What format for Blueray?

[jriker1]

I have been converting my videos to MPEG2 using CCE for DVD burning using Scenarist for ages now. Just purchased a blueray burner to store more of my growing video content off-line. It consists of AVI's, WMV's, MPEG files. Few questions:

1. What format do I need to convert these videos into to burn on Blueray?

2. Can I mix PAL and NTSC videos?

3. Is there specific resolutions the videos need to be at to support blueray from smallest to largest?

Thanks.

JR

[brunersany]

question 1: you need convert video to MPEG-2 format for Blue ray DVD burning, because Blue ray also use MPEG-2 compression standard.
2 I am afraid PAL and NTSC video cannot mixed up for playback, and you need a conversion program to convert PAL to NTSC or vice versa.
3 video's resolution for Blue ray can be very large for HD video, 1920*1080.

[nurbs]

1. MPEG2 works on blu-ray, but there are restrictions on the resolutions you can use, gop length and others so maybe you need to convert, maybe not.
2. Don't know, but I don't see why not.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Technical_specifications

[Ghitulescu]

To avoid recompression you may fill the BDR with the files you have as they are. You can watch them on PC using a software player (say VLC or MPC) or [partially] on BD-Players that understand the formats and containers you have.

Otherwise you have to recode them into MPEG-2 or H.264 as no consumer VC-1 encoder is available. Also the audio should observe the standards.

[Blue_MiSfit]

There are indeed some excellent consumer VC-1 encoders available!

Windows Media Encoder is the old standard - not really suggested.

Expressions Encoder is much newer, and has the latest VC-1 encoder core from Microsoft IIRC. It's a nice piece of software, and while not free is reasonably priced.

Still, x264 is better for most purposes, imo :)

If you plan on transcoding all your material, I'd suggest standardizing on H.264, as a good encoder like x264 will be wildly more efficient than any MPEG-2 encoder.

If you must stick to MPEG-2, then there are plenty of good encoders, my personal favorite being HC (as it also handles HD resolutions very well).

~MiSfit

[Ghitulescu]

Thanks for your suggestion, MS web site lists an extremely reasonably priced (free) version of Expression Encoder 3.
Q. What's the difference between the free version and the IIS Smooth Streaming version of Expression Encoder?
A. The free version is a feature-filled VC-1 encoding application that supports the following:

· high performance multi-core encoding

· crop/scale/de-interlace operation

· multi-clip editing

· A/B compare

· live encoding

· up to 10 minutes of screen capture

· smart encoding

· Silverlight templates

· multi-channel

· audio import and export

· rich metadata support

· presets and custom plug-ins as well as

· full access to the .NET SDK for all above features


The IIS Smooth Streaming version adds:

· H.264 encoding

· Smooth Streaming encoding

· native support of MP4/H.264, TS, M2TS, AVCHD, MPEG-2, AAC and AC-3 files

· Unlimited screen capture durations

So, if you don't care about these 4 items above, you may grab the free version.