MP4 To Blu Ray ?

[NewTwoVideo]

Hello Everyone,

I have several YouTube 1080p videos that I enjoy watching frequently and so I have downloaded them and saved them on my hard drive because when I try to stream them my machine ends up buffering so much it is impossible to enjoy them.

They are saved as .mp4 files.

I would like to try to burn them into Blu Ray discs and watch them on my Blu Ray player connected to my HDTV.

Could someone recommend a program for Windows XP that could help me do this?
Preferrably free. But if not, then something not too expensive.

Approximately how long does it take to transcode a 4 minute long .mp4 into something suitable to burn to Blu Ray?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

[Baldrick]

Try AVCHDCoder or multiavchd. If the mp4 video is blu-ray compliant it shouldn't take that long. Burn the BDMV folder with imgburn on a DVDr or BDr.

[jman98]

Try AVCHDCoder. As a new member you are very likely to find multiavchd too advanced to be of any real use to you right now.

[NewTwoVideo]

Thank you Baldrick and jman98.

I will download AVCHDCoder and start reading the manual.

Could you just give me a link to any helpful howto's if they exist for this?

[NewTwoVideo]

Well here's where I've gotten to.

1. After you install AVCHDCoder you have to install ffdshow, Avisynth, and Haali Media Splitter from the help menu in AVCHDCoder. I found this out the hard way. It throws an error message which you have to track down and decipher. I found the answer in the forum postings.

2. On my pc, highest quality (slow) is actually faster than high quality (medium). Go figure?

3. A 2 minute playing time .mp4 took 21 minutes to transcode. Maybe it would be faster on Windows 7 because it would then be 64 bit?

4. I used imageburn to burn the iso to a Blu-Ray rewriteable cause it was the first attempt and I did not want to waste a Blu-Ray blank. At 2x speed it took about an hour to format the blank re-writeable. About 2 minutes to burn the .iso file.

5. End result a Blank Blu-Ray re-writeable that verifies perfectly and appears to have no data.

Total failure.

Any ideas?

TIA

[NewTwoVideo]

I installed multiavchd. It transcoded a 4 minute .mp4 in about 80 seconds. Much more reasonable.
Used imgburn. Still blank index.
Unchecked Prefer Format Without Spare Areas. Erase Quick. Re-burn. Still blank.
Install Media Player Codec Pack 4.2.5 Reboot. Still blank.
Install UDF Reader v 2.5 for Windows XP. Voila!
I now have a playable Blu Ray. Well at least on PC. Now I try it on set top Blu Ray player.
Wish me luck.

[NewTwoVideo]

I just want to wrap up this thread.
I used MultiAvchd to transcode 16 .mp4's onto Blu Ray which I burned into a BD-R with Imgburn.
The videos were between 2:00 and 4:30 each.
It took about 8:00 to transcode and about 8:00 to create the Menu.
The speed is amazing compared to the other program.
I played the Blu Ray on a Samsung settop Blu Ray player.
The last .mp4 coded was a different resolution (1280 x 720) and only the sound played. No video at all for that one.
The rest played well.
The menu had some problems. Some commands from the remote were ignored.
Others brought up a Yellow Triangle warning saying they were not permitted.
At times it took about 5 different key presses of different keys to get something basic like skip to next video.
But for the most part it worked fine.
Now here's the ironic part.
I inadvertantly slipped in the DVD containing the .mp4 files into the Samsung Blu Ray player.
It brought up a menu of the files and when I tried to play them, each one played perfectly including the 1280 x 720 one.
Fast Forward, Rewind, Skip Ahead, Skip Back, Pause, Play, Stop, everything worked perfectly.
I did not need to put any of them on Blu Ray. I could just have played the .mp4's off a DVD-R.
I am glad that I got to have this learning experience.
I think multiavchd is a good program. It needs a little work on the menu it generates. Maybe I needed to set something I neglected and I still am at a loss to figure out why the 1280 x 720 did not transcode the video properly.
I would try MultiAvchd for some Blu Ray authoring from my camcorder files in the future.
But for any of you who find this while doing a search. Don't bother to convert the .mp4's. Just burn them to DVD and pop it into your set top player.

Hope this helps someone.

[Baldrick]

Yup. Many standalone blu-ray players supports both mp4 and mkv in HD. Especially Samsung, Philips and LG blu-ray players.

Another option would be to stream video to your blu-ray player if it has dlna support.

[NewTwoVideo]

Thank you. I had no idea, and I'm sure many other people do not know as well.
I wonder whether people even take this into consideration when they buy.
I know I would, now that you have made me aware of this.
Thanks.