What are people using to author blu-ray discs?

[gerbow]

I am new to Blu-ray disc creation. I have used DVDSP4 to create DVDs previously. Obviously there is no way to create a fully-customisable blu-ray disc on Mac OSX. So I am looking at my options. I have an LG external blu-ray writer which came with Power Producer, although the version bundled only creates BDAV discs. I have to upgrade to the latest version to get BDMV.

I looked at the preview of Corel DVD Movie Factory 7 and that looked quite good; it seemed quite customisable. Has anyone in Australia used it? (That seems to be where it is currently available).

I exported two heavy motion clips (originally transcoded from avchd to canopus hq) from the Edius 5 timeline and the Mpeg2 version contains block artifacts whilst the avc version is identical to the original; outstanding quality (only downside is it took 12 minutes to export 3 minutes worth of footage)! Therefore I would like to be able to author avc bluray discs.

What do people use and recommend for bluray avc disc authoring?
Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Jerry]

I am new to Blu-ray disc creation. I have used DVDSP4 to create DVDs previously. Obviously there is no way to create a fully-customisable blu-ray disc on Mac OSX. So I am looking at my options. I have an LG external blu-ray writer which came with Power Producer, although the version bundled only creates BDAV discs. I have to upgrade to the latest version to get BDMV.

I looked at the preview of Corel DVD Movie Factory 7 and that looked quite good; it seemed quite customisable. Has anyone in Australia used it? (That seems to be where it is currently available).

I exported two heavy motion clips (originally transcoded from avchd to canopus hq) from the Edius 5 timeline and the Mpeg2 version contains block artifacts whilst the avc version is identical to the original; outstanding quality (only downside is it took 12 minutes to export 3 minutes worth of footage)! Therefore I would like to be able to author avc bluray discs.

What do people use and recommend for bluray avc disc authoring?
Any help is greatly appreciated.

The 'blockiness' in your video probably comes from too low of a bitrate for the motion that you are talking about.
What program are you using to transcode to blu-ray compliant files?
If you are working in HD and going to BD, you better get used to long render times. That is the way it is. Firecoder blu is an option for hardware encoding.
I have found that it takes longer to encode H.264 compliant files than it does Mpeg2HD files.
As far as an authoring application, you will have to decide how 'professional' of an application it is that you want.
There are many apps out there:

Encore CS3 CS4
DO Studio
DVDITHDPRO
Sony DVD Architect
Sony BLUPrint
Scenarist

Ulead DVD Studio
Nero
Just to name a few.
You have to decide the ease of use factor for yourself.

[gerbow]

I simply exported a few canopus HQ clips with some gpu transitions directly from the timeline using print to file. I did not play around with the default bitrates. I have procoder 3 as well, but did not use that in this instance.]

Thanks for the suggestions. I could upgrade my copy of premiere 6 to CS4 (and gain encore), but having read some of the problems users are having on the adobe forums I would rather not go that route.

I'll look into some of your other suggestions.

Thanks

[Claire]

For a much simpler, more reliable and easier option to Encore for authoring to Blue-ray I suggest you try TMPGEnc DVD Author 4 with the caveat that it accepts and outputs only MPEG2. This is one sweet program and is also very fast if you need it to handle the conversion to MPEG2 for you.

For AVCHD I suggest you try Corel DVD Movie Factory 7, not as good as in my opinion but it does accept and output H.264/AVC from Firecoder without re-encoding it so the combination takes amost all of the waiting time out of producing Blue-ray that Jerry refers to.

Encore hangs up badly when importing H.264 files, keeps you waiting to make the next move, Movie Factory is much quicker at this, TMPEGEnc works like lightning with MPEG2.