Blu-ray authoring options, Encore v. DVDit v. Movie Factory

[guartho]

Reading over my post I see I made it too verbose. Here are my two real questions:

Does Mpeg-2 (vs. h.264) give you reliable 1080p playback on a variety of Blu-ray players?

Approximately how much time can you fit on a single layer BD-R using Mpeg-2 at 1080p?

I'd also be interested in any unsolicited thoughts on Ulead's Movie Factory.

For more details on my situation, here's my original post

I've spent the morning searching this forum and haven't found the answer. If this has been spelled out before I apologize and request direction to the appropriate thread since I wasn't able to find it on my own.

I need to start authoring my videos, specifically HD wedding videos, on Blu-ray by the end of June. Right now it looks like my options are Encore as part of Premiere Pro for $750, DVDit Pro HD for $300, or Ulead Movie Factory Plus for $80.

I've read quite a bit about Encore and DVDit Pro. I just learned of Ulead Movie Factory in my searching of this forum today so I know the least about it.

Other than price, my concern is versatility. It seems that with DVDit Pro I can only author in Mpeg-2.

Encore supposedly can author Blu-ray discs using H.264 in addition to Mpeg-2.

Perhaps it's a non-issue on Blu-ray, but for HD-DVD I never could get Mpeg-2 HD discs to play properly. The H.264 encodes were almost bullet-proof. Is burning to BD-r as Mpeg-2 going to be good enough?

In addition to reliability, my other codec-concern is space. I'll be wanting to be able to fit a max of 2 hours of 1080p on SL 25 gB discs. Is that possible using Mpeg-2? Most of my wedding DVDs land under 90 minutes total, but the first one booked is a full-Mass Catholic wedding.

As I said, I don't know much about Ulead's Movie Factory Plus. I'm guessing that it's Mpeg-2 only as well. If I go with one of the cheaper two, I really would consider it a stop-gap measure until Apple updates DVD Studio Pro. If I can "get by" with Mpeg-2 until then, I wouldn't mind.

Well, there's a whole truck-load of information. Any thoughts?

[CreativeX]

From my experiance I would avoid MPEG-2 with HD.

I just posted in another thread about a tool from NetBlender that will do Blu-Ray http://dostudio.netblender.com/dsa_quicklook.asp I don't see any information on encoding, you might want to contact them to see if they have anything.

[Don Blish]

Originally Posted by guartho

Reading over my post I see I made it too verbose. Here are my two real questions:

Does Mpeg-2 (vs. h.264) give you reliable 1080p playback on a variety of Blu-ray players?

Approximately how much time can you fit on a single layer BD-R using Mpeg-2 at 1080p?

I'd also be interested in any unsolicited thoughts on Ulead's Movie Factory.

For more details on my situation, here's my original post

Remembering HDV2 (1080x1440 30p) is recorded at 25mbps, I get about 2.2 hours at that speed on a single layer BD-R using DVDit Pro HD (which only supports mpeg2).

I also make shorter projects on DVD-R. About 50 minutes on dual layer and half that on single. For these I record at a constant bit rate of 20Mbps and see no degradation from the native speed of 25.

All these discs play flawlessly on various Blu-Ray players including the PS-2

Here is a thread on what playes these "BDMV" projects with menus

http://forums.support.roxio.com/inde...howtopic=20850

[plee]

Originally Posted by CreativeX

From my experiance I would avoid MPEG-2 with HD.

I just posted in another thread about a tool from NetBlender that will do Blu-Ray http://dostudio.netblender.com/dsa_quicklook.asp I don't see any information on encoding, you might want to contact them to see if they have anything.

Netblender does look promising but the cost may make it out of reach for most ($250/month subscription).

DVDit has a few bugs that you must work around. But once you know what they are it does do a good job of producing a BD disc. It's been over a year now and no updates so I think it is starting to fall behind...

[CreativeX]

Originally Posted by plee

Netblender does look promising but the cost may make it out of reach for most ($250/month subscription).

DVDit has a few bugs that you must work around. But once you know what they are it does do a good job of producing a BD disc. It's been over a year now and no updates so I think it is starting to fall behind...

I would love to know what some of the issues are. Would you be able to post them here? I think you are right about DoStudio it seems to be for a post video production company.

[guartho]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I'm still in the midst of experimenting. I had to send my Sharp BD player back because it insisted on spitting all my discs right back out. I decided to get the PS3 for my testing and worry about flaky stand-alones later.

I decided to start with Ulead's movie Factory since it's the lowest financial risk and I don't expect to be using a non-apple app for very long.