DVDA5 authored BD-R does not play on Sony
 

- Video shot with Sony XDCAM-EX1 1080/24p HQ 35mbps
- Edited with Sony Vegas Pro
- Authored to 25Gb BD-R media as AVC with Sony DVD Architect 5

Plays perfectly on Sony Playstation 3.

Plays not at all on Sony BDPS360 standalone Blu-ray player, gives blue screen message "Not Supported."

Very disappointed, this was Sony workflow end-to-end, it should work.

From online owners manual for BDPS360, the following vagueness:

Some BD-REs/BD-Rs, DVD+RWs/DVD+Rs,
DVD-RWs/DVD-Rs, or CD-Rs/CD-RWs cannot
be played on this player due to the recording
quality or physical condition of the disc, or the
characteristics of the recording device and
authoring software. The BD-Rs recorded on a PC
cannot be played if postscripts are recordable.

i will have to say this is the first time i appretiated the word Workflow :-)
(as it has been a hypeword for the $$$ companies selling for so long)

Tom,

There's a number of reasons it might not have worked, but they will all stem from how you did the AVC and sound compression.

I do BD discs out of DVDA and play them on my Sony BD player .. BDP-N460, and all works well. In fact, I've been burning short projects to DVD-9 RW for grins. I even have a BD-RE that I use to test a full write before I burn up BD-R.

So give us a screen shot of how you are compressing this AVC data and let's see where things are going wrong.

There is an introduction media called "Evergreen" that plays once when the disk is inserted.
Then it goes to the Kamikazi Klones - Freedom is You menu, and holds there.
From there you choose Play All, or the scene selection menu (which takes you to other menus).

DVDA is recompressing all the mxf video media into AVC. The audio is AC3 Pro, 5.1 elementary files and is not recompressed.

It all plays perfectly on the PS3, just not at all on the new BDPS360 which gives a bluescreen "Not Supported" message.

Well right there on the prepare screen you are getting a red error box. Click it and see what the error message is.

One or more text objects in 'Kamikazi Klones - Freedom is You' are outside the title safe area.
One or more menu links are off screen in 'Playlist: 13 - 20'.
The video 'Credits.mxf' on track 2 'Video' in 'Credits' will be compressed.
The video 'ModernDisappearingMan.mxf' on track 2 'Video' in 'ModernDisappearingMan' will be compressed.
The video 'Evergreen.mpg' on track 2 'Video' in 'Evergreen' will be recompressed.
The overall bit rate for ‘Evergreen’ is greater than 28 Mbps. The overall bit rate is too high for burning Blu-ray onto a DVD.
The overall bit rate for ‘Kamikazi Klones - Freedom is You’ is greater than 28 Mbps. The overall bit rate is too high for burning Blu-ray onto a DVD.
The video 'KlonesTest+SecretAgent2.mpg' on track 2 'Video' in 'KlonesTest+SecretAgent2' will be recompressed.
The overall bit rate for ‘Play All’ is greater than 28 Mbps. The overall bit rate is too high for burning Blu-ray onto a DVD.
The overall bit rate for ‘Playlist: 1 - 12’ is greater than 28 Mbps. The overall bit rate is too high for burning Blu-ray onto a DVD.
The overall bit rate for ‘Playlist: 13 - 20’ is greater than 28 Mbps. The overall bit rate is too high for burning Blu-ray onto a DVD.
The overall bit rate for ‘Credits’ is greater than 28 Mbps. The overall bit rate is too high for burning Blu-ray onto a DVD.
The overall bit rate for ‘Play 13 - 20’ is greater than 28 Mbps. The overall bit rate is too high for burning Blu-ray onto a DVD.
***************************************************

The error messages from the 'Prepare' menu are above. The text objects are only very slightly outside the safe area, and the menu link that's off the screen for Playlist 13-20 is meant to be hidden, it just makes a call to the credits. The other warnings for overall bit rate could be a factor since I'm obviously over 28 Mbps, but it says "for burning Blu-ray onto a DVD." I took that interpretation literally, I'm not burning to a DVD, I'm burning to Blu-ray media.

I didn't see a red error box unless you mean the one for the track, 'KlonesTest+Secr' which I've pictured below. It's only showing up as red box because it doesn't have to be recompressed even though I've elected for it to be.

