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Author and Burn Blu-Ray Entirely on Mac?

Scott M

Scott M

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So far I have found one mention of one solution: by burning HD MPEG2 and then using Roxio's Toast with the HD/BR Plugin.

Has anyone tried this combination, or found other successful Mac-centric options?
 
Hi,

I actually pulled my hair out for months trying to figure out the best solution for this problem, but I have a good working setup now and I'd be happy to share my findings if it helps. Although this is just one approach, it is definitely the one I liked best.

First of all, I'm sure you're aware that Apple does not sell or make Blu-ray as an upgrade option available for any of their computers. Many have speculated that the reason is because they were waiting for the "format war" to come to an end, but I think the true answer is less political than that: they have no software with which to work with Blu-ray. Until DVD Studio pro is compatible with the format and they have a way to play movies natively (remember that studio-burnt discs require an HDCP-compliant monitor as well), I don't think the drives are going to show up.

This is a problem for those of us shooting high resolution content (say, with the RED, perhaps), as the only way to distribute this stuff sans film-out is either as a giant web download or on a DVD. I don't know how thrilled you are about shooting 4K and then having to cram it down to 480p so your neighbor can see it, but I'm not. So Apple be damned, I went looking for an alternative solution.

If you do any searching online, you'll realize quite quickly that just finding a compatible drive for the Mac (Pro) can be complicated. There are options out there, but most are expensive, slow, and problematic. For instance, FastMac offers multiple choices (http://store.fastmac.com/index.php?cPath=10_2_52), but at $529.95, their cheapest is painfully slow (2x). For just $50 more, you can get a 4x burner - but it's SATA only, and guess what - your Mac Pro's optical drive connections are good ol' IDE. A SATA drive is really what you want these days, of course, but if you have no way to connect it then the point becomes moot pretty quickly.

An eagle-eyed Mac enthusiast will probably be quick to point out that the current Mac Pro actually has two unused internal SATA ports on the motherboard itself, but what they probably don't realize is that they're a pain to get to and utilize. Like, a real pain.

Here's one account explaining with photos how to gain access to the ports and connect your new, shiny SATA device:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/MacPro_HD_in_optical_drive_bay/MacPro_HD_in_OpticalBay.html

In short, you have to remove the fan assembly and CPU heatsink to gain access to the ports, which takes a good bit of work. You will also need a right-angle SATA connector to fit the SATA cable underneath the fan assembly, as well as a MOLEX-to-SATA power adapter for your drive (as the Mac Pro only provides MOLEX power connectors and the drive only uses SATA). Finally, you'll have to remove the Blu-ray drive's front bezel, as it is too wide to fit in the optical bay slot in the Mac Pro. Here's a good recap if you need step-by-step directions:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4916867&postcount=7

If you're brave enough to take the plunge, it should be noted that while your SATA drive is capable of reading BD discs (commercial or BD-R), many users online have mentioned that writing to the discs is not possible through SATA mode due to current Apple OS firmware restrictions. While this may be remedied in the future, you certainly don't want to take the chance now - especially if your primary use for the drive will be burning discs.

So if the IDE drives are too slow and the SATA drives just flat out don't work, what is an ambitious filmmaker to do? The next obvious solution is to take your SATA drive and put it in an external enclosure of some kind so that the Firewire or USB bus can provide you with the necessary interface you need to get the drive recognized and working properly. Although eSATA is indeed faster, FW400 and USB2.0 both provide enough bandwidth to safely burn Blu-ray discs and they are both compatible with the current Blu-ray spec in Mac OSX firmware at this time so that's the route I would heartily recommend.

Before you look for an enclosure, you'll need to know which drive to buy and the good news is that more and more manufacturers are beginning to release product. A quick glance at this page on Newegg shows no less than six internal Blu-ray drives for your burning pleasure:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2010100005+1036522425&name=Blu-ray+DVD+Burner

There are some other models by Plextor and Panasonic as well, but I'll save you the time and just tell you the one to get straight out: the GGW-H20L from LG. It's a 6x (yes, you read that correctly) BD-R burner, will do Dual-layer BD-R discs (that's 50GB per disc!), and will even read HD DVD discs (if you made the wrong choice early on and have a library of media lying around). The best part is that although it's the fastest drive on the market it's also the cheapest - a steal at $299.99. I bought mine from a local Fry's, but they're readily available online as well. I really can't say enough great things about the drive.

