Which settings in Toast 10 for Bluray burning?

[Luc De Wandel]

I have to burn a Bluray disk of a Quicktime Movie in ProRes422, 25 progressive, 35 megabit variable bit rate. The disk will be played on a Panasonic Bluray player and shown on a LCD-flatscreen, true 25p and full HD. Could anyone tell me what are the best suited coded settings in Toast 10? I'm looking for the best image quality with no artefacts.

[Martin Mayer]

How long is the QT movie?

[Luc De Wandel]

Well, actually there are two movies: one of 10 minutes and one of 32 minutes. They can be burnt on two separate disks.

[Martin Mayer]

Well, you could put both those movies on one single-sided 25GB Blu-ray Disc at the maximum bit-rate = 26Mbps (with a lot of room to spare).

You can't go higher than that bitrate, as that would be outside the BD spec, and a set-top player would choke. Toast will have to re-encode your super-quality original, but I don't think you'll be disappointed with the quality at 26Mbps.

[Luc De Wandel]

OK, Martin, I'll choose 'custom' and take the maximum bitrate: 26 Mbit/sec
How should the other settings in that pane be, ideally? :

- Format: MPEG 4 AVC, I presume?
- Re-encoding: 'automatic', 'always' or 'never'?
- Field dominance: 'Automatic', 'Top field first', 'Bottom field first' or 'progressive'? I remember I tried 'progressive' before and got a lot of 'combing' artefacts when panning.

Thanks!
Luc

[Martin Mayer]

Yes, MPEG4 AVC.
And I would leave the others all on Auto, and carefully view the results on a set-top DVD player connected by HDMI to an HD-Ready TV.

I would be worried that you shot in 25p - as I personally don't like 25p at all - but that's just me. I shoot 50i and prefer the smooth motion.

Frankly, if you get artefacts on vertical edges when slow panning, that's what I would expect from 25p. Why DID you shoot 25p in the first place??!!

[Luc De Wandel]

Well, mostly because I'm only viewing my movies on apparatuses that build up their image in a purely progressive way, like plasma and LCD-flatscreens. I tried interlaced before and had lots of de-interlacing artefacts. Most people on this forum also advise progressive, so I trusted their advice...

[Luc De Wandel]

Originally Posted by Martin Mayer

Yes, MPEG4 AVC.
And I would leave the others all on Auto, and carefully view the results on a set-top DVD player connected by HDMI to an HD-Ready TV.

I would be worried that you shot in 25p - as I personally don't like 25p at all - but that's just me. I shoot 50i and prefer the smooth motion.

Frankly, if you get artefacts on vertical edges when slow panning, that's what I would expect from 25p. Why DID you shoot 25p in the first place??!!

Martin,

I did some testing with interlaced yesterday and as you point out, even fast pans are perfectly smooth. Guess I'll have to reconsider my 25p habit... Although the result looked a little less sharp.