Everything I burn is to Blu-Ray.

Of course, it's all my own stuff made just for me.... sometimes I'll make a DVD.
Working on a Wedding now, and I will give them a DVD I know they can play, AND a Blu-Ray incase sometime in the future they get one. Might give them an HD computer files also.

I don't do any commercial work ever.

Very few commercial clients ever want a BluRay, but corporate/industrial clients are a bit different. They initially didn't ask for BluRay, but when I began screening cuts on their office big-screens in BluRay, they started asking more often. Now that's all some want. I would always prefer my work be seen at its best and I get a lot of new corporate clients after they've seen my work for others. Since last August about 8% of total delivered media for all clients combined has been BD.

Last DVD I authored for a feature length doc I delivered in both Standard def and Bluray. I don't think they've duplicated the Bluray, however, they're only selling the standard def DVD, but delivering the Bluray was part of the deal. Was pretty easy to do, too, since I used DVD Architect. I built the whole thing as a bluray using all the HD material and once that was done I just changed the properties and rendered out the Standard def DVD. Also, for all the film festivals and screenings they used a bluray copy, although not the authored one, a simpler one I created that just had a background and a play button on it, also done in DVD Architect. I was surprised to find how many theaters across the USA were able to play use the Bluray, never had a problem, as a matter of fact. A far cry from the doc I did just prior to that, there were only a very few houses that could accomodate Bluray. Most places wanted Digibeta of all things, even the ArcLight in Hollywood, freaking standard def on a 60 foot screen. That was hard to sit thru. That was a few years back though.

I have been delivering Blu-ray exclusively for the last three years...why mess with DVD when the Blu-ray can do everything better? And more!

I deliver to corporate, industrial, and retail. Blu-ray is for the customer who cares, I am not delivering the cheap DVD compilations that you see in Target and WalMart - those are entirely for a different customer base I am not concerned about. I also keep the video side on Blu-ray, no slippage into internet streams that are so so so very soft...

I deliver mixed-mode discs as well to customers, not too forget integration to some internet apps that are another side of the new media business. When you can create many subtitles, multi-angle videos, and apps on mixed mode Blu-ray- your customers can get excited about the optical disc format.

15% do the Blu-Ray here. The numbers are slowly increasing.

In my area, DVD is still common.
For trueHD version, sharing them as files is still easier to my clients. Not many people knows Blu-ray as discs yet.

Must read:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=798794

For a short while I was getting asked for Bluray, but the number is dwindling. I do all my work in HD, then sample it down for the DVD.

I am down to about 10% of the clients wanting Bluray, from a high of about 28%.

Huh. Pretty interesting. That thread, now a year old.

I would gather that things have not changed THAT much since then.

Okay, another ignorant question: How does one deliver a BluRay that can have the same sophisticated menu structure as one can build in DVD? By the way, I don't use DVD-A--yet--but was just wondering if a menu structure is possible. I say this because I seem to recall that Sony really tied up BluRay in knots for the small-volume disk producer when it first came out, didn't they?

riredale, have no idea what you are talking about...you may be referring to the broad licensing to produce commerical volume quantities of Blu-ray discs. That is a marketing and licensing aspect of the Blu-ray consortium and has nothing to do with the pure tech, or even Sony as merely one member of the consortium.

1) DVDAPRO through version 5.2 (6.0 is defective) allows you to do more with creating Blu-ray discs, than you can with creating standard DVD discs. So it is not the least handicapped in menus or anything else applying to authoring.

2) One exception compared to commercial releases is that the DVDAPro does not include licensing for building interactive on-top of runnng video pop-up menus - that is because if you did want to pay for such a licensing programming royalty - well, lets say you would be out of mortgaging your house!

3)With regard to point (2) do keep in mind that SCS DVDAPro does allow you to program on-screen over video buttons just as it does allow this special feature in DVD's.

4) If you want a more sophisticated quality to your Blu-ray authoring, you can buy from SCS the independent's upgrade of Do-Studio production for Blu-ray at a cost of about $3,000.

Why is the DVDA 6 defect?

i've never been asked for blu-ray. offered to my clients and all have refused - basically none had players or were interested in getting them - however, they ALL have media players of one sort or another.

all my productions are delivered in various hd file formats, either on / via the web, on flash drives, or simply dl'ed from dropbox.

i haven't burnt a dvd in two years.

"Okay, another ignorant question: How does one deliver a BluRay that can have the same sophisticated menu structure as one can build in DVD?"

Anything you can do for DVD with DVDA you can do with BD. I regularly produce identical versions of a job in both. My main gripe is that DVDA should be able to produce pop-up menus for BD by now - much like some BUDGET authoring programmes can.

