Buring Blu-ray Discs from Standard DVD Media

Posted by Dan Israel on May 5, 2013 in Video

Apple’s Compressor takes a lot of knocks.  Some are warranted!  It has a cumbersome interface; multiple independent windows that are hard to hide and show; and hidden everything!  But it is also a powerfully flexible and high quality encoder for conversion or transcoding.  For several years I’ve been burning BD5 discs for clients.  These are hybrid discs that allow high resolution content to be burned to a Standard DVD media.  The only caveat is, this type of disc, must be played back on a Blu-ray player (at least to my knowledge).

WHAT IS A BD5 (DVD-5?)

BD5 (and it’s dual layer brother BD9) is a essentially a Blu-Ray structured disc limited to a data rate that is sustainable by conventional DVD media and burner.  Specifically, 10-15Mbps average (13-17Mpbs Max) bit rate as opposed to Blu-Ray which is nearly double that.  Other than this, it is the same structurally as a Blu-Ray disc.  It is sometimes called AVCHD, because the codecs are both H.264 and the data bit rates are both limited.WHY CAN’T IT PLAY ON A DVD PLAYERThe structure for DVD uses a completely different disc structure (TS Folder vs. BDMV) and completely different codec (mv2 vs H.264).  I guess newer DVD players that will play AVCHD disc, would work because they can read the structure/codec.  But older DVD players will NOT be compatible.

 

HERE IS HOW TO DO IT

BURN FROM COMPRESSOR

1. Drag your High Resolution output file into Compressor 3.5 or 4.
2. Create a Job Action of “Create Blu-ray Disc” on your high-res output file.  (Click in the blue part & select JOB ACTION tab from the Inspector Window.
3. Select the Output Device (DVD BURNER – see below for HARD DRIVE for creating a file to burn multiple discs)
4. Select the basic authoring options you want.

CREATE A DISC IMAGE FOR MULTIPLE BURNS

If you are wanting to burn multiple discs, you can have Compressor create a disc image that can then be burned either through Apple’s Disk Utility or Roxio’s Toast.  But Compressor will automatically select Blu-Ray for the “Stream Usage” versus AVCHD unless you selected a conventional DVD burner in the Output Device.  If you are making a BD5/BD9 you must change one option for it to work correctly.

1. Click on the “H.265 for Blu-ray” encode line.
2. In the Inspector Window, click the button/tab for ENCODER options.
3. Click the small GEAR icon next to “Average Bit Rate:”  This should un-gray the Average and Maximum settings
4. Set the Maximum Bit Rate of 17Mbps.   Doing so should set the Average Bit Rate near 15Mbps.  This is what limits the Blu-ray stream into AVCHD.
5. Click on the ACTIONS button/tab in at the top of the Inspector Window
6. Select “Default Destination” to write your .img file.