• Blogs
• Forums
• Tradeshows
• Partners
• White Papers
• Events

 

Edit Expertise: HD Deliverables

Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

Producing Blu-ray Discs in Adobe Creative Suite 3.

Sidebar
Compatible Blu-ray Burners

Since I starting shooting HDV back in 2005, I've yearned for an easy technique to deliver high-definition footage to the living room. I created my first Blu-ray Discs using Sonic DVDit Pro HD, which worked well, but the video-editor-to-authoring-tool handoff was always a concern. Most importantly, I never knew how to render my video files from Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple Final Cut Pro to avoid the time and potential quality degradation of re-encoding in DVDit Pro HD.

When Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium debuted, Blu-ray authoring in Encore was the feature I coveted most — and tested first. While there were a few bumps in the road, it's a solid solution overall, especially (obviously) for Premiere Pro editors. In this tutorial, I'll walk you through the steps of producing a Blu-ray Disc in Premiere Pro CS3 and Encore CS3, and I'll conclude by discussing how to produce Blu-ray-compatible files for Encore in Final Cut Pro.

You'll need a Blu-ray recorder to produce Blu-ray Discs. This sounds obvious, but I wanted to specify up front, because Apple DVD Studio Pro can produce HD DVD-formatted discs using legacy DVD+R/-R drives, and several consumer programs let you burn both Blu-ray- and HD DVD-formatted projects onto legacy DVD+R/-R discs. Encore is not one of those solutions; you'll need a Blu-ray burner such as the LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive I used in my tests (for more on this drive, see next month's issue of Digital Content Producer). Before buying a Blu-ray burner, check the Adobe website to make sure that the drive is compatible with Encore (see p. 32 for a list of compatible drives as of press time).

Setting expectations

Let's start by setting expectations. Encore doesn't enable the full range of Blu-ray authoring capabilities such as Java support, pop-up menus and interactive content with interactive graphics, or support for 50GB dual-layer titles. Rather, it simply extends Encore's DVD-related design features to Blu-ray, producing single-layer BDMV Blu-ray Discs with motion menus, buttons, and the like. For the record, a single-layer Blu-ray Disc should hold about 130 minutes or so of video, which should be fine for most corporate and event videographers.

Working in Premiere

While editing, you'll work in Premiere Pro as normal, except that you'll use a high-definition preset and will output high-resolution video. Note that this is one area where working with nested sequences really pays off — primarily because it allows you to export your entire video project at one time.

To explain, for most larger projects — such as weddings, concerts, and stage performances — I produce each scene in a separate sequence. Then I drag each completed sequence into a conglomerate sequence and export this composite sequence to Encore. This is illustrated in Figure 1, which shows a three-part project. The sequence on top is the conglomerate, which contains CM edit (for creative movement), then scenes one and two of the ballet (scene two is off to the right). The sequence tabs for each of these nested sequences are behind conglomerate at the top of the timeline.

Using a conglomerate sequence lets me insert all necessary chapter markers (demonstrated below) into the video and create one content file to export — usually overnight. If you've never tried nested sequences, now would be a good time, because you're facing quite lengthy encoding times for your high-definition video, and if you encode scene by scene, it's a pain. But I'm getting ahead of myself; let's start at the beginning.

Step 1

Choose the right Premiere Pro preset

Create your Premiere Pro project using a preset that matches your source video. In this project, I mixed video shot with the Canon XH A1 and Sony HDR-FX1 camcorders, which are both 1080i HDV, so I set that preset. If you shot in PAL or 720p, choose the appropriate preset for your footage (Figure 2).

Step 2

Add chapter markers in Encore

Chapter markers are points in a file that you can link directly to via menu buttons. I like setting them in Premiere Pro because you have a better view of the content. For example, with concerts, the audio waveform is the best way to see where songs begin and end. While Premiere Pro shows the waveform, Encore doesn't, so chapter markers are easier to set in Premiere Pro than in Encore.

To set a chapter marker, move Premiere Pro's Current Time Indicator to the desired location, then right-click and choose Set Encore Chapter Marker (Figure 3). This opens the dialog box shown on the right in Figure 3. Type the desired name for the marker, and click OK.

Step 3

Render your file in Premiere Pro CS3

One new feature in Premiere Pro CS3 is the ability to export to Encore. For reasons too lengthy to describe, I find this workflow more confusing than simply exporting from Premiere Pro and creating an Encore project file manually, so that's what I recommend that you do.

To export from Premiere Pro, choose File > Export > Adobe Media Encoder. Here are the decisions you have to make during this phase:

a. Which format: MPEG-2 Blu-ray or H.264 Blu-ray? Encore can produce both MPEG-2 and H.264 Blu-ray Discs. In theory, H.264 should produce higher quality than MPEG-2, although encoding times are much longer. I say “in theory” because I've produced multiple Blu-ray Discs from HDV source, and I always found the discs indistinguishable from the original footage. Because H.264 obviously can't improve the quality of the original footage, I just haven't messed with it.