As for menu system, DVDA creates BD similarly to DVD. If I need to make both output, I can create DVD version first, so the markers is there too. Then, save-as, to BD version, just replace them all. Done.

But, the problem of BD authoring in DVDA, when you press MENU button, it will jump to TITLE, TOP Menu, similar when you click TITLE DVD. Also, feeling a bit awkward when you go from Scene Selection, and looking for specific scenes.

Now I personally don't need crazy sophisticated menu Java scripted menu like that, but at least Pop-Up menu, easy navigation between scenes, that is enough.
A suggestion is to try for other authoring software, but haven't had any chance with it.

Set

I'm yet to deliver a Blu-Ray and only a few are asking for DVD's. Mostly video files
(H.264 | .mp4 | ProRes)

I've been editing a few weddings lately and the wedding dress/shop owner is asking about Blu-Ray but gives me miniDV taped weddings.

As long as those miniDV taped weddings contains HDV 1080i recorded video, that can do..., but if it is DV 576i or 480i..., it will be just the same as DVD.

Actually clarification on setiawan3d comment about HDV on DV - is not quite correct.....

If you capture prosumer high-end camera source of DV ($2500-$4000 retail range of original camera price) that has good imaging with a Firewire connection - then take into an HDV project of SonyVegasPro 7.0 to 9.0 versions- you can integrate the quality very well.

Here are the caveats - if DV source is 16:9 you have a close-enough approximation that you will not have to worry about pillar-boxing for the different aspect ratios - if DV is 4:3 you should liberally pillarbox the way NTSC US American national broadcast does for integrating the different formats and aspect ratios.

Produce output on Blu-ray and you will get better than what you can get by producing a standard DVD workflow.Just one more advantage for using Blu-ray authoring and ditching DVD.

100% Bluray. If it's requested on disc, I deliver Bluray only and the client is happy. I shoot HD only, so I deliver HD. And no client has asked for a standard def DVD since 2009 anyway, so I don't even bother to give them a choice. It's 2013 already, and 4K is knocking at the door!

Additionally, unlike major-label, replicated production DVDs, unless it's really optimized, a home-burned DVD usually looks really bad (even up-converted) on an HD TV.

That's been my experience anyway.

Darby

I have run into many, many customers who actually cannot tell the difference between a native Bluray and a native DVD project.

It has to do with the monitor/television they are using, and/or the playback device.

My experience is that progressive video, especially 24p, from a home burned DVD looks great uprezzed on a Blu-ray player with an HD TV. Interlaced DVDs however (which is what a lot of home-burned DVDs are) seem to gain nothing from a Blu-ray players uprezzing algorithms.

>> unlike major-label, replicated production DVDs, unless it's really optimized, a home-burned DVD usually looks really bad>>
Indeed the Mpeg encoders for lower cost products like VegasPro and DVDArchPro are nowhere near as good as those used in commercial retail disc market. Hence their performance as interlaced video is not that good.

On the other hand Blu-ray encoders including the Mpeg version included with SCS products is not that bad, and does a pretty good job for burned one-off production. NOTE, the included AVC encoder with generic SCS product is not so much, and many do resort to other products to get as good as they can. Likely the AVC encoder with Do-Studio is a better product at a much higher price.

The upside of all this, is that for one-off productions to burned discs, you cannot beat the Blu-ray format - the highest quality authoring format and technology available to the ordinary person.

Darby, perhaps your eyes are a lot better than mine.

I shoot in HDV, edit in HDV, and then I encode to mpeg2 with MainConcept in Vegas. I then author to DVD. When I play the DVD on my PC, the resulting video looks EXACTLY like the HD original except for the fact that it's a bit softer (obviously; 720x480 pixels versus a 1440x1080 HD source).

Yes, MainConcept is not quite as sophisticated as the Hollywood encoders, but up until a couple of years ago I used only the expensive, sophisticated CinemaCraft encoder for my Mpeg2 encoding. I switched to MainConcept because my own tests demonstrated that later versions of MC had improved to the point that CinemaCraft was not much better--unless really low bitrates were required (<6Mb/sec). Then the better performance and the ability to manually tweak portions of the completed encoding made a difference in CinemaCraft's favor.

Yeah, Hollywood stuff looks great on DVD. Other threads dating back many years have gone into this. It makes a big difference that Hollywood source material is pristine and also shot at 24fps. But, as I stated at the outset, to my (older) eyes my DVDs look exactly like the HD source except for some softness.

Or maybe it means I need a stronger lens prescription.