Here’s the problem though - random member tinkers, does a poor job, and uploads it. It starts going around the internets and suddenly there’s a subpar product out there that people are downloading with Harmy’s (and maybe njvc’s) name(s) on it.
As the “creator” of content, I wouldn’t want someone doing that.
Also, Blu-ray players are insanely cheap now. Anyone who doesn’t have interest in getting one doesn’t get much sympathy from me anymore.
I get where you are coming from. But rest assured I have no intention of just doing this and then uploading without Harmy and NJVC having the final say. I will first pm them both and see if they are ok with it. If that step is successful then I’ll send the both of them a draft to view themselves and if they arent happy with the final product then thats where it will end. No sub par product floating around the inter webs.
It’s just too much content for a single layer disc, I think. This is the kind of thing that would get endless criticism from us and others if a company were to do it and release it.
It’s true that there would be more wiggle room for 720p material. However, part of what makes despecialized so large is the enormous number of audio tracks (some of them full DTS-HD MA audio) rather than having oversized 720p x264. One option would be to cut some of the dubs. There are a lot that don’t even show up in the menu due to technical limitations there. That will only save you so much, though, as they’re ac3.
As I said before, though, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to just compress everything down when you’ve got a feature film and very different content in all of the extras. BDRB does have options to selectively compress the main feature and bonus material in different ways. So that might be worth looking into. But really, I think the issue is best solved by either:
-
Spreading the material out across two BD25s as has already been done.
-
Not using the Blu-ray medium for something like this if its limitations and your desire to use smaller than ideal discs are in conflict. The whole point of it was sort of to have a near professional quality thing (which created its own slew of problems, obviously).
Good of you to ask njvc and Harmy. I’m chiming in as someone who rendered one of the main features you’re talking about compressing, but all credit and the final word is of course up to those guys.
As far as DVD goes, that’s a different ballpark but it seems fair enough. Do whatever is appropriate for the normal run length of a DVD, so that it’s still presented well for those that like SD content. I’m not familiar with mastering in this format, but I would assume that would be 2+ discs. And this brings up Frink’s point that quality control matters. Traditionally, we’ve had Chewtobacca making the ‘official’ DVD encodings because he knows what he is doing. Other people have thrown the mkv into a some kind of ‘insta-DVD’ program and uploaded it to the spleen, resulting in much complaining because of people not knowing what they’re doing. tldr: just do it right, I guess.