OT: Blu-Ray Mastering Software

[BostonNit]

All-knowing BWI board:

I am in the process of capturing my library of VHS, 8MM, Hi8 and Digital8 movies from my kids' childhoods, etc. When the process is complete I will have dozens if not hundreds of .MP4 files.

I'd like to find a good reasonable (or free!) Blu-Ray mastering application to be able to produce BD's that can play on BD players, PS4, etc. I've done a fair amount of online research, but I'd rather hear from someone who's taken on a similar project and has direct experience with an authoring tool.

I want something that can create a high level menu to allow a video to be selected from the menu.

The vast vast majority of the videos will be .MP4's, but there will be some .WMV's and .AVI's too, so something that can work with multiple file types would be best, but the key is being able to handle .MP4's.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

 

[sluggo72]

All-knowing BWI board:

I am in the process of capturing my library of VHS, 8MM, Hi8 and Digital8 movies from my kids' childhoods, etc. When the process is complete I will have dozens if not hundreds of .MP4 files.

I'd like to find a good reasonable (or free!) Blu-Ray mastering application to be able to produce BD's that can play on BD players, PS4, etc. I've done a fair amount of online research, but I'd rather hear from someone who's taken on a similar project and has direct experience with an authoring tool.

I want something that can create a high level menu to allow a video to be selected from the menu.

The vast vast majority of the videos will be .MP4's, but there will be some .WMV's and .AVI's too, so something that can work with multiple file types would be best, but the key is being able to handle .MP4's.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

how are you capturing your 8MM?

as far as output, I just used iMovie and made them into a 'movie'. iDVD was a good program to get an output, but I think Apple has stopped supporting it, they want to drive everything to the cloud.
There are converters out there, so far I have had some success with Wondershare, they have a free trial version, and a pay version, which I think is like $20. It does seem to work pretty well.
But I am really interested in how you are capturing your 8 MM. TIA

 

[BostonNit]

My Digital8 camera has a video out. It will play 8MM, Hi-8 and Digital8 tapes. I run the video out to a capture device I bought at BestBuy. It allows me to save them as MP4's.

 

[sluggo72]

My Digital8 camera has a video out. It will play 8MM, Hi-8 and Digital8 tapes. I run the video out to a capture device I bought at BestBuy. It allows me to save them as MP4's.

okay, I have 8mm film as opposed to the tapes, your quality should be very good. I don't know much about BluRays, but as mentioned iDVD wasn't too bad to use. I think you can still get a copy someplace. it did allow you to put things in 'chapters' so you could list things that way.

 

[PSUinCAfan]

Preserving those family memories in digital is not that difficult.
On my Mac I run Roxio Toast Titanium for the software part.
http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/titanium/
Just remember that you are capturing SD media which is not going to reach the quality of HD Blu-ray. If you try to blow-up the frame size (SD 720x540) the picture is going to get fuzzy. Consider just burning these SD files to DVD and let the playback player up convert for you to watch them.
Another thought would be for you to buy a box that could play those digital files from your drive directly to the TV. I think the most recent Xbox will do it.

For actually burning the Blu-ray disc you will need hardware.
I bought an external Blu-ray disc player/burner which runs from Firewire - it is older and you can probably find online a Thunderbolt or SATA connection. It interfaces very nicely with Toast.

FWIW. I shoot a lot of home video using a Cannon VIXIA HD which is a AVCintra codec 1920x1080 and the up-conversion to Blu-ray codec works beautifully. Always record sound at 48 khz.

Remember that harddrives fail over time so those original files you converted to digital back them up multiple times.

 

[BostonNit]

Thanks, I'm on Windows, not Mac. I have a high-end BD-drive in my PC.

You're right about the resolution... it's not great to begin with and blowing it up makes it all the more pixelated, but it's the nature of the beast. Right now I have stacks of Hi8 and Digital8 tapes that I never ever watch because of the hassle of hooking up the camcorder to the tv for playback. Once I convert them all to MP4's I'll be able to watch them from the cloud, a standalone drive on my network, or burn them to DVD or BD for sharing with my family.

Just was hoping that someone who's taken on a similar project could offer some insight into the last piece of the puzzle... the disc authoring piece.

 

[southern_lion]

I use the TMPGEnc DVD author 5. I author all my Penn State DVDs (SD and widescreen) as well as all my Blu-rays with this software. I can easily edit out all the commercials, make chapter breaks, easily put together the menus to chose each chapter. I've also put all my old Hi8 tapes onto my computer and used this software to put together DVDs (or Blu-rays).

It's not free software, but works great for me.

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/taw5.html

 

[BostonNit]

I use the TMPGEnc DVD author 5. I author all my Penn State DVDs (SD and widescreen) as well as all my Blu-rays with this software. I can easily edit out all the commercials, make chapter breaks, easily put together the menus to chose each chapter. I've also put all my old Hi8 tapes onto my computer and used this software to put together DVDs (or Blu-rays).

It's not free software, but works great for me.

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/taw5.html

Thanks. They're up to version 6 now. I'll check out the trial version. It looks to be exactly what I'm looking for.