Many were eagerly awaiting an announcement for Blu-ray support at this year’s Mac World, but sadly, no announcement was made. Does this mean you can’t use the Mac to create Blu-ray disks? No it doesn’t! You CAN burn Blu-ray video disks on a Mac.
Just a note before you start, if you are attempting a Blu-Ray burn for the first time, make sure you use a BD-RE (re-writable) disk instead of a BD-R (write once) disk. As you read further, you’ll note that producing a Blu-ray disk on a Mac can be an exercise in extreme frustration. Using a BD-RE disk will allow you to “experiment” without making a bunch of expensive coasters with the write-once BD-R’s.
While Apple doesn’t officially support Blu-ray authoring (nor playback, for that matter) on their line of computers, users might still have an option, albeit, an expensive one. Adobe’s top of the line video editing software, Adobe Premiere CS3 comes bundled with their DVD creation software, Adobe Encore CS3. Premiere can capture, edit and output HD video (as either mpg or H.264), and Encore supports Blu-ray as an output option. So will it work? With a Sony BRU-100a Blu-ray burner pirated from my old Dell XPS Pentium 4, I set to task to find out. I captured about 2 hrs of HD video from my Sony HDR-HC3 HDV camcorder. This was captured with Premiere, and as of this writing, it’s now outputting the video as an H.264 encoded MP4 file. My Mac Pro Dual Quad 3.2ghz Penryn monster has been crunching away for almost 4 hours encoding 2.5 hours of HD video, and it’s only a little more than halfway done on the first of two passes.
These screen shots just goes to show you that there is no such thing as too much computer. I always say, buy the best computer you can afford when you decide to buy one. Once the video is encoded, I’ll import it into Encore, make a quick menus, and do a test burn.
Update: Jan 26, 2008…Well, I managed to burn a Blu-ray disk on the Mac, but what a friggin’ nightmare. Adobe has produced some of the buggiest software I have seen with the introduction of the Creative Suite 3 (CS3) line of products for the Mac. The products installed fine, but the trouble began when I attempted to use them, specifically, Adobe Premiere (video editing) and Encore (DVD/Blu-ray burning). I captured video from my HDV camcorder into Premiere. After some basic editing, I output the video to the H.264 format which produced a separate .m4v file (video) and .wav file (audio). When I imported the two files into Encore, the video and audio files were about 8 seconds different in length. This resulted in the audio that would get more and more out of sync with the video. Had to try something else.
I made another attempt, this time I exported the video again, but this time in mpg format. When I imported into Encore, the video and audio were in sync. In Encore, I had the option to output to to Blu-ray using again, the H.264 format. So I selected this option. I made up some simple DVD menus and went about burning the disk. I used a Sony rewriteable BD-RE disk. Upon attempting to build the disk, Encore would simply hang, or crash, over and over again. I attempted to update the Adobe software with the built in Update feature, but when the updates attempted to install, the update would hang, or crash, and whatever Adobe application was being updated, would be rendered unusable after the update, forcing a reinstall. After repeated, failed, attempts at updating the software, I gave up. Some apps were updated, some weren’t. Fortunately, Encore and Premiere were successfully updated. Time to try a burn again.
Success! Sort of…The Blu-ray DVD burned successfully, but playing it back on my Sony PS3, the video was not smooth at all. It had this stroboscopic effect to it, where objects moving rapidly across the screen left a blurry trail behind them, and the video looked grainy and choppy. This is about as far as I got. I have a feeling I need to play around with the encoding options and wotnot. That’s all I have at this point. Need to do some research. Stay tuned…
Update: Feb 1, 2008…
Well, I made a few more attempts at creating a watchable Blu-ray disk. It took 4 tries, but I now have a good looking Blu-ray video disk. Here’s the summary of my experiences to this point:
This is a screen shot of the OSX Activity Monitor taken during encoding in Premiere (click for larger image). Well, there you have it. Steve Jobs may be holding out on us with Blu-ray support on the Mac, maybe indefinitely, but there is hope. If you’ve got the cash, patience, and one rewriteable Blu-ray disk, you too can be watching your home video in hi-def. Good luck!If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
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Nice work. Thanks for pioneering and documenting this. What a painful and expensive experience. Looking forward to iBD, but not holding breath.
