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Best and easiest software for Blu-ray authoring.

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I’ve been looking for quite a while for one. I’ve been constantly seeking one. I was recommended Adobe Encore but I never quite got the hang of it. I also heard the quality would be slightly downgraded if I were to author one (the case for the Despecialized Editions). If this wasn’t the case I would love links to some tutorials. Otherwise I could use some recommendations.

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 (Edited)

I’ve only used Encore. I’m not sure what a better or easier option would be (there aren’t very many options in the first place).

Most software will probably try to re-encode something like Despecialized, as they detect or assume that it is not BD compliant. If that’s something you can’t get around within the software itself, you can just author the disc and then replace the main video using multiAVCHD. People have posted a guide for that around here before, I think.

As you’ll see with njvc’s discs, Encore (and probably anything else) will also limit your audio track count. With multiavchd, you can then go ahead and add all the extra ones you want. You’ll just need to use your remote to access them instead of the BD menu.

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towne32 said:

I’ve only used Encore. I’m not sure what a better or easier option would be (there aren’t very many options in the first place).

Most software will probably try to re-encode something like Despecialized, as they detect or assume that it is not BD compliant. If that’s something you can’t get around within the software itself, you can just author the disc and then replace the main video using multiAVCHD. People have posted a guide for that around here before, I think.

As you’ll see with njvc’s discs, Encore (and probably anything else) will also limit your audio track count. With multiavchd, you can then go ahead and add all the extra ones you want. You’ll just need to use your remote to access them instead of the BD menu.

If I do recall correctly Encore allows musing 64 tracks as a limit (Audio and subs combined). I just have this sort of obsession about things looking authentic. I guess I’ll look up some tutorials. And this may sound dumb, but maybe converting it (maybe to m2ts) could leave the quality intact ? Also, great job with the colour correction done in Star Wars 2.7

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Probably already well known and/or suspected but I just tried Cyberlink’s Power2Go (as it was part of a PowerDVD purchase) and it isn’t suitable for anything beyond making a home video viewable on a Blu-ray player.

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 (Edited)

RashadShehadeh said:

towne32 said:

I’ve only used Encore. I’m not sure what a better or easier option would be (there aren’t very many options in the first place).

Most software will probably try to re-encode something like Despecialized, as they detect or assume that it is not BD compliant. If that’s something you can’t get around within the software itself, you can just author the disc and then replace the main video using multiAVCHD. People have posted a guide for that around here before, I think.

As you’ll see with njvc’s discs, Encore (and probably anything else) will also limit your audio track count. With multiavchd, you can then go ahead and add all the extra ones you want. You’ll just need to use your remote to access them instead of the BD menu.

If I do recall correctly Encore allows musing 64 tracks as a limit (Audio and subs combined). I just have this sort of obsession about things looking authentic. I guess I’ll look up some tutorials. And this may sound dumb, but maybe converting it (maybe to m2ts) could leave the quality intact ? Also, great job with the colour correction done in Star Wars 2.7

Thanks.

I could have sworn Encore had a limit of 8 audio tracks, but I might be completely misremembering. 64 might indeed be the limit with subs included.

I’m not sure that Encore would accept an MKV in the first place, so remuxing it to m2ts or simply demuxing the streams would be the way to go anyway. It’s really about whether Encore accepts the streams as compliant or not. Presumably their standards are either excessively high for our purposes, or unable to properly detect the properties of our streams. I’m pretty sure that njvc’s earlier attempt with the 2.7 stream resulted in a re-encoded file. It’s quite possible that it just will not want to burn an unprocessed x264 encode, and will try to re-encode to h264. Anyway, if so, swap back the stream you want with multiavchd.

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towne32 said:

RashadShehadeh said:

towne32 said:

I’ve only used Encore. I’m not sure what a better or easier option would be (there aren’t very many options in the first place).

Most software will probably try to re-encode something like Despecialized, as they detect or assume that it is not BD compliant. If that’s something you can’t get around within the software itself, you can just author the disc and then replace the main video using multiAVCHD. People have posted a guide for that around here before, I think.

