Burning movies to BD-R instead of DVD-R

[FReynolds]

Pretty novice question here, but I searched around and couldn't really find exactly what I was looking for.

I've been burning DVD's for years, but looking into possibly burning blu ray disks now. Just a little confused about the process.

Say I have a compressed 2-3 GB avi or mkv movie file ripped from a blu ray. I realize this is not the same quality as a store bought BD since the size of the file is so small and compressed.

My question is if there is any benefit converting that file to blu ray writing format and burning it to a BD-R instead of a DVD-R? Is there a max resolution burning to DVD that can be increased by burning to BD?

Basically what I'm asking is if there is any benefit to burning this type of file to blu ray instead of DVD.

[Baldrick]

Are they HD? Then yes make bluray instead. You can even burn bluray video on a dvdr and it will work some bluray players.

Or just burn as data and see if your player plays it. Several bluray players has avi and mkv support.

[FReynolds]

Thanks for the response.

Just throwing out a random example. Say the file was ripped from a 1080p blu ray disk, it's in mp4 format, has 1920x800 resolution, and the file size is 2gb.

The better option would be to burn to blu ray instead of dvd? The sound/picture quality is better on the blu ray?

[smrpix]

Say the file was ripped from a 1080p blu ray disk, it's in mp4 format, has 1920x800 resolution, and the file size is 2gb.

Then it hasn't been simply ripped, it's been ripped, converted and destroyed.

The better option would be to burn to blu ray instead of dvd? The sound/picture quality is better on the blu ray?

Sound and picture is potentially superior on Blu Ray, higher resolution, etc -- but your source, and how you (mis)handle it, determines the final outcome.

[FReynolds]

[Then it hasn't been simply ripped, it's been ripped, converted and destroyed.

No question. I understand a 2GB ripped and compressed file is not going to be as good quality as a "store bought" blu ray disk.

I'm just trying to figure out if there is any benefit to burning this type of compressed file to a bd-r instead of a regular dvd-r. Will there be any noticeable difference between the two?

[smrpix]

I'm just trying to figure out if there is any benefit to burning this type of compressed file to a bd-r instead of a regular dvd-r. Will there be any noticeable difference between the two?

Probably, but no one can give you a definitive answer for your specific material. Why not take a 5 minute segment, author it as BR and as DVD (on your computer if you don't have the physical disk drives) and see if you can see a difference?

[FReynolds]

What's the best way to convert a mkv/mp4/avi file to author blu ray format? Something like AVCHDCoder or multiAVCHD, I'd assume? And then burn with something like imgburn?

I've been using convertxtodvd for dvd's in the past.

[Kerry56]

BD Rebuilder can import various types of video files and output to Blu-ray. If you import more than one at a time, it will build a simple menu for you. All videos to be imported have to be in the same folder.

[johns0]

To answer your original question it will make no difference burning the same file to a bd-r as compared to a dvd-r,it will show the exact same quality,with a bd-r you can fit about 5x more compared to a dvd-r and with that in mind you can put on lots of low bit rate videos or one or 2 high bit rate videos.

[FReynolds]

To answer your original question it will make no difference burning the same file to a bd-r as compared to a dvd-r,it will show the exact same quality,with a bd-r you can fit about 5x more compared to a dvd-r and with that in mind you can put on lots of low bit rate videos or one or 2 high bit rate videos.

Space isn't really my issue. I'm not putting multiple 2-3 gb movies on single disks, so the space on a dvd-r is just fine.

I'm more concerned with picture quality and sound. I'd like to make both as good as possible and if it was actually worth it to burn to BD instead of a DVD. If nothing improves by burning to BD, I'd just keep burning to DVD.

[Kerry56]

If your player will playback various types of files on discs, then burning them as data will retain the highest quality (not that they are going to be outstanding at 2-3gb). If you need Blu-ray format, many of them would have to be re-encoded to be compliant, and re-encoding will degrade quality a bit.

[FReynolds]

Is there anywhere, legally or not (sorry if talking about piracy is against board rules - mods fell free to delete if it is), to download movies that will burn as actual BD quality or am I stuck to buying actual blu-rays that are sold in stores?

