HD and SD on Blu-Ray, how will it look?

[Ron Hunter]

Like many of you, I have a collection of family movies spanning many years. Most are SD, but the newer ones are HD.

I would like to put all of these movies on a single Blu-Ray disc with chapters for the years, but I'm wondering how the SD movies will appear on screen. Will the SD movies fit in a tiny box in the center of the screen? I know the Blu-Ray player upconverts SD video, but if the SD video is on a Blu-Ray disc, won't the Blu-Ray player "think" the SD is actually HD and play it "as is"?

Before I go to the trouble and do this (and create a $15 coaster), I want to see if any of you have already been down this road. Thanks!

[Chuck Engels]

Hi Ron,
I suggest that you start a HD project and then add SD video to the project. I think you will see the results when you do that. The frame is 1920 x 1080 for the HD media, the SD media will only fill 720 x 480 of that HD frame, so yes it will be a small box in the center. You can scale the SD video up some without losing a lot of quality, maybe by 20%.

If you create a completely SD DVD and play that on a Blu Ray player most will do some form of upconverting. But playing a Blu Ray disc the player has no reason to think or know that it includes SD video as the frame size is HD, know what I mean?

This isn't a lot different than addind 320 x 240 video to a SD project a few years ago. The new digital cameras would shot video and that was cool but it was a lot smaller and the quality wasn't too great. People still combined the video with normal DV footage in a 720 x 480 SD project and DVD.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

....Before I go to the trouble and do this (and create a $15 coaster).....

Ron, buy a re-writable BD-RE disc and use it for final tests before writing the BD disc(s) and you'll have no more expensive coasters.

[Chuck Engels]

Good suggestion John

[Ron Hunter]

Thanks for the great feedback. Sounds like I'll put the SD movies on DVD and the HD ones on Blu-Ray.

[Chuck Engels]

It's easier to scale the HD video down to SD project size and combine everything on a DVD, going the other way is a definite problem.