I'm looking to buy my first Blu-ray burner. Any suggestions?
-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron F. Ross
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2013 3:12 PM
To: Experimental Film Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Frameworks] HD cam 24 vs 25? vs DCP?
If you're stuck with Blu-Ray, definitely use
professional optical media. Taiyo Yuden is the
gold standard. They make DVDs under their own
brand as well as others. For Blu-Ray, I think
Taiyo Yuedn have an exclusive with JVC. I go to
supermediastore.com, they have the widest selection of media I've seen.
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For H.264 encoding on Windows, Adobe Media
Encoder is the best I've worked with. Definitely
better than the Sony AVC codec, which seems to
have issues with properly converting/flagging
Studio IRE 16-235 levels, leading to contrast
issues in playback. Quicktime has notorious
problems with this as well, sometimes encoding or
playing back MP4s at the wrong levels.
//////////////
Aaron
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At 12/13/2013, you wrote:
The problem for the filmmaker in the digital age is that there is
absolutely no standardization between different screening venues. Some
folks want files, but only take certain codecs and containers (and
different ones at different places, of course...). And some folks want
physical media: tapes (still a variety of formats) or discs... It all
depends on what tech the venue has invested in, and what their
'projectionist'/tech-person can handle (and, alas, such folks are often
less than competent to deal with any kind of curveball*).
Unlike todd, I haven't had any problems with Blu-Ray, and I'd guess that
Blu-Ray players are pretty common now. With any home-burned optical discs,
the quality of the media matters A LOT. NEVER buy cheapo generic blank
discs. Folks making shorts should keep in mind that up to a half-hour or so
of material in MPEG2 will fit on a standard blank DVD5 in Blu-Ray format,
and will play-back in any DVD player. If you do that, get some of the
premium Taiyo-Yuden blanks from one of the internet outlets, and you should
get good reliable results. (And always burn at the slowest available
speed.)
At least Blu-Ray is better than the least-common-denominator default pretty
much EVERYBODY can handle: a standard DVD (meh). And with Blu-Ray, as long
as your disc plays at all, there's really no way the folks on the other end
can screw it up.
Of course, if you're dealing with venues that take files, todd's
thumb-drive idea is a great way to go. Flash memory just keeps getting
cheaper. (32GB USB thumbs can be had now for just over $20... cheaper than
'professional' tape stock, not to mention film prints...)
So, I would say that an artisanal filmmaker needs:
• Decent software and hardware to author and burn Blu-Rays (and if you're
doing the short-running-time BR on DVD5, you don't even need a Blu-Ray
burner.
• Proper software to transcode your digital 'master' into whatever format a
venue desires. On a Mac, that means a combination of Apple Compressor and
the old-reliable (and free) MPEG-Streamclip. On a PC, I don't know...
(Aaron??)
I suspect some of Moira's specific problem is that she's working in Avid
(on a PC, I'm guessing), which uses some sort of proprietary codec and
offers limited options for output to standardized formats. The closest we
seem to be to a high quality file standard for distribution is ProRes 422.
And as recently noted here, ProRes isn't available on PCs. Given what
production houses charge for transfers, it might behoove PC based folks to
invest in a used older Mac Pro (~$500) if only to make ProRes files.
Finally, if anybody wants you to send files via the Net, they'll probably
want some kind of h.264 coded file (in either a Quicktime or .mp4
container). It's very compressed and lossy, of course, but it can look damn
good if you encode it right. The thing to note here, is that different
h.264 software codecs are not created equal, and Apple's version is
notoriously meh. What you want is the open-source x264 encoder. (x264 is
not a codec, it's just a means of encoding h.264). There's lots of settings
inside this thing, most of which I don't understand, but if you set the
right frame-rate, choose one of the higher quality presets ('Slower' or
'Very Slow') and throw in the 'use 3rd pass' option for good measure,
you'll get the best visual-quality-to-smaller-file size ratio in
existence. And AFAIK, you can use x264 in the PC version of MPEG
Streamclip, (and probably a variety of other PC-based shareware or freeware
converters as well.)
djt
* I will never forget my experience at a good-sized film festival, in a
city of some 1.3 million residents, at which the organizers had hired a
"professional" video projectionist. There were three pieces screening
simultaneously in adjacent screening rooms of the rented multiplex, and
EACH ONE was screening in the wrong aspect ratio: the ones that should have
been 4:3 were stretched out to 16:9, and the ones which should have been
16:9 were squeezed into 4:3.
On Dec 12, 2013, at 11:25 PM, todd eacrett wrote:
From a presentation perspective, I'd nix both of the rapidly obsolescing
HDCam and Blu-ray in favour of a ProRes file. Blu-ray is a pita for
screenings. I've had discs that tested fine one day then wouldn't read
the next. Even with a BR data drive and the software it's a slow and
potentially lossy process to rip it back to a file.
If you're sending out a physical object (hard-drive/memory stick) with
files on it, consider including multiple versions with different
resolutions and/or bitrates. When I have the time to re-encode a file I'm
pretty careful, but if I have to do so an hour before a screening, not so
much.
You don't mention the running time, but a file that can be up//downloaded
is theoretically cheaper/faster than shipping a tape or disc. At least it
pushes the economic and environmental costs of the server farms onto the
next generation.
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-------------------------------------------
Aaron F. Ross
Digital Arts Guild
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