[FReynolds]

If your player will playback various types of files on discs, then burning them as data will retain the highest quality (not that they are going to be outstanding at 2-3gb). If you need Blu-ray format, many of them would have to be re-encoded to be compliant, and re-encoding will degrade quality a bit.

I tried burning an mkv file as data with imgburn and it didn't play on my sony blu ray player. Had to use convertXtodvd to convert and burn the mkv to watch.

Not sure about mp4 and avi files though.

[usually_quiet]

Is there anywhere, legally or not (sorry if talking about piracy is against board rules - mods fell free to delete if it is), to download movies that will burn as actual BD quality or am I stuck to buying actual blu-rays that are sold in stores?

Talking about warez and where to obtain warez is against forum rules. There are supposed to be Blu-Ray compatible sources for Big Buck Bunny and Sintel legally available for download.

[jman98]

I tried burning an mkv file as data with imgburn and it didn't play on my sony blu ray player. Had to use convertXtodvd to convert and burn the mkv to watch.

Not sure about mp4 and avi files though.

Strictly speaking you may not have to convert to DVD or BluRay. It might be that your MKV file used a type of audio your Sony doesn't support for MKV playback, for example, and fixing that would fix the playback problem but if you want to keep things simple, converting might be the best way to go as you should get something that works that way, barring any problems with crap media. A lot of media sold in the USA isn't very good. If you can find Verbatim, they'll give you the best chance for success (but avoid their cheap Life series which is sold to compete on low price with other low quality media in the USA/Canada).

[FReynolds]

Does converting the current MKV/AVI/MP4 file format that it's already in to DVD hurt picture quality? Does it reduce resolution as opposed to just burning the file as is? This is assuming the 2 GB file has a 1920x800 resolution like in the example I gave up above? Does keeping the file as is instead of converting keep the current resolution?

[LMotlow]

I have to echo jman98 and a couple of other responders. You have several ways to go with video(s). But first you might want to take some time to find out what you're doing.

Say I have a compressed 2-3 GB avi or mkv movie file ripped from a blu ray. I realize this is not the same quality as a store bought BD since the size of the file is so small and compressed.

It would be the same quality if had been simply ripped (which means decrypted and copied, not re-encoded). If it's re-encoded to another container, it's not the same quality.

My question is if there is any benefit converting that file to blu ray writing format and burning it to a BD-R instead of a DVD-R? Is there a max resolution burning to DVD that can be increased by burning to BD?

You don't "convert" a BluRay rip to BluRay writing format. If it started out as BluRay, you author it again as BluRay and burn it to disk. If you now have an mkv, that's not compatible with BluRay or DVD. You should have left the BluRay rip unconverted.

The "max resolution" for DVD is 720x480 (720x576 for PAL). The minimum resolution for BluRay is the same as for NTSC or PAL DVD. Resizing means a quality loss and another lossy re-encode, whether you size up or down.

Obviously a BluRay disc can hold more data than a DVD disc. But if you have a BluRay original and you want to burn it to DVD disc, and if the 2 or 3GB video isn't too big to fit on DVD, go ahead. You take your chances with players that see a DVD disc and are programmed to play DVD, not BluRay or mkv. Some players might be tricked into handling this oddball non-spec disc, but many won't be fooled.

What was the structue of your original BluRay? Was it HD? An hour of 1920x1080 BluRay at even fairly low bitrates would be 6 to 8 GB or bigger. If you re-encoded to mkv at a bitrate to turn that into a 2 or 3 GB file, you definitely screwed it up. Even if you re-encoded at HD resolution, it's still a quality loss through re-encoding. Re-encode it again for BluRay, and the results are worse. There's software suggested that can do the work, but you're into what is called re-compression madness at this point.

Just throwing out a random example. Say the file was ripped from a 1080p blu ray disk, it's in mp4 format, has 1920x800 resolution, and the file size is 2gb.

Must be a fairly short video, or you've messed it up with a very low bitrate. Anyway, mp4 isn't BluRay compatible. It's a format that was designed basically for internet streaming, where it's usually not interlaced -- whereas 1920x1080 BluRay is either interlaced or runs at 23.97 film speed, progressive. So the question is, do you have an understanding of your original BluRay source? Looks like you're assuming that these various digital formats are "all alike", which they definitely ain't.