Once you get a drive, you'll need an enclosure as it is natively SATA. I had enormous difficulty finding a Firewire -> SATA unit at the time I bought my burner (YMMV), but there are some USB 2.0 -> SATA enclosures out there. The one I bought was from Addonics (http://www.addonics.com/products/enclosures/ae5idecsu2f.asp). It's not the best looking thing in the world, but worked flawlessly right out of the box and I have yet to experience an error with this combination.

So now that you have a drive connected to the computer, what are you going to use to make Blu-ray compliant discs? This, too, is a complicated mess and there are several approaches.

The MPEG2/Toast solution you've found will work, but MPEG-2 is a lossy compression algorithm and pretty low quality for Blu-ray IMO. It's definitely the cheapest way to go, but you have a $20,000 camera and you're going to be burning discs at $10 a pop... you might as well buy the software to make your content look its best.

The alternative I have found is a combination of software products found in Adobe's Production Premium Creative Suite. I purchased this originally for its powerful combination of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash (I do lots of graphic/web design as well), but it also comes with some great video applications including Premiere, Encore, and After Effects. Even if you like to do all of your cutting in Final Cut (I do), having After Effects in your arsenal is indispensable. And, the magic app of the lot - Encore - will (drumroll, please) - burn Blu-ray discs! A competitor to DVD SP, it gives you full control of your BD project, including the ability to have multiple audio tracks, subtitles, HD video menus, and everything else you're used to with SD DVD. The catch is that although Encore will encode your projects to MPEG-2 for you, this is still the same lossy codec you don't want to be using. Fortunately, it can accept BD-compliant H.264 files natively and burn them without any need for transcoding or recompression. (The software does offer an H.264 compression option of its own, but I have not had good success with it. I have posted on several forums about my issues, but a workaround has yet to be presented).

In theory, Apple's Compressor should be able to make you a nice HD H.264 file, but I haven't found a setting yet that Encore likes without throwing up its "this file needs to be transcoded to a compliant Blu-ray format" flag. Fortunately, After Effects does have such a setting, and thankfully the render times are pretty quick and you can select whatever bitrate you want (even a CBR option, thank god!) for your project. I just grab my finished 1080p file from Final Cut (usually in Prores HQ), drop it in a blank timeline in After Effects, and then render it out to H.264. Import that into Encore, click burn, and you're good to go. Even with 4x BD-R media, the discs will burn at the 6x rate and it's not that bad of a wait time. I have been very lucky with my setup thus far - not a single coaster from Encore this entire time.

So that's it in a nutshell. Quite a few steps in there, but hopefully all the hassle I went through to get something working will save you some time. I can only imagine that Apple has got to release SOME Blu-ray SOMEthing in the near future, but if you're one of those people who is getting tired of not being able to distribute RED content on anything but standard DVD discs, this is the best choice we've got at this time. And, at $300, I imagine this burner will be much cheaper than Apple's initial offering (and probably faster, too). Good luck on your quest, and if you have any other questions about this (or anything Blu-ray-related on a Mac), feel free to shoot me a PM.

Best,

Häakon
 
Great post Haakon,

I just bought Adobe Production Premium last week, what a bonus that it can be used to burn Blu-Ray!

Ed.
 
MrGlory said:
Indeed, that was extensive and greatly appreciated!

