Is HD video and burning not as far along as I thought?

[Gerry]

Hi, gang --
It's been ages since I've been here. Been limping along on a 6-year-old Win XP computer with Prel 4 for the past few years, recording my video on an old Canon Mini DV. And enjoying it.

Recently upgraded to a new Win 7 machine (i7 3.4ghz processor) and decided it was time to upgrade everything else. After taking a great trip to Alaska last summer and watching the disappointing video quality on our 1080 TV, I went out and bought a new DSLR that shoots Full HD video (1080 @ 30fps, MPEG on SD card). I even upgraded to Prel 9. We have another Alaska trip scheduled for next summer, and I want the video to be spectacular.

Then I realized there was no way to watch the movies on the HD TV unless I burned them to Blu-Ray. I was totally shocked to see how few BD burners are available out there. And that got me to wondering: was I assuming that 1080 HD home videos and burners are much farther developed than they are? I guess I expected to see a boatload of BD burners because seemingly HD camcorders are the only things available any more. Is it still in its infancy?

Did I make a mistake buying the DLSR? How is everyone else watching their PREL-produced HD videos? Or am I headed in the right direction and should just buy one of the BD burners and get set to watch my spectacular HD videos?

Confused!

[Chuck Engels]

I bought a very nice LG bluray burner, works great.
If I don't want to connect the camcorder directly to view the video that way then I edit and burn to a Bluray disc.
I think you are headed in the right direction, don't let the lack of options worry you

Here's mine, works great
http://astore.amazon.com/chuckengelsco- ... B004LPLE50

[Chris B]

I've got an LG as well - works fine. I burn BluRays for archive purposes (1080i 50fps) and play the ISOs from my nettop PC under the TV. I think a lot of people are moving to the media-centre/NAS/cloud storage model rather than burning disks these days.

[Dave McElderry]

Nothing against LG, but here's another that I can personally vouch for. I've been using it for several months with zero issues. I have no idea if the higher price translates to better quality - only time will tell. But I do know that Sony has an excellent reputation in their drives.

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Blu-ray-Inte ... B004HYFOI8

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Being a bit of an early adopter I also have an LG BD burner that I bought a few years ago. Never had any problems with it (but they are noticeably cheaper these days ).

I also use a DLNA compliant Synology NAS for, amongst other things, streaming video to my 1080p TVs so, as ChrisB says, burning a BD isn't always necessary.

[RJ Johnston]

When I'm in a hurry to see what my videos look like after shooting them with my Kodak Playtouch, I join the MPEG-4 1080p30 AVC/h.264 video and AAC audio clips and then just copy one big file to a thumb drive, which my Sony Blu-ray player accepts. Actually, it goes like this:

I use Videoredo TV Suite with H.264 to "join" the video into an elementary h.264 stream, which requires no recoding, and the audio into an mpeg audio stream which I then convert to an AC3 or PCM stream with a different converter. Then I mux the video and audio with the free TSMuxeR to create a M2TS file. The M2TS video file is copied to a thumb drive which is inserted into a Sony Blu-ray player.

The one big M2TS file can not be edited later without problems.

I have been using an internal HP Blu-ray burner for almost two years without creating any coasters. I stay away from USB 2.0 external burners, which have caused me a lot of problems. Maybe USB 3.0 will be different.

[Gerry]

This is all really good news. Thanks! Gonna go pick me up a BD burner this afternoon and continue with my vision of the future. I'm still surprised, though, because I just expected to find things "farther along" with BD burners much more mainstream.

Lesson learned: don't be out of touch with technology for too long!

Great to be back!

[Bobby]

Hi Gerry.

Sorry to be late by a day, but RJ's point about the USB stick is a good one. BD and any technology using those old silver discs is so 20th century! Many people skipped BluRay entirely, and went from DVD to HD streaming, including myself. In my case, I output HD files and copy them to a media streaming box (Patriot Box Office in my case) and then plug that into my TV via HDMI cable. Works great and no discs to mess around with, burning problems, etc.

There are lots of ways to accomplish this; many TVs have direct USB input so you wouldn't even need a streaming box.

I think that is the way to go, and the reason that BD is languishing and why you haven't seen much progress. On the other hand, if you want to distribute to folks, like your family, discs are the most convenient way to do it. No solution is perfect!

[Gerry]

Thanks, Bob, and everyone. I'll really have to investigate streaming much more closely. Breaking the "hold it in my hand" habit will be hard.

In the meantime, I was able to land an LG burner this afternoon (only $60), and spent the afternoon shooting some HD video. Then I spent the evening trying to get Prel 9 to burn it to a disk. Wound up getting a "Chapter Overflow" message and spent a lot of time online investigating that.

I was finally able to burn a disk by using Phantomibility's Phantom BD disk, then burning the ISO to a Blu-Ray with IMGBURN. Worked great. I then stripped all the "funny business" out of my video (e.g. menus) and am trying to burn directly from Prel again.

But the bottom line for me is: the camera's video looked great onscreen and that was my biggest concern. So I keep the camera. Now HOW I get it to the screen is just a matter of details. Maybe Prel11 will hold the answer.

[Gerry]

In my case, I output HD files and copy them to a media streaming box

What settings do you use to output HD files? Seemingly I'm seeing that Prel only saves to disk, so I'm obviously missing something.

[Chuck Engels]

On the Share tab you have lots of options, everything from MP4 to WMV.
Here are some tutorials on the share options, one of them is free
http://muvipix.com/products.php?searchp ... =0&btn.y=0

[Gerry]

Thanks! I'll have to check it out.

I was able to make an MPEG (m2t) file today and successfully burned that to a Blu-Ray disc. Tried another one with menus and that didn't turn out so well. So it looks like Digital Architect Studio is in my future!

Thanks for the help!

[Peru]

So it looks like DVD Architect Studio is in my future!