Hmm, ok. Then I don't know what's wrong.

Perrone,

Do you agree with the warning that "overall bitrate of 28 mbps is too high for burning onto a DVD" should not apply to BD-R media?

What sucks about this, is the lost time debugging for ONE player. Maybe it could be solved by using different media, lower bitrate or other tricks, but I hoped once we moved into the BD-R media proper, those sorts of issues would by now have disappeared.

I was using cheap, ink jet printable media of unknown origin, but it works fine in PS3. Seems like PS3 is a bad test bed, since in most cases it's more forgiving than other players.

I don't have a PS3 as a test bed. And I haven't yet burned any really high bitrate BluRays. I will be next week though as we have another screening.

I don't know what to make of the warning of bit rate. Try it at 24Mbps and see what happens.

"I was using cheap, ink jet printable media of unknown origin, but it works fine in PS3. Seems like PS3 is a bad test bed, since in most cases it's more forgiving than other players."

How cheap... :) this could be the difference as well as Bitrate and yes the PS3 basically has Sony's high end reference blu ray player inside it which use to sell for like 1200.00 That is one reason the PS3 was very popular as just a blu ray player (not for gaming) It can play almost anything you throw at it. Cheap media especially when it comes to Blu Ray can be very bad for reliability. Also as far as Bit rate I would not try anything over 25 as with it being VBR you could have peaks that hit well above what the BD-R physical media you are using can deal with so to speak. Sounds like a media issue for sure though...

It could be a bitrate or media issue Jason I agree. The printable disks were $3.13 ea, and burned at 8x in my LG burner.

Perrone was pining about his 2.5 hour failed burn in the other topic. This burn in DVDA took 25 hours.

I think I will try a shorter burn at a lowered bitrate, different media brand, or other tricks until I get it to work, then one by one eliminate the things not responsible for the failure.

Tom, do yourself a HUGE favor.

Author out of DVDA to a .iso file. It will be faster, you won't ruin any media while you get your workflow down, and the final out to BluRay media will be pretty quick.

Yikes I did say "the burn in DVDA" when I meant the *render*.

I always render out to an iso image file, never burn with DVDA, shame on me for saying that.

The slow render in DVDA is from Mxf to AVC, slow but beautiful. But not so beautiful when it won't play, however it will play in my PS3.

The guys in the Blu-ray burning topic at the AVSForum say that when it plays correctly in the PS3, it is authored correctly. They seem to agree the most likely explanation is media incompatibility.

I'll keep trying until I get it. I burned this collaboration with Nero V.8, I'm going to first retry with a quality Verbatim disk, and use ImgBurn.

I also want to see if there is a Blu-ray disk testing software out there, for indicating PIF/POF (parity) errors.

Colossal waste of time
 

In the end, there was nothing wrong with my media, authoring or burning. I went out and purchased another BDP-S360 Sony Blu-ray player, and it had no trouble playing any of the disks. I don't know what was wrong with the other one, it belongs to a friend, but this one handles everything fine. Sorry for the bother!

Update
 

The first BDP-S360, the one that would not play the BD-R/RE disks authored by DVD Architect 5, is now playing them fine as well. Don't know what was bricked in the settings menu, but a full reset to default settings cleared the problem, and it too now plays the disks as well.

LOL!

Those video gremlins get you when you're least ready for them. Little devils!

Even though you have gotten the resulting BD-R to play back fine on the standalone Sony BDP-S360 after a reset to factory defaults, I still think that the overall (remember that "overall" means "average" when it comes to Vegas and DVDA) bitrate of 35 Mbps is too high for AVC encodes in DVDA, especially since the overall peak bitrate in some parts of the video will exceed the maximum total peak bitrate (including audio and miscellaneous items) of 54 Mbps that's supported by the official Blu-Ray spec. (IMHO, if the disc had to be mastered at 35 Mbps, I would have done this as CBR--but the AVC encoder in DVDA can only do VBR.) As a result, playback will likely stutter and/or skip on some less-forgiving Blu-Ray players. Lowering the overall bitrate to 25 Mbps will allow the total peak bitrate to remain within the official Blu-Ray spec. And with the disc mastered in AVC format, the image quality will likely be practically as good at 25 Mbps as it is at 35 Mbps--even on a very large TV screen.