As far as outputting the H.264 file from AE to be ingested into Encore, any tips or settings that seem to work best?
Click to expand...
Glad to be of help! Sure, here's a screenshot of the settings I regularly use:

grab.jpg


It's pretty easy to set up as After Effects has a Blu-ray H.264 preset built right in. Just make sure you select this in the "Format" dropdown, as "Quicktime" or plain old "H.264" won't work properly. Once you've selected the Blu-ray option, you can click the "Format Options" button in the Video Output section to tweak any settings you like. Under the video tab, you can ensure your output will be 1920x1080, 23.976fps, progressive, and Widescreen 16:9. Below that, you can alter the bitrate settings to your preference. Some people prefer VBR if they have a lot of content, but if what you shot will fit on a disc without the need to ever go below the maximum threshold, there's never a reason to use it. Go CBR and give yourself the best quality you possibly can for your entire disc. Encore will let you go up to 35Mbps, which is very clean and sharp for playback. That's it; everything else should already be configured for you. You should be importing true 1920x1080 (square PAR) files into AE - if, say, you shot your project in 2:1 or you want a 2.40:1 ratio for example, just letterbox it in Final Cut before exporting. There aren't any "anamorphic" settings like there are for DVD to squeeze some more resolution out of the format, but at 1080p, even a letterboxed presentation looks great.
 
h2opixels said:
presumably this drive will work (with AE/Encore as described above) ? anybody tried it ?

http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=11054
Click to expand...
Hi David,

As that drive is external and USB/Firewire compatible, you should have no problems using it with Encore. Just be aware that the drive is roughly $1,186.24 (on that site, anyway) and tops out at 4x. Believe me, I don't have any stock in LG but an extra $800 isn't worth a slightly prettier chassis (and a slower drive!). That being said, it should be completely usable in this workflow.
 
I use above described workflow on PC.
One thing you Mac people should check.
Do not let Encore scale down the 4K, it is not the best choice you get there.
I start in AE in 4K from 16 bit TIFF sequence input.
Next I create new composition with properties of 1920x1080 and in its effects use scale with SIN high details.
Do not transcode here in AE
Go to Premiere and again do not transcode, Premiere will not take 16 bit TIFF direct but it will work on 16 bit TIFFs in Adobe dynamic link mode. So no ingestion in to Premiere.
Do whatever you want to do in Premiere and just save project at the end without transcoding.
Now you can go to Encore and take the project from AE. Changes done in Premiere will be taken under account when you will do final and the only transcode.
 
Häakon said:
Hi,

I actually pulled my hair out for months trying to figure out the best solution for this problem, but I have a good working setup now and I'd be happy to share my findings if it helps. Although this is just one approach, it is definitely the one I liked best.

First of all, I'm sure you're aware that Apple does not sell or make Blu-ray as an upgrade option available for any of their computers. Many have speculated that the reason is because they were waiting for the "format war" to come to an end, but I think the true answer is less political than that: they have no software with which to work with Blu-ray. Until DVD Studio pro is compatible with the format and they have a way to play movies natively (remember that studio-burnt discs require an HDCP-compliant monitor as well), I don't think the drives are going to show up.

This is a problem for those of us shooting high resolution content (say, with the RED, perhaps), as the only way to distribute this stuff sans film-out is either as a giant web download or on a DVD. I don't know how thrilled you are about shooting 4K and then having to cram it down to 480p so your neighbor can see it, but I'm not. So Apple be damned, I went looking for an alternative solution.

If you do any searching online, you'll realize quite quickly that just finding a compatible drive for the Mac (Pro) can be complicated. There are options out there, but most are expensive, slow, and problematic. For instance, FastMac offers multiple choices (http://store.fastmac.com/index.php?cPath=10_2_52), but at $529.95, their cheapest is painfully slow (2x). For just $50 more, you can get a 4x burner - but it's SATA only, and guess what - your Mac Pro's optical drive connections are good ol' IDE. A SATA drive is really what you want these days, of course, but if you have no way to connect it then the point becomes moot pretty quickly.

An eagle-eyed Mac enthusiast will probably be quick to point out that the current Mac Pro actually has two unused internal SATA ports on the motherboard itself, but what they probably don't realize is that they're a pain to get to and utilize. Like, a real pain.

