Blu-Ray Authoring - Solutions for Mac users part 1

Since the recent sudden demise of HD-DVD, Mac users have not had many choices for high definition DVD authoring. Apple's Final Cut Studio currently only supports HD-DVD not Blu-Ray. While it was hoped that Apple would introduce a new version with Blu-Ray at the NAB show a couple of weeks ago, this didn't happen. In fact Apple skipped the show for the first time in years. Although Blu-Ray support will probably be added soon, it isn't here now. Adobe does have it in Encore, but many of us (myself included), are using Apple's Final Cut Studio (of which DVD Studio Pro is part).

There is little sense right now for the wedding and event videographer to spend hundreds of dollars to purchase an expensive authoring application if they have DVD Studio Pro. In the low cost category, there is currently only one native Mac application for Blu-Ray authoring, Roxio's Toast with the Blu-Ray plugin ($90 plus $20 for the plugin).

I have tried it and have not had much luck. While Toast is an excellent app for burning CDs and DVDs, the Blu-Ray plugin is very buggy. I tried authoring discs using AVDHD (H264) and have found that many times Toast would quit with an error before completing. I was able to author a disc encoded with MPEG2, but this is inefficient and uses a lot more space. Since I do not have a Blu-Ray burner at this time, I am burning to standard DVDs. With AVCHD, it is possible to get about 40 minutes of video on a DVD-5. MPEG2 will produce only about 20 minutes.

The other issue concerns the menus produced by Toast. Like most consumer oriented DVD applications, Toast allows you to create menus for your DVD. Unfortunately these are extremely primitive. It seems that you can only make a main or title menu. No sub-menus for your chapters. While you are supposed to be able to include chapters on your disc, I have not been able to get it to work, either from Toast, or by importing them from Final Cut Pro.

The Toast menus are also ugly and you have few options to modify them. Overall Toast's Blu-Ray plugin is not yet suitable for either consumer or professional use.

After reading Phil Hinkle's article in EventDV on authoring Blu-Ray discs using Nero, I began to take a second look at the possibility of a having low cost solution while we wait for support in DVD Studio Pro.

Nero is a CD and DVD authoring application that runs only on Windows ($110 with Blu-Ray plugin). If however you have an Intel based Mac with Windows installed, you can use it. Nero, like Toast is a consumer level application. But it is way ahead of Toast in capability. The Nero Vision application is quite sophisticated, and can be used to capture and edit video as well as authoring DVDs. Sort or like iMovie and iDVD rolled into one. The nice thing, is like iDVD it actually has some decent menus along with the flexibility to modify them or even roll your own. It's no DVD Studio Pro, but it will do.

In the next part of this article, I will discuss Nero and if it is a suitable interim Blu-Ray authoring solution for Mac users (at least those with Intel Macs).