Blu-Ray Tutorial

How to create a Blu-ray disc with Encore CS3
by Chris Randall – Edit1Media


Adobe brings Blu-ray Authoring to the Masses

With the recent price drop and the flurry of new HDV video cameras on the market now, just about anyone can afford to shoot and edit in High Definition. NLEs are being upgraded to handle HDV editing and just about any new system has the power to do so. Unfortunately due to the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, the video production world has been waiting for a solution to deliver HD content to their clients. It appears the wait may be over with software giant Adobe selecting Blu-ray as their format choice for delivery of High Definition video.

CS3

July will bring the release of the much anticipated Adobe CS3 Production Studio. The Adobe team has brought many new features including Blu-ray support to Premiere and Encore and much tighter integration between applications. This only speeds up workflow and allows the user to easily accomplish tasks without having to leave the editing software to do them. In its earlier version, Premiere Pro 2.0 improved on its DVD authoring by adding the ability to import DVD menus from the library or from ones that were created in Photoshop. With Premiere CS3, they decided to remove the DVD authoring tool in favor of creating a link directly to Adobe Encore CS3. This allows the user to export their edited timeline right into Encore. You have the ability to export your HDV timeline in the Blu-ray format as a straight play Blu-ray disc or a fully authored Blu-ray disc with Menus. Even better, once your encoded HD file has been brought into Encore, it can easily be down converted to SD for DVD playback or exported in flash for the web. Not only do you get a streamlined way to author your Blu-ray disc, you also get the robust features that Encore provides.

Adobe Encore CS3 currently supports Blu-ray Burners from Samsung, Pioneer, Sony, and Panasonic. I tested the Panasonic SW-5582 Blu-ray Drive. Street Price - $600 which has worked flawlessly from the start. All of the internal Blu-ray Drives connect to your PC in the same way as your current DVD drive. Installing the drive was a rather straightforward process. Simply disconnect and remove your current DVD drive and install the Blu-ray burner in its place. Since they use the same cables, it is just a matter of re-connecting the appropriate cables. The Panasonic drive is also backwards compatible with all DVD/CD formats. It can burn CD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW plus Dual Layer DVD discs in both formats as well as DVD-RAM discs. This drive does it all. Unfortunately, Burn speeds for Blu-ray discs are limited to 1X and 2X. A 25 GIG disc will take up to 1 hour, 45 minutes to burn which will only improve as drives become faster in the future.

Main Title

From this point, I will walk you step by step on creating a Blu-ray disc using Adobe Premiere CS3, Encore CS3 and the Panasonic SW-5582. I recommend getting a BD -RE (Blu-ray rewritable) Disc for your initial tests. Discs are expensive right now ($18-$25) but should come down in price in a few months. To begin, you will need to install the drive in your system. Once the drive is installed, and you have powered on your PC, make sure that Windows recognizes the new hardware and installs the correct driver. You can easily check this by right clicking the drive letter in Windows Explorer and select properties. Click the hardware tab and view the devices that are listed. You should see the Blu-ray burner listed by the manufacturer’s product name. On my system, it is listed as Matshita BD-MLT SW-558

Now that we have verified that the drive is installed correctly and is working, go ahead and run Adobe Premiere. Open up one of your HDV projects with a finished timeline that you are ready to burn to Blu-ray. Insert chapter markers using the chapter marker button. These markers will automatically be brought into Encore when you encode the video. Once you are ready to export your project to Blu-ray, go ahead and select "Export to Encore" This will bring up a dialog box with several options. Go ahead and name your Disc. Under type, select Blu-ray Disc, single layer MPEG-2. The next item you need to do is choose if you want to Author with Menus or do a Direct Burn without Menus. (See Figure 1) Check your encoding setting and verify you have the correct one selected. Once you have that done, press the OK button to start the encoding. You will be asked what to name the encoded file and where to save it. Encoding times will vary based on the length of your video and encoding settings.

After the encoding is finished, Adobe Encore will automatically open and import your video into a timeline. (See Figure 2) From here, authoring is nearly the same as creating a standard DVD. If you are doing a direct burn, all you will need to do is verify your settings and go to the build DVD menu. For a fully authored Blu-ray disc, Encore provides a whole library of Menus for you to choose from that are already in the HD format. The great thing about these menus are that they can easily be brought into Photoshop and changed to your liking with a click of a button. You can use frame grabs from your HD video and replace the background, keeping the titling and buttons intact. Once you have created your menus and added buttons, you will need to link the buttons to the individual chapters.

Make sure to check your project for errors before burning using the Check Project wizard. Go ahead and select Build - disc to bring up the Build dialog box. (See Figure 3) From here you want to choose Blu-ray under format and select Blu-ray Disc in the Output drop down box. Your destination should automatically display the Blu-ray burner. If not, select it from the Recorder drop down menu. With the blank disc inserted, you should see how many Gigabytes are used up by your project. Once you press build, Encore will begin creating the files necessary for your Blu-ray disc and write them to the disc. (See figure 4) Once the burn is complete, you will want to test the disc. I recommend getting CyberLink Power DVD Ultra for testing your Blu-Ray disc on your PC. (See figure 5) This software costs $99 and plays all of the latest formats including HD-DVD. If you verify that the disc plays without any problems, you can test the disc on a PlayStation 3 or other stand alone player. Of course if you haven’t invested in a Blu-ray player yet, a trip down to Best-Buy is in order to try out your disc on one of the display models. This is great for testing compatibility among various players being sold.

Bonus features

Now that we have created the Blu-ray disc, you can easily take the same project and burn the video to DVD. Encore will automatically down convert the Blu-ray format to DVD standard. This is great if your clients want to give copies of their wedding to parents or relatives who don't have a Blu-ray player yet. Another great feature is the export to flash feature. This is a great option for putting DVD content on the web. You can host your clients wedding for virtually anyone to see worldwide. Not only do others get to see your work, the do so in a way that is just like watching a DVD on their home DVD player.

Conclusion

It is nice to see that there are finally some options out there for creating and delivering weddings in HD. Adobe has really stepped up to the plate and created an integrated solution that really makes the process easy and streamlined. With the cost of Blu-ray burners such as the Panasonic SW-5582 coming down in price, it makes it a very affordable solution for burning HD weddings.