Glad to have found this! I’m trying to duplicate your steps but am not having luck getting my Sharp BD-HP20U (-R & -RW compatible) to play the disc. How are you burning the .iso image in Toast? Thanks!
To use Toast, select a Data disk as the type of disk you want to create. The select DVD-ROM and drag your .iso file to the Toast window. In the lower right hand corner of the Toast window is a tiny little button above the Record button. Use this button to select Blu-ray as the media type (BD or BD-DL). Incidentally, although you can burn Blu-ray with Encore, Encore will only support 25gb single layer disks. Toast will allow you to burn a 50gb dual layer (BD-DL) disk! One important note: If you are successfully burning Blu-ray disks with Encore, but are unable to play them on your Samsung player, it could be your player’s firmware. See if you can get an update for the player’s firmware, or, take your disk to a store that sells many Blu-ray players and see if you can get it to play on another player. That will at least help you determine if it’s the disk, or your player.
Thanks so much! I cannot get Encore to burn a disc either from the project or .iso. I followed your instructions in Toast and was successful, but my player will not accept either a -RE or -R. There is a firmware update available, but the player doesn’t see the file on the USB drive (probably because I used a Mac even though I formatted the USB drive “FAT” as instructed). The joys of being an early adopter! I’ll try to get to a Best Buy later to test the discs in other players.
What is the problem you are having with Encore when burning a disk?
Sorry for the delayed response–I need to remember to check back here. Encore makes no progress on burning, then after moving the mouse I get the beach ball (app. not responding). I’ve let it go for maybe 20 minutes, then had to force quit and shut down.
I got to a store and my discs burned in Toast are not playing on a PS3 or the one set-top they had hooked up. My test projects have had only 5 minutes or so of video–do you think that’s maybe an issue? I’m going to try calling Adobe when I have some time.
Having only 5 minutes of video may be an issue, but my original tests were only about 10 minutes. As far as your Encore burn problems are concerned, did you download and apply all of the available updates? Also, did you move any of your project’s files around to different folder/drive locations on your machine? This sometimes causes instability problems with your projects. Even though you tell Encore where your files’ new location is, it can still screw up your project and cause instability.
Thanks so much for helping with this. My latest test has just over 10 minutes of video, but still not working. Encore is up to date, and no I didn’t move any files. I was able to update my player’s firmware, but still no luck. On my list is to try different media (using Verbatim now). Also to try a project from Premiere–now I’m taking an edited FCP video and bringing into Encore for transcoding.
My BD drive is from Fastmac–their 4x SATA. They claim support for Encore, but may give them a call. Any other suggestions welcome!
Update: it looks like it’s the player after all. I took a new disc back to Best Buy and it played in a Samsung BD-P1400. Same disc does not play in my soon-to-be-returned Sharp BD-HP20U, which is rated for BD-R/RE, even with latest firmware. Hopefully that might help somebody. I wasn’t able to test in a PS3, but guessing it would work. The flaw must have been in the first disc I took to Circuit City.
An irony is that now that Blu-ray has won, I can pick up a HD-DVD player for $75 at Costco, which can play DVD-SP-burned HD-DVD’s on regular DVD-R’s. This project is a 10-minute looping kiosk video, so I could have waited on Blu-ray. Oh well.
Ya, such is life for us early adopters. The pioneers get all the arrows.
hello
when you installed the sony internal blu-ray, did you have to remove the front plate on disc tray? thanks, having doubt as to whether my new LG super multi will be able to go internal on my macpro.
Yes, if the drive has a front plate, it has to be removed in order to fit through the drive door.
Has anyone tried to burn short footage, like 20 minutes of HD in BR format on normal DVDs to be played back on a BR player? I have an iso image made from Encore CS3 and will attempt this once I load the new toast 9 and then report back.
I had all the same issues with Encore hanging in the middle of burning. Wasted $20 on two BDR discs before reading the part about using BD-REs. Good thing I only wasted two.
Also does anyone have a better source for blank BDRs, preferrably the White, Ink jet printable type?