Editing in Avid Media Composer (Blu-ray and beyond)

Hey guys,

So I've been trying to figure out the best way to edit Blu-ray footage and I was able to get it to work with Avid Media Composer 6.

First off, why Avid? It's the most stable, intuitive, well-rounded Non-Linear Editing system I have ever used. It is industry standard for a reason, and I STRONGLY encourage all Fan-Editors migrate to this brilliant program.

That said, many of you might be left wondering how to set up a Blu-ray sourced video in Avid MC. Here's a simple little guideline:

VIDEO:
Once you've ripped the M2TS files (using DVDFab or even just copying the files right off of the disc in some cases), you'll notice that Avid cannot import these files. You'll need to manually create Avid friendly files using Sorenson Squeeze (comes with Avid Media Composer).

Import the M2TS files into Squeeze and set the profile to MOV with these settings:

Streaming (hinted)
AVID DNcHD Codec
23.98 fps
(Under codec options, set it to 709 color levels, Alpha->None, and 1080p/23.976 DNxHD 175 8-bit)
Force Key Frame Every 300

I'm going to try some tests with more frequent keyframes and an Avid 1:1 setting, but I feel like it wouldn't be too much better and secondly, good look getting your computer to edit that. 

The file will be about 3.7 times larger than the original file. (Tested with a 250mb file)

This file can be AMA linked into Avid with no lag.


AUDIO

M2TS -> DTS
Use tsMuxeR to convert the M2TS to DTS (DEMUX audio only)

DTS -> AC3
Rename the DTS to: input.dts
Place the "input.dts" file into the "dts2ac3" folder
Run the .bat file -> should end up with output.ac3


I believe the AC3 SHOULD be enough. In case you want 6 WAV tracks...

AC3 -> WAV
Run BeSweetGUI
Link the EXE to BeSweetv1.4
Link the ac3 we created earlier
Output to WAV 6 tracks


NOTE: AVISYNTH AND DOTNETFX MUST BE INSTALLED!!!



I'll let you guys know once I've run more tests! 

Cheers!



A-Man

Made a quick update to the above - as Blu-rays only support 8-bit colour, I've amended the post to reflect creating 8-bit MXF files.

vickunnie said:

As we all know, the most compatible video format for Adobe Premiere and Avid editing is MPEG and DNxHD MOV format. So we need to transcode the Blu-rays to the editable format first before import the Blu-rays to the editors. In order to perform the task smoothly, I recommend you a powerful Brorsoft Blu-ray Ripper for Mac which has an exclusive function to support Blu-rays and DVDs to editing tools, such as Adobe, Avid even FCP.

 Can you go straight from Blu-ray disc to MOV DNxHD or to MXF DNxHD? If not, my method above is proven to work, while 100% of your posts on this website have been to tell people to download the Brosoft Bluray ripper.