The better option would be to burn to blu ray instead of dvd? The sound/picture quality is better on the blu ray?

Sound and picture quality depend on the type of encoding and processing, not on the disc. Higher resolution is usually a "better" image, given that the processing was OK. But the BluRay standard also includes standard definition just like DVD, while SD BluRay bitrates can be higher. You also have other considerations for compatibility, such as GOP sizes and audio sampling rates, etc.

What's the best way to convert a mkv/mp4/avi file to author blu ray format? Something like AVCHDCoder or multiAVCHD, I'd assume? And then burn with something like imgburn?

I've been using convertxtodvd for dvd's in the past.

You're going in circles here. Neither mkv, mp4, nor AVI are valid for BluRay, AVCHD, or DVD. Yes, there's software around that can make those conversions for you. But at this point you've lost quality at the outset and have some rather lofty expectations about all these conversions.

Basically what I'm asking is if there is any benefit to burning this type of file to blu ray instead of DVD.

If you don't convert them yet again, you can burn mkv/mp4/avi to disc as video data files, not as authored program streams like BluRay. Many players won't recognize them from disc. They expect those types of videos to be on a USB stick or a hard drive. Consult your SONY's manual. The only advantage to burning to a BluRay disc is that the disc can hold a bunch of 3GB videos.

Space isn't really my issue. I'm not putting multiple 2-3 gb movies on single disks, so the space on a dvd-r is just fine.

I'm more concerned with picture quality and sound. I'd like to make both as good as possible and if it was actually worth it to burn to BD instead of a DVD. If nothing improves by burning to BD, I'd just keep burning to DVD.

If you're concerned about quality, then space is an issue. Lowering a bitrate means more video per disc and smaller files, but it also means lower quality. Re-encoding is another notch down in quality. You're talking about lossy video compression here, not WinZIP. As others have said, just because you burn something to a certain kind of disc has nothing to do with quality, and burning non-compliant video to any disc is a waste of time. Burning a video to a DVD disc doesn't in itself automatically make it "DVD". Likewise for BluRay discs.

I'd suggest that you go back to just a plain rip (i.e, a copy) and author and burn that rip to BluRay. You can author and burn it to DVD disc if you want -- but like I say, your player might vomit.

You ought to take a look at the BluRay and DVD encoding standards:
BluRay and AVCHD (NTSC & PAL): https://www.videohelp.com/hd#tech
DVD (PAL, NTSC, & NTSC-film): https://www.videohelp.com/dvd#tech

If you'd like to know how you might have screwed up your BluRay spec through re-encoding, here's authoritative tables of specs for encoding BluRay/AVCHD disc: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=154533

Note that BluRay is encoded with either MPEG or h264/AVC. DVD uses MPEG2 only. Audio encoding has to be correct as well. And that reminds me -- mkv, mp4, and AVi are containers, not formats. How you have those files encoded or re-encoded is anyone's guess.

Does converting the current MKV/AVI/MP4 file format that it's already in to DVD hurt picture quality?

If the original was HD and was resized/re-encoded to DVD, yes.

Does it reduce resolution as opposed to just burning the file as is? This is assuming the 2 GB file has a 1920x800 resolution like in the example I gave up above?

You have to make up your mind. The "current" file is either HD or SD. If it's 1920x1080, you can't make it a "DVD".

Does keeping the file as is instead of converting keep the current resolution?

You can't keep it as-is if you want BluRay. mkv/mp4/avi are all invalid for BluRay.

[FReynolds]

Thanks for such a detailed response. I'll have to read through it again to completely comprehend what you've said, but i appreciate your time.

These files must have been re-encoded. They were ripped from a BD and put in another container like MKV. They are not currently in blu ray format. I'm just downloading them as is. I don't have the original copies.

I honestly don't have a clue how these files are so small. I'd say where I'm getting them from, but I don't want to break any of the rules here. It probably wouldn't take you too many guesses to figure it out though.

