero burning ROM as UDF 2.5. I then tried to see if the AVCHD player that came with PMB would recognize the 'hybrid' disc. No luck. It still errored with a message that the disc was not the correct type. The Sony BDP-S301 set top player now identified this disc as 'BD-ROM' and played it exactly the same as the original Vegas/DVD Architect disc which it identified as 'AVCHD'.

Maybe a not so useful experiment but I just had to know....

Bruce

If only it were so simple....... (-8

Some other research on the subject:

BD structure edit [Archive] - Doom9's Forum

It's available as Java source code that you need to compile.

These bits are part of the MPEG-2 Transport Stream -- you can see them in Apple's Compressor. BDMV uses MPEG-2 Transport Stream to carry any of the BD three codecs. The real copy protection is done by ACCS. So, these bits are automatically set to match the purpose of the disc as seen by Warner which is Hollywood movies.

This thread was started on my miss-assumption that WE could burn BD-5/BD-9 on DVD-R and DVD-RW. This was never intended to happen. And, the failures are to be expected. They should be happening. Were ACCS on the disc -- as it should be on a BD-ROM -- you couldn't play those streams.

Bottom-line -- Larry was correct.

YES, if we use a workaround that passes EACH stream through an application before burning we can make BD-5/BD-9 on DVD-R and DVD-RW. But, unless we can buy special red-laser discs which are NOT available, these discs MAY not play well as they are spun to 3X speed to support 25-35Mbps MPEG-2.

PS: Sony makes a cheap DVD burner that hardware transcodes HDV to AVCHD. This is probably the best way to move HDV to AVCHD.

I'd like to toss in a few words about x264. Simply put, it's by far the best H.264 codec out there, and it's free!

Wrapped in a nice GUI like MeGUI or RipBot264, it can create very nice looking AVCHD streams from any source, be it HDV, AVCHD, BluRay, or whatever you have.

Of course, passing through untouched video to the AVCHD disc is always preferable, but if you must re-encode, use the best possible codec! That, folks, is x264!

-Derek

Derek,
Why is x264 the best in your opinion? You've used the others?

Bringing This Back Up
 

I've followed most of the earlier discussion, which informed me and also dampened my expectations for using AVCHD as a low-cost way of putting my HDV onto disks as HD.
However, the mention of using m2t as an AVCHD-DVD source interests me. There's a new Nero 9 program out now that is promoted as having expanded AVCHD capabilities. If I capture my HDV with the Sony PMB program as m2t files, would Nero 9 accept them and pass them through onto an AVCHD-DVD?

I have been able to effectively use the PMB file-clipping feature as a means to do simple editing and then stack up and splice together the separate m2t clips onto a standard-definition DVD using Windows DVD Maker. The video comes out in a 16:9 aspect and looks very good from the DVDs. It's much better than when using other sources for an SD-DVD. However, when I edit the m2t files on Windows Movie Maker and publish them as wmv-HD, even when using custom settings with as high as 12 Mbps, the resulting SD-DVDs, when using that as a source, have lesser picture quality. Possibly, if I used the top level of 20 Mbps for wmv-HD, it might improve. I was able to determine the bit-rate for these DVDs at almost 11 Mbps. I had thought that 9.2 Mbps was the top rate for an SD-DVD, but a disk had 254 seconds of video and used 342 MB, which figures out to about 10.85 Mbps. These DVDs will play on a standard player to a TV.

So, I'm wondering if Nero 9 would put together these same m2t clips from PMB and write them onto a DVD as AVCHD? Unfortunately, the trial version of Nero 9 leaves out the AVCHD capabilities, so I can't test this before buying. Of course, the viewers of these disks would be limited to those with BD players and PS3 (maybe) and also those with similar DVD software programs like Nero 9 and Cyberlink's new #7 version. I personally know four people who are equipped like this, but I'd still like to do it, as it's painful to see the way Vimeo and Exposure Room abuse my HD with their brutal compression. Thanks for any comments or suggestions. I'd appreciate just being told that this isn't possible, if that's the case.

Since HDV is MPEG-2 and AVCHD is MPEG-4, doing this will involve a conversion that takes time and might cause a quality loss. Only you can decide if the time and quality are acceptable. For me they are, but I use Sony's AVCHD encoder that offers very good quality.

Thankfully, both HDV and AVCHD are 1440x1080 formats so they match.

Remember, AVCHD discs can only be played on BD players.

I've used Mainconcept Reference and Quicktime, and yes, x264 is measurably superior.

Has anyone had any luck with this in this last 7 months? Maybe something with the new Vegas 9, or any change in the way PS3 handles the disks with new system updates.