Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs with editing software

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NoobDV456
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Joined: May 5 2013
Could do with the assistance of others out there.
I am looking to either hire someone to burn raw footage to blu-ray discs or alternatively obtaining a blu ray burner that will produce very high quality discs that are not region locked and can be played on a Mac laptop.

The footage is currently 4 hours long and is in .MOV format with the codec in Apple ProRes 422 (LT) Linear PCM Timecode

Also what kind of software would I need to split a 4 hour movie into segmented parts to put on separate blu rays so that the quality of the film is not impacted due to high compression rates?

The current file size is over 128GB, so looking at how we could go about making a high quality video, and hoping this is easy to accomplish

Any help with this would be fantastic
 
DAVE M
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Joined: May 17 1999
Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
first off, I'm not aware of any standard set up that will play a bluray on an INTERNAL mac drive.
 
It's not clear if you are talking about the same machine for burning and replay.
 
You can buy an external drive for the mac to burn bluray and use a similar one for replay.
Region locking is up to you to set so it's free as standard.
 
ProRes is always a massive file and needs to be compressed in a good software to be bluray compliant
NoobDV456
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Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
So what software would I be looking for in order to do this, and given that we also want copies that can be played on foreign region DVD players, is there a way to segment the single file .MOV file?
DAVE M
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Joined: May 17 1999
Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
AFAIK no mac software creates bluray, although if using FCP (editing/video package) yu can make compliant files then use Toast to make the bluray disc with an external drive.
 
But the recipient needs a drive that plays them back
 
 or you can buy Adobe software that does give the ability to make more professional looking blurays (AFAIK Toast is a bit basic)
 
the software for doing this isn't cheap so for a one off you'd be better paying someone to do it for you - unless you are planning on making lots of (different) discs
 
Once burnt, the discs can be duplicated (in the hundreds)
or you can go the whole hog and have a master made, then have them replicated.
 
ProRes is an editing format and as you know, takes up a massive amount of space.
 
4 hours is best done on a dual layer BR that will take 50G including the menus and chapter navigation
 
I don't do bluray or tend to use dual layer. But you sometimes need to experiment to get the best place for the disc to switch layers
PaulD
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Joined: Aug 31 2002
Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
Hi
No Apple disk player in any Mac plays BluRay, so an additional/external BD player has to be connected.
Compressor or Toast can burn a simple BD disk.
 
OS X doesn't support BD playback, so either you have to run Windows - bootcamp/virtualised - or you can use this software http://www.macblurayplayer.com 
NoobDV456
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Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
What software particularly would I need to split the file into segments so that I can spread them over multiple blu-ray discs.
 
I have noticed that blu-ray burners can be picked up for as little as $159, and that FCP can be obtained for $319.99, which seems reasonable. Given that I have not edited videos or burnt to blu ray before (on either Windows or Mac), so looking for something that is easy to use but also allows provides the ability to split the film over multiple discs & create multiple copies.
 
Would be even better if there is the possibility of creating chapters and subtitles. 
DAVE M
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Joined: May 17 1999
Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
you need something like compressor to change the file from Prores to H264
 
adobe do a package called cs6 that will do all you want and enable bluray burning on the mac (with an external player)
 
AFAIK you're talking about FCPX which doesn't burn to bluray
 
 
 
once you get to the complexity of a DVD authoring software, you can design menus, add  chapter points and subtitles. But subtitles are a pain to do
DAVE M
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Joined: May 17 1999
Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
It might be better if you told us what you actually want to do?
 
a four hour film is long.
 
Nobody will watch something on BR from ProRes - it needs to be in a format that complies with the DVD/BR standard.
130G ProRes won't fit onto a 4/8G optical disc therefore it needs to be compressed.
 
Also, you need the correct software to see proRes on a machine
Ron Jackson
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Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
FCPX will burn a BR to an external burner. I use a LG machine. Big files take ages to compress/process  before burning. I've no idea what the technology is that Apple uses but I think there is limited scope anyway with BR. I don't know how good FCPX is for adding chapters and the like. An alternative is Toast Titanium.
 
Ron

Ron Jackson

NoobDV456
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Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
It is a wedding video, which cannot be edited as some of their family were unable to come to the wedding and they wanted to see the big event.
 
For some people we need to make DVD's in case they don't have blu ray players (including people overseas) and for others we want to make blu rays for blu ray players
Gavin Gration
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Joined: Jul 29 1999
Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
There's no way on earth that anyone except a pixel peeping maniac would be able to see the difference between compressed H.264 and ProRes LT on a laptop screen. Even on a decent projector you'd be splitting hairs.
 
A regular plain old Blu-ray disc will faithfully maintain all but the slightest of details - that's what it's designed to do.
 
If you really want to have the files available as ProRes then use a portable hard drive. BD-R discs aren't fast enough for ProRes LT.
NoobDV456
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Joined: May 5 2013
Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
We have no strong desire to keep it in ProRes 422, as long as visually the quality is not compromised when watching the movie on TV's (whether they be LED, LCD, Plasma) below the quality of a standard DVD and is playable on a wide range of machines we are interested in converting the file to another format.
 
Also we wish to split the one file into at least 2-3 discs.
 
How could this be done? Is it easy to do?
Ron Spicer
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Joined: Jul 22 2001
Re: Blu-ray Burner - High Quality Production of HD Discs ...
NoobDV456 wrote:
What software particularly would I need to split the file into segments so that I can spread them over multiple blu-ray discs.
 
I have noticed that blu-ray burners can be picked up for as little as $159, and that FCP can be obtained for $319.99, which seems reasonable. Given that I have not edited videos or burnt to blu ray before (on either Windows or Mac), so looking for something that is easy to use but also allows provides the ability to split the film over multiple discs & create multiple copies.
 
Would be even better if there is the possibility of creating chapters and subtitles. 
 
 
The LG burner/payer is well under £100.    When importing into FCPX from QT after transfer with something like MPeg Streamclip you can select exactly what parts of the film you want to actually place in the Event folder.   You then edit that section and and burn it to Blu-Ray via File/Share/Blu-ray . . . ?