All of the BD rips seem to be around this same size there. They all are listed as "BDRIP or BRRIP", 1080P, x264, etc. I'd assume they were taken from HD blu ray. Bitrate is listed as 3750 Kbps for one to give you an example. No clue how good or bad that is.

[LMotlow]

All of the BD rips seem to be around this same size there. They all are listed as "BDRIP or BRRIP", 1080P, x264, etc. I'd assume they were taken from HD blu ray. Bitrate is listed as 3750 Kbps for one to give you an example. No clue how good or bad that is.

3750 is pretty bad for that frame size. But it depends. Some pristine anime can run OK at pretty low bitrates, but that's still kinda low. That figure could also be an average bitrate, not the max.

[FReynolds]

Kind of off topic on my own topic, but I just burned a MKV movie file to DVD-r as a data file. It plays on my Blu Ray player fine, but if I try to fast forward, it immediately crashes and I have to start the movie over from the beginning. Anyone know why?

[smrpix]

Kind of off topic on my own topic, but I just burned a MKV movie file to DVD-r as a data file. It plays on my Blu Ray player fine, but if I try to fast forward, it immediately crashes and I have to start the movie over from the beginning. Anyone know why?

Because it's not a BR movie. It's an MKV file on a DVD disk and you can consider yourself fortunate that it plays at all.

If you want it to work right, you must author a BR disk to spec -- both the media files and the navigation.

[FReynolds]

Kind of off topic on my own topic, but I just burned a MKV movie file to DVD-r as a data file. It plays on my Blu Ray player fine, but if I try to fast forward, it immediately crashes and I have to start the movie over from the beginning. Anyone know why?

Because it's not a BR movie. It's an MKV file on a DVD disk and you can consider yourself fortunate that it plays at all.

If you want it to work right, you must author a BR disk to spec -- both the media files and the navigation.

Figured it was something that simple. Thanks.

[fanaudi]

Hi ,
I ' m using TMPGEnc authoring Works 5 from Pegasys to convert MKV to Blu-Ray , results are excellent and yes , better than DVD .

[johns0]

There's no difference in quality burning the exact same file to blu-ray as compared to dvd.

[FReynolds]

I've just been burning them to dvd disks as data files. Not blu-ray quality, but still much better than DVD because of the improved resolution from when I was converting these files to DVD format. I think I'm just going to stick to that since my bluray player can play these type of files. Probably the best quality I'm going to get going this route.

[Cornucopia]

Just understand that you might not always have that same player, and your next one might not be as accommodating (of course, it could go the other way and be MORE accommodating). Going with standards such as DVD-Video & Blu-ray (BDMV, BD-J) ensures greater longterm support. Sticking to generic media data files/formats doesn't.

Scott

[fanaudi]

There's no difference in quality burning the exact same file to blu-ray as compared to dvd.

According to my tests , there is .

[Skiller]

There's no difference in quality burning the exact same file to blu-ray as compared to dvd.

According to my tests , there is .

That's not possible. It's the exact same sequence of 0's and 1's (Bits), the only difference being it's stored on two different types of optical media. There's no way for the Bits to become altered in any way just by storing them on either media, hence the quality is identical.

[fanaudi]

There's no difference in quality burning the exact same file to blu-ray as compared to dvd.

According to my tests , there is .

That's not possible. It's the exact same sequence of 0's and 1's (Bits), the only difference being it's stored on two different types of optical media. There's no way for the Bits to become altered in any way just by storing them on either media, hence the quality is identical.

This is correct , Skiller but the final bitrade will be higher in a bd file than in a dvd file . Technically , the image remains unaltered but subjectively , you'll get a sharper image on your screen with a BD . That's what I found out anyway .
Best regards .

[Skiller]

This is correct , Skiller but the final bitrade will be higher in a bd file than in a dvd file .

Well yes, if you re-encode your MKV to either DVD compliant or BD compliant video so that you end up with a "real" DVD-Video or BD-Video disc rather than a data disc containing just the original MKV.

But if you burn that very MKV as is, then it does not matter whether it's a DVD or BD media as long as it fits the disc and your player can play it.