Blu-ray DVD authoring with Adobe Encore

Adobe's Dave Helmly of DAV's TechTable has a tutorial on the basics of Blu-ray DVD authoring with Adobe Encore, which is embedded below.

He previously covered Blu-ray Playback Problems on his blog. There's also an Adobe guide on Authoring Blu-ray Discs with Adobe Encore in an Apple Final Cut Workflow and Ken Stone's Burn Blu-ray playable discs on a Mac SuperDrive that shows you how to burn high definition video onto standard DVD-R discs that playback in a Blu-ray player.

Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio

FCP World announced FCP World Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio, a collection of 60 Blu-ray Templates for Final Cut Studio 2009 designed by Kevin Monahan, author of Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro.

Monahan says, "Final Cut Studio 2009 ships with a total of 5 templates. That’s not nearly enough! I’ve designed 60 new templates that give video makers a lot more options for creating a Blu-ray or AVCHD disc. These are fully animated, high-quality looping backgrounds, not just stills. Also, I’ve designed many of the templates with Motion content, so that users could create, say, a title sequence or lower-third, that could match a particular template.

The templates work with FCP 7 and Motion 4 through the 'Share' protocol, while Compressor 3.5 accesses them via 'Job Actions.' The templates are localized for Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish."

Compressor’s BluRay Disc Open XML template format + free Swish Pan FCP transition [updated]

Andy Mees noted that Compressor’s BluRay Disc Open XML template format revealed... by Apple in a PDF guide to Compressor 3.5 in the Final Cut Studio 2009 bundle. For background see Jan Ozer on Blu-ray Creation with the New Apple Final Cut Studio at Millimeter, and Burn Blu-ray playable standard DVD-R discs on a Mac SuperDrive by Ken Stone.

Andy also has a free Swish Pan transition as well as other filters and resources for Final Cut.

Update: via lafcpug, Apple has released free add-ons for the new Final Cut Studio, Compressor Droplets, Color Looks (90 of them!), and 700 MB of Alpha Transitions.

Blu-Ray's "bag of hurt"

Karl Soule of Adobe explains one reason why Blu-Ray replication cannot be done today from an Encore disc or disc image -- a $3500 licensing fee for the 1st title and $1500 thereafter. See What's Wrong with the Blu-Ray Market Today? Part 1: Duplication vs. Replication, and AACS.

The good news is that Encore work can be duplicated in mass "onto store-bought burnable BD-ROM media... and the content will still play in most (but not all) Blu-Ray players."

Update: Final Cut User has some additional observations and a State of the Technology overview of Blu-Ray.

Update (01/09): The NYT looks at CES and Blu-ray’s Fuzzy Future.

And on the FCP-L, Philip Hodgetts explains a bit more:

"I'd say it's not going to happen on OS X - playback or authoring - because the entire internal OS has to have encrypted memory paths throughout the computer. None of this is in OS X and none is (apparently) planned for Snow Leopard. This internal encrypted memory path is reportedly one of the reasons that Vista's performance was significantly slower than XP. It's not so much stubborness on the part of Job but rather a disinclination to 'pollute' the elegance of OS X.
... [and] if Blu-ray won the disc war, then downloads would succeed!"

Update (1/20/2009): CrunchGear gives Nine (questionable) reasons why Blu-ray will succeed.

Encore CS3 and Blu-ray on the MacPro

Dave's Tech Table has some updated info on Working with Adobe Encore CS3 and Blu-ray, especially concerning using the 2 ODD onboard SATA ports on a MacPro.

Blu-ray Blues - 7,085 of them -1

The Fini blog has The Blu•ray Blues -- because the "first project licensing alone will cost $7,085. That's in addition to the actual costs of replication/duplication and packaging that we're already used to paying." AACS copy protection was optional on HD DVD but mandatory on Blu-Ray replication.

Also, "Apparently some Bluray players want to see a copy protection folder, even if it is empty and some authoring apps don't put those folders on their burns."

But wait, there's more... at Fini and at PC Magazine's Who Will Pay Next-Gen DVD License Fees?

Update: from ZDNet, "in the news today was some information about JavaFX and the Blu-ray specification. It turns out that the Profile 2.0 spec for Blu-ray adds a networking ability so you could start building things on the players creating an interesting living room development model. What makes it interesting for Sun is that JavaFX is part of the Blu-ray spec so if you get networking support and JavaFX support some creative Java types could go to town."

Encore CS3 and Blu-ray on new Adobe blog

Dave Helmly, an Business Development Manager, has published his first entry on his blog, DAV's TechTable. According to The Genesis Project, Dave's video blog will be focusing on hardware and technology. This time out, there's an in-depth discussion on Working with Encore CS3 and Blu-ray.