As you’ll see with njvc’s discs, Encore (and probably anything else) will also limit your audio track count. With multiavchd, you can then go ahead and add all the extra ones you want. You’ll just need to use your remote to access them instead of the BD menu.

If I do recall correctly Encore allows musing 64 tracks as a limit (Audio and subs combined). I just have this sort of obsession about things looking authentic. I guess I’ll look up some tutorials. And this may sound dumb, but maybe converting it (maybe to m2ts) could leave the quality intact ? Also, great job with the colour correction done in Star Wars 2.7

Thanks.

I could have sworn Encore had a limit of 8 audio tracks, but I might be completely misremembering. 64 might indeed be the limit with subs included.

I’m not sure that Encore would accept an MKV in the first place, so remuxing it to m2ts or simply demuxing the streams would be the way to go anyway. It’s really about whether Encore accepts the streams as compliant or not. Presumably their standards are either excessively high for our purposes, or unable to properly detect the properties of our streams. I’m pretty sure that njvc’s earlier attempt with the 2.7 stream resulted in a re-encoded file. It’s quite possible that it just will not want to burn an unprocessed x264 encode, and will try to re-encode to h264. Anyway, if so, swap back the stream you want with multiavchd.

Any good lossless encoders? And it’s pretty rare seeing one that can convert to .m2ts…
And also how can I burn it into an ISO?

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 (Edited)

I’ll try to explain the terminology to you, which should help you maneuver these kinds of questions a bit better:

Lossless video encoding creates files that are hundreds of gigabytes, or larger. It is used as a permanent archive of a video stream, that can then be encoded (with loss) into more compressed formats for viewing. Or, to import into a program for editing.

You can’t go from one lossy format to another lossy format without re-encoding and losing some information (with lossy being anything used for actual viewing, such as blu-rays and DVDs and such).

But you’re not interested in re-encoding. MKV and M2TS are containers that hold video and audio streams. The Despecialized streams, including the x264 video stream, are blu-ray compatible. So all that needs to be done is putting them in a new container (m2ts). There is no loss involved in that process. It is also very fast. Seconds or minutes, as opposed to hours of encoding. This is called multiplexing or “muxing”.

You can remux an MKV to blu-ray m2ts easily using tsmuxer (gui). If you choose blu-ray format, it will put it in the correct directory structure (and ISO if you like), so that it is ready to burn. You can also choose to demux the MKV. This will give you all the video, audio, and subtitle streams in the MKV, which can then be imported into programs like Encore. You might need to change the file extension of the video stream for Encore to recognize (I vaguely recall it preferring .m4v to .264.

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towne32 said:

I’ll try to explain the terminology to you, which should help you maneuver these kinds of questions a bit better:

Lossless video encoding creates files that are hundreds of gigabytes, or larger. It is used as a permanent archive of a video stream, that can then be encoded (with loss) into more compressed formats for viewing. Or, to import into a program for editing.

You can’t go from one lossy format to another lossy format without re-encoding and losing some information (with lossy being anything used for actual viewing, such as blu-rays and DVDs and such).

But you’re not interested in re-encoding. MKV and M2TS are containers that hold video and audio streams. The Despecialized streams, including the x264 video stream, are blu-ray compatible. So all that needs to be done is putting them in a new container (m2ts). There is no loss involved in that process. It is also very fast. Seconds or minutes, as opposed to hours of encoding. This is called multiplexing or “muxing”.

You can remux an MKV to blu-ray m2ts easily using tsmuxer (gui). If you choose blu-ray format, it will put it in the correct directory structure (and ISO if you like), so that it is ready to burn. You can also choose to demux the MKV. This will give you all the video, audio, and subtitle streams in the MKV, which can then be imported into programs like Encore. You might need to change the file extension of the video stream for Encore to recognize (I vaguely recall it preferring .m4v to .264.

Don’t worry. I’m familiar with the subject (for example: Harmy probably sent you the raw encode of the Despecialized Edition of the original Star Wars, to avoid even the slightest quality loss compared to version 2.5). But from what I understand here I can execute the process you were generous enough to explain, and just copy the m2ts video file and load it in Encore to make a custom Blu-Ray from scratch…
I’ll also change the file extension.