If you're trying to squeeze four hours of footage onto a single-sided Blu-ray Disc, H.264 is worth a try, but for most projects less than two hours long, MPEG-2 should probably work just fine. In addition, if and when Premiere captures and edits AVCHD video, which is an H.264-based format, consider producing an H.264-based Blu-ray Disc to avoid the transcode to MPEG-2.

b. Administrative options. Buried under the choices shown in Figure 4 are options for encoding the entire sequence or just the work area and whether to produce audio, video, or both. Make your choices and move to the next step.

c. Which preset? Click the preset list box, and choose an encoding preset. Most important here is that you choose a preset that matches your source footage, which is why I've chosen 1440×1080i for my HDV source. Note that high-quality compression translates to two-pass variable-bit-rate (VBR) encoding while medium quality is one-pass VBR, which is obviously faster, and which is what I use for draft work.

Most users should stick with the presets, which are generally conservative. For example, at high quality, Premiere Pro outputs a target bit rate of 25MBps, with a maximum bit rate of 30, while the Blu-ray spec supports a maximum bit rate of 40MBps. Obviously, higher bit rates decrease disc capacity, and they also increase the risk of playback problems — especially from recordable discs — so I wouldn't boost data rate to the redline unless encoded quality was a problem, and then I'd try H.264 first.

Click OK in the Export Settings window, and save your file as normal.

Step 4

Create your Encore project

Open Encore and choose New Project in the Welcome to Adobe Encore DVD splash screen. Choose the Blu-ray authoring mode in the project settings, and select other settings to match your encoded assets (Figure 6). Be sure to get these right, because if they don't precisely match the files you produced, Encore will re-encode before producing your disc.

Step 5

Import your content

Import your content as normal. After import, click your video file in the Project window to check it in the properties window. As shown in Figure 7, the Blu-ray Transcode should be set to Don't Transcode. If not, click the drop-down list, scroll to the bottom, and select Don't Transcode. If this option isn't available, you've got a format mismatch — which could occur, for example, if you import video produced at 1920×1080 video into a 1440×1080 project.

If you use Premiere Pro's Export to Encore option, always check to make sure that the Blu-ray trancode is set to Don't Transcode, rather than Automatic, which could trigger a time-consuming and quality-degrading re-encode.

I recommend testing with short clips of a minute or so in duration to make sure you have the workflow down, because it's definitely irritating to devote 20 hours of encoding time only to find out that you'll have to re-encode to produce your disc. Author and test your DVD as normal, and when you're ready to produce, move to step 6.

Step 6

Build your disc

Create your disc choosing the Blu-ray format, Blu-ray Disc output, and Current Project as input (Figure 8). In a perfect world, your disc will burn right away, without transcoding, and you'll live happily ever after. In my world, particularly on the Mac, and when burning to the Pioneer BDR-101A recorder, I produced multiple coasters — expensive at about $20 a pop.

The first workaround is to create a Blu-ray Image, which is an ISO file you can then burn from within Encore by choosing Disc Image in the Create Using List box. If that doesn't work, try burning the same disc image using the disc-burning software that came with your Blu-ray recorder — typically from companies such as Sonic or Nero.

If that doesn't work, and you have an external Blu-ray recorder (or multiple computers with internal burners), try copying the disc image to a different computer and burning the Blu-ray Disc there. In the end, it was this third solution that worked for me.

Working with Final Cut Pro/Compressor

At the time of this writing, DVD Studio Pro doesn't produce Blu-ray Discs, but Apple Compressor can output Blu-ray-compatible files. I used the HD MPEG-2 19Mbps preset shown in Figure 9, which you can find in Compressor's HD DVD MPEG-2 30 minutes folder. Note the stream usage list box that I changed over to Blu-ray. As you can see, I also bumped the data rate a bit because I had very little content on this particular disc.

Encore loaded the file normally and produced a Blu-ray Disc without re-encoding the file, which was obviously the desired result. If you're a Final Cut Pro user who's already paying major bucks to upgrade to CS3 versions of Photoshop, After Effects, and/or Illustrator, it's nice to know that you can pay a few hundred extra dollars and get a Blu-ray authoring solution that works just fine with Final Cut Pro.

That's it: HDV to Blu-ray in just a few (gulp) simple steps. Ain't technology grand?

---

Compatible Blu-ray Burners

• Lite-On LS-2B1S
  us.liteonit.com
• LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive
  www.lacie.com
• Philips SPD7000
  www.storage.philips.com
• Pioneer BDR-101A
  www.pioneerelectronics.com
• Plextor PX-B900A
  www.plextor.com
• Sony BWU-100A
  www.sonystyle.com

---

To comment on this article, email the Digital Content Producer staff at feedback@digitalcontentproducer.com.

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.