Here's one account explaining with photos how to gain access to the ports and connect your new, shiny SATA device:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/MacPro_HD_in_optical_drive_bay/MacPro_HD_in_OpticalBay.html

In short, you have to remove the fan assembly and CPU heatsink to gain access to the ports, which takes a good bit of work. You will also need a right-angle SATA connector to fit the SATA cable underneath the fan assembly, as well as a MOLEX-to-SATA power adapter for your drive (as the Mac Pro only provides MOLEX power connectors and the drive only uses SATA). Finally, you'll have to remove the Blu-ray drive's front bezel, as it is too wide to fit in the optical bay slot in the Mac Pro. Here's a good recap if you need step-by-step directions:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4916867&postcount=7

If you're brave enough to take the plunge, it should be noted that while your SATA drive is capable of reading BD discs (commercial or BD-R), many users online have mentioned that writing to the discs is not possible through SATA mode due to current Apple OS firmware restrictions. While this may be remedied in the future, you certainly don't want to take the chance now - especially if your primary use for the drive will be burning discs.

So if the IDE drives are too slow and the SATA drives just flat out don't work, what is an ambitious filmmaker to do? The next obvious solution is to take your SATA drive and put it in an external enclosure of some kind so that the Firewire or USB bus can provide you with the necessary interface you need to get the drive recognized and working properly. Although eSATA is indeed faster, FW400 and USB2.0 both provide enough bandwidth to safely burn Blu-ray discs and they are both compatible with the current Blu-ray spec in Mac OSX firmware at this time so that's the route I would heartily recommend.

Before you look for an enclosure, you'll need to know which drive to buy and the good news is that more and more manufacturers are beginning to release product. A quick glance at this page on Newegg shows no less than six internal Blu-ray drives for your burning pleasure:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2010100005+1036522425&name=Blu-ray+DVD+Burner

There are some other models by Plextor and Panasonic as well, but I'll save you the time and just tell you the one to get straight out: the GGW-H20L from LG. It's a 6x (yes, you read that correctly) BD-R burner, will do Dual-layer BD-R discs (that's 50GB per disc!), and will even read HD DVD discs (if you made the wrong choice early on and have a library of media lying around). The best part is that although it's the fastest drive on the market it's also the cheapest - a steal at $299.99. I bought mine from a local Fry's, but they're readily available online as well. I really can't say enough great things about the drive.

Once you get a drive, you'll need an enclosure as it is natively SATA. I had enormous difficulty finding a Firewire -> SATA unit at the time I bought my burner (YMMV), but there are some USB 2.0 -> SATA enclosures out there. The one I bought was from Addonics (http://www.addonics.com/products/enclosures/ae5idecsu2f.asp). It's not the best looking thing in the world, but worked flawlessly right out of the box and I have yet to experience an error with this combination.

So now that you have a drive connected to the computer, what are you going to use to make Blu-ray compliant discs? This, too, is a complicated mess and there are several approaches.

The MPEG2/Toast solution you've found will work, but MPEG-2 is a lossy compression algorithm and pretty low quality for Blu-ray IMO. It's definitely the cheapest way to go, but you have a $20,000 camera and you're going to be burning discs at $10 a pop... you might as well buy the software to make your content look its best.

The alternative I have found is a combination of software products found in Adobe's Production Premium Creative Suite. I purchased this originally for its powerful combination of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash (I do lots of graphic/web design as well), but it also comes with some great video applications including Premiere, Encore, and After Effects. Even if you like to do all of your cutting in Final Cut (I do), having After Effects in your arsenal is indispensable. And, the magic app of the lot - Encore - will (drumroll, please) - burn Blu-ray discs! A competitor to DVD SP, it gives you full control of your BD project, including the ability to have multiple audio tracks, subtitles, HD video menus, and everything else you're used to with SD DVD. The catch is that although Encore will encode your projects to MPEG-2 for you, this is still the same lossy codec you don't want to be using. Fortunately, it can accept BD-compliant H.264 files natively and burn them without any need for transcoding or recompression. (The software does offer an H.264 compression option of its own, but I have not had good success with it. I have posted on several forums about my issues, but a workaround has yet to be presented).

