In the last post, I talked about using Roxio Toast as a low cost solution for authoring Blu-Ray on a Mac. Here I will discuss another solution, Nero 8.

Nero is an application that only runs under Windows. This limits it’s use on a Mac to Intel based machines running Windows either in a Boot Camp partition or in a virtual machine using Fusion or Parallels. If you have an Intel powered Mac, Nero will provide a much better solution to Blu-Ray authoring than Toast.

Nero can run either in a Boot Camp partition (where Windows is running by itself), or in a Windows virtual machine (running in OS-X by using Parallels or VMWare Fusion). I used the VM method. This has certain advantages as you can access files on your Mac filesystem by putting them in a shared directory. You should probably avoid running in a VM however if you have a low-end Intel Mac, or one doesn’t have much memory. I was using a 2.66Ghz Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM running Windows XP in a Fusion VM. You will need to install Nero 8 Ultimate Edition and if you are authoring real Blu-Ray disks, you will have to purchase an activation code for the Nero Blu-Ray/HD-DVD plugin. This is not required however, if you are authoring AVCHD DVDs (This is Blu-Ray compatible video on a regular DVD).

As I don’t have a Blu-Ray burner, I decided to work with creating an AVCHD DVD. Authoring is done using the Nerovision appication which is part of the Nero Ultimate suite. This is an all-in-one video capture, editing, and DVD authoring package. After selecting AVCHD on DVD, the next step is to add media assets. Nero being a consumer app, does not have the flexibility of DVD Studio Pro regarding the type of media that it will accept. You must have both video and audio multiplexed into one file. It accepts MPEG2 and H264. MPEG2 should be saved as an m2t (MPEG2 transport stream). H264 can be a Quicktime or AVI file.

Although Nero is supposed to be capable of not reencoding Blu-Ray compatible files, this does not seem to work. Because you have to assume that it will reencode, it is best to start with best possible source file. Therefore I exported my HDV timeline in Final Cut Pro as a 25mbps (roughly equivalent to the full HDV data rate) MPEG2 transport stream. This can be done using Compressor. I also exported another timeline as an H264 Quicktime file in Compressor. Both of these were added to the Nerovision project. After importing, you can then create chapters (Nero will not import chapter markers from FCP).

Once you have added assets, the next step is to create menus. Nero provides as full set of templates to work with, and some of them are not bad looking (you will have to download them from Nero if you don’t have a boxed version). The nice thing is, unlike Toast, you are capable of doing a lot of customization. You can even create your own menus and save them as templates. While it is not DVD Studio Pro, you can still build some very nice custom menus. Just make sure that you click the advanced option on the menu creation screen.

After creating your main and chapter menus, you are ready to preview. Nero provides a preview screen where you can test things out. When you are satisfied with your menu, you will be ready to encode and burn your video. There are several options that you can set for encoding, and you can encode either MPEG2 or H264 (H264 is much more efficient). One note of caution. If you are using AVCHD to burn to a standard DVD, do not set the data rate higher than 1500kbps. While you can encode to a Blu-Ray disc at up to 4000kbps, you will get skipping if you go much over 1500 on a red laser DVD.

I found that even using the default encode settings that I got some very clean results which played pefectly in my PlayStation 3.

Before you create any Blu-Ray or AVCHD discs, you should read Phil Hinkle’s article in EventDV on Blu-Ray authoring with Nero, and the Nero Vision 5 AVCHD Authoring Guide in Digital Digest.

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).

While at the WEVA Expo last month I attended Larry Jordan’s excellent Soundtrack Pro seminar. Now for all of you who are wondering what Soundtrack Pro is, it is Apple’s audio editor for video. Version 2 was released as part of Final Cut Studio 2.

After getting back from the Expo, I was eager to put into place what I had learned. So last weekend I started refining the audio on my current project. This is a wedding that we did in June. I had promised the bride that she would get her DVDs in early September. Anyway, after a few false starts, I got the workflow down in Soundtrack Pro’s multitrack editor. Once I had the sound the way I liked it, I was ready to export the project back into Final Cut Pro (the video editing application). This is where things went wrong.

The export function creates a new audio mixdown file. Unfortunately when I opened the file in Final Cut Pro, the audio levels were all wrong. Some tracks were too loud, some were too soft. I figured that it was my problem, and that I did something wrong. I treaked things some more in Soundtrack Pro and exported again. The audio still wasn’t right.

Today, I looked on Apple’s Soundtrack Pro forum. It seems like a large number of people have had the same issue. Soundtrack Pro screws up the levels when exporting a file. This is a bug that makes this product unusable for me. Apple never should have released the new version as it is. This is too bad, as Soundtrack Pro is really a nice audio editor. I will wait until they fix the bugs before using it again.