Basically, I'm wondering if a Blu-Ray can be used as a huge DVD. For example, say I want to have an X-Files marathon, but with minimal disc-swapping. Can I rip an entire season's worth of episodes from the 6 DVDs and author a new Blu-Ray preserving them as-is (obviously with a new menu and structure), or would my player become confused and reject the new disc?
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Yep. The old multiavchd can import dvds and make a new blu-ray. No video conversion. But I haven't tried it.
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Since you are burning to a blu ray, you'll need a blu ray player to play it back. And some blu ray players don't like the output from MultiAVCHD for some reason. You'd just have to try it.
I went through a lot of different processes to build a dvd and burn on blu ray last summer. MultiAVCHD made the most elaborate menus, but its output wasn't very compatible with my main software player at that time, which was Arcsoft TMT3. But other software players had no issues with it.
One other way of doing this is to build an oversized dvd in AVStoDVD, complete with menu to select each episode. You'll need to set a custom output size for the dvd. I used 23500mb. Then use DVD2BD Express to make this into a blu ray.
Both of those programs are free to use. -
Thanks to both of you for the input. I'll give MultiAVCHD a try (anyone know if MultiAVCHD discs work on a PS3?) and if I have problems, I use AVStoDVD all the time for DVDs anyway, so I'm very familiar with it.
Baldrick, little thing: Since DVD2BD/DVDtoBD is referred to both ways even on its own website, any chance of a DVD2BD pointer in the Tools section? I hadn't known it was under DVDtoBD here. -
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Finally got a BR burner and gave this a try. MultiAVCHD is going to take some experimentation (and is annoyingly hangy when bringing up properties or menus), so I'll save that for later.
The AVStoDVD + DVDtoBD Express combo worked like a charm. I fed 46 chapters of old Doctor Who (11 Tom Baker serials) into AVStoDVD to create the Blu-Ray sized DVD and then gave that to DVDtoBD.
It took a bit over an hour for DVDtoBD to process everything (stages 1 & 2), and then another hour for building (stage 3)--no reencoding involved. Out of curiosity, I defragmented the target drive and tried again, and that shaved about 10 minutes off the prep part and about 15 off the build. The disc burned fine with IMGBurn, and my PS3 loaded and began playing it without complaint.
One thing that did not convert over is chapter breaks. Actually, the "Next" button doesn't work at all when playing this disc; it doesn't skip to either what should be the next chapter or the next file. I'm still very new to Blu-Ray in general, so I don't know if this is a limitation of the DVDtoBD software or the PS3 when playing a DVDtoBD-converted disc or something else. Anyone have any insight?
Big thanks to Baldrick and Kerry56 for your help! -
I believe loss of chapter navigation is a limitation of DVD2BD Express.
I finally got around to making a guide for the process, but it looks like you don't need it. http://club.myce.com/f32/guide-combining-dvd-videos-into-blu-ray-331859/ -
Hopefully I never get so old and cranky that I start thinking I'm above looking at a guide simply because I did something right once. I liked your guide and will keep it bookmarked to refer to.
I've now experimented some with both DVDtoBD and MultiAVCHD and discovered a few pros and cons of each.
* You recommmend setting the DVD size in AVStoDVD to 23,500 MB. When I created a BD-DVD using 40+ 25-minute TV episodes, DVDtoBD added a full gig of overhead to AVStoDVD's output. (MultiAVCHD adds about 1.5 gigs.) If you got by with 23,500 MB using a few movies, it implies that the overhead increases depending on the number of files loaded. I'll try a few combinations of things (hour-long TV episodes, 90ish min movies, 2+ hour movies) to get some ballparks and let you know what happens.
* Blu-Rays created with MultiAVCHD play just fine on my PS3.
* MultiAVCHD slows my system annoyingly when it's computing hard, even with priority set to low. I'm running a 4(8)-core i7-860, so there's no excuse. This was constant through the entire process. DVDtoBD was much less intrusive.
* DVDtoBD brings in the DVD menus created by AVStoDVD perfectly. MultiAVCHD ignores them entirely and creates its own Blu-Ray-type menus. Unfortunately, this has the effect of losing the titles--everything became DVD File #1, DVD File #2, etc. Apparently the user needs to enter all of them by hand one by one.
* MultiAVCHD does, however, import the title chapters just fine, which DVDtoBD doesn't. In fact, the "skip" function doesn't work at all on the DVDtoBD disc--not between chapters or titles. The display doesn't show the title running times either.
Interestingly, it turns out DVDtoBD isn't ignoring the chapters; it seems to be mistranslating them. Watching the first DVDtoBD-created BD, I kept getting a very brief pause (kind of like a DVD layer change), and then the little "play" arrow would appear onscreen. I timed these occurrences at exactly five minutes, which corresponded with the chapter lengths set in AVStoDVD . Also, when fast-forwarding through the title, it would suddenly downshift to "play" at these points. It seems that the player is reading these former chapter breaks as a kind of new title signal, even though the video file itself on the disc is still in one piece. Creating another BD-DVD with chapter length set to 30 minutes (longer than the titles' playing time) works around this annoyance. -
That's a bit odd on the sizes. Looking at the output in AVStoDVD in my guide, it says 18.88gb for the dvd-video. I still have the blu ray version from DVD2BD Express on one of my hard drives, and it's size is 17.8gb. Which doesn't make much sense.
Good to know about the chapter point behavior. -
In my case, the size of the original AVStoDVD-built folder is 19.24 gb. Using that as a source, DVDtoBD made a 20.09 gb Blu-Ray, while MultiAVCHD's was 20.54 gb. The differences were spread around the in the structures, but the bulk seem to be in slight enlargements to the .m2ts video files themselves compared to the VOB originals.
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Following up on my posts above with some more numbers:
I've just made a BD-DVD with seven movies ranging from roughly 1:50 to 2:45 (total 15:49). Since AVStoDVD tends to leave generous amounts of empty space, this time I set the DVD size to 26 gb. Final DVD size as created by AVStoDVD was 21.8 gb; BD created from this by MultiAVCHD was 22.8 gb; BD created by DVDtoBD Express was 22.9 gb. Both will leave somewhat over 400 megs free on the disc itself, which is an improvement over several gigs unused. -
A technical note about those container overhead sizes: I'm not at all surprised that the BDMVs used more overhead than the DVD-Videos, because DVD's VOB container/stream is based on MPEG2-PS (Program Stream), while BD's M2TS container/stream is based on MPEG2-TS (Transport Stream). For those who are closely familiar with the difference between these 2, it amounts to PS being used when the storage/transmission medium is assumed to be (nearly) error free and modest in it's multiplexing needs. TS, on the other hand, was designed to be more "rugged" - able to handle more error-prone mediums and able to handle more complex mulitiplexing with ease. For BD, when they first came out with the spec, it was used professionally for camera recording and that made TS a MUST. From there, BD just kept the TS format, even though consumer use was less taxing.
Because of those differences, TS includes lots of packeting fallback & additional in-stream error correction features (beyond the BD's own disc-based CIRC type error detection/correction). All that extra stuff is bound to pad the files. But BDs have "space to burn", right? (pun intended)
Scott -
I tried DVDtoBD Express the other day and am seeing the same thing with the chapter breaks. Aside from the brief pause at chapter stops the end result was spot on. Curious how you generated another build, but with the chapter length increased as you described per avoiding the issue. Thanks!
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