In theory, Apple's Compressor should be able to make you a nice HD H.264 file, but I haven't found a setting yet that Encore likes without throwing up its "this file needs to be transcoded to a compliant Blu-ray format" flag. Fortunately, After Effects does have such a setting, and thankfully the render times are pretty quick and you can select whatever bitrate you want (even a CBR option, thank god!) for your project. I just grab my finished 1080p file from Final Cut (usually in Prores HQ), drop it in a blank timeline in After Effects, and then render it out to H.264. Import that into Encore, click burn, and you're good to go. Even with 4x BD-R media, the discs will burn at the 6x rate and it's not that bad of a wait time. I have been very lucky with my setup thus far - not a single coaster from Encore this entire time.

So that's it in a nutshell. Quite a few steps in there, but hopefully all the hassle I went through to get something working will save you some time. I can only imagine that Apple has got to release SOME Blu-ray SOMEthing in the near future, but if you're one of those people who is getting tired of not being able to distribute RED content on anything but standard DVD discs, this is the best choice we've got at this time. And, at $300, I imagine this burner will be much cheaper than Apple's initial offering (and probably faster, too). Good luck on your quest, and if you have any other questions about this (or anything Blu-ray-related on a Mac), feel free to shoot me a PM.

Best,

Häakon
Click to expand...


So encode h.264 in AE and burn in Encore. Got it. :)
 
I wish someone could enlighten me as to how the BE06LU10 (new external 6X unit) can operate over USB 2.0 at any speeds faster than 2X? Blu-Ray or BD-ROM at 6X speed is nearly 220MB/s -- 1.752Gbps max, I think. That's 3X what USB2 can handle.
 
so, for those of you scoring at home thats:

$300 for a Blu-Ray drive
$75 for a FW/USB enclosure
$1,700 for Adobe CS3 Production Premium Pack

a total of $2,075 on top of the cost of FCP Studio 2 for the luxury of burning Blu-Ray discs on a Mac. It might actually be cheaper to build a time machine to transport yourself into the future when Apple has native Blu-Ray support for their suite.

Some days I really hate Apple.
________
LEGEND
 
Thanks for the Info Häakon,, I been using Sony Vegas and After Effects,
I may get FCP soon
 
Emery said:
So encode h.264 in AE and burn in Encore. Got it. :)
Click to expand...
Yes. :-) But the bulk of the post was also about finding and installing a burner, which, up until today's announcement of LG's external 6x BD-R was somewhat complicated!

Jeff Kilgroe said:
I wish someone could enlighten me as to how the BE06LU10 (new external 6X unit) can operate over USB 2.0 at any speeds faster than 2X? Blu-Ray or BD-ROM at 6X speed is nearly 220MB/s -- 1.752Gbps max, I think. That's 3X what USB2 can handle.
Click to expand...
6x Blu-ray is 216 Mbit/s (27 MB/s). USB 2.0 is 480 Mbit/s (60 MB/s). It's well under the threshold. Even Blu-ray's technical max of 12x tops out at 432 Mbit/s (54 MB/s) - probably too fast for real world use over USB2.0, but 6x is well within the limits.

Ethan Cooper said:
so, for those of you scoring at home thats:

$300 for a Blu-Ray drive
$75 for a FW/USB enclosure
$1,700 for Adobe CS3 Production Premium Pack

a total of $2,075 on top of the cost of FCP Studio 2 for the luxury of burning Blu-Ray discs on a Mac. It might actually be cheaper to build a time machine to transport yourself into the future when Apple has native Blu-Ray support for their suite.
Click to expand...
And yet many were willing to shell out $1,500 for REDCine just a few hours ago... :bleh:
 
I would recommend using windows, even if OSX is your preferred OS on your Intel-PC.

Most blu-ray writers come with a authoring software (typically cyberlink) as bundle software.

Our 300-500 burners all had authoring software bundled.

we use Adobe CS and bluray is great.
Never want to go back to DVD, the quality is so much better.
 
Anyone have a good source for buying BD-R blanks in a spindle or multi-packs?
 
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