Hi Jim -

... and good luck to the ex-Canadian Australian, Dale Begg-Smith in the Winter Olympics (in skiing, not business).

I have no experience, yet, of Blu-ray burning but you would be interested in Xerox's findings on this http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/8131.page

Cheers - Tony
Visit PDtoots. PowerDirector Tutorials, tips, free resources & more. Subscribe!
Full linked Tutorial Catalog PDtoots happily supports fellow PowerDirector users!

Jim, Let me say 1st that I'm down (you know, happy) with Build 2508 and it's fix for SVRT.. My finished vids are rendered in 'same as original' guality.. BD burning still requires patients, but is better. I have found that it's best to produce each set of clips in separate projects and then burn all the projects together, rather than to go from editing to burning directly. As far as the HD menus themselves go, they look pretty good.. Having said that, I just think the playback options leave one wanting more.
1. Limited to 4 chapters/thumbnails per page
2, Thumbnails appear to be cropped to the center of the clip
3. Limited to chapter menus with thumbnails. ie: you can't make a list of chapters in text form.
4. The music and motion of thumbnails on the chapter pages has a limit of 15 seconds duration.
...(I bet all this was done, maybe, to save disk space more than anything else? ...probably.)
...If you come upon work-arounds for this stuff please let us know.
...Don't forget to use rewritable BDs.

Sometimes the toughest part of finding the answer is finding the answer (more beer, please) The best thing about PD is the people in the Forums !!!
Win-7 Ultimate, ASUS Rampage III Extreme, Intel Core i7-980X, 12-GBs DDR3, Intel X25-M 160GB SDD, Asus nVidia GeForce GTX580 (1), Dell U3011 Monitor, Canon HF100 and HF-S21

Bob,

I know there are limitations in going to HD but I'm committed so I'll either have to live with them, find workarounds (like the Reg Edit so you can render the Blu-Ray Disk to a Folder instead of burning it to disk to test), or move onto a higher level software package.

One of the previous work arounds was using Nero to Burn so I'll see how many folks still use it for PD8, before I decide which way to go.

Tony,

Nice comment on the Olympics. I'm going to take my wife (she plays in a "beer" league) to the opening game for women's hockey on Saturday. Canada Vs. Slovakia.

I'll check out Xerox'S Post. Thx. Regards,

Jim

Asus Z87-A Motherboard - O/C if needed to about 4.6 Ghz.
Intel i7 4770K CPU
16 Gigs Corsair Vengeance DDR3 Ram
OCZ 448 Gig SSD (for OS and related Video Editing Programs)
1 TB, 1.5 TB, and 3 TB Data Drives - Slide in Drawers as needed.
LG's HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 Blu ray Burner
Samsung SH-S223F 16x DVD Burner
Gigabyte GTX 660Ti NVidia Geforce Graphics Card

The zoomed in effect is nothing new to PD menus. I reported this issue in a very detailed menu deficiency write-up when PD7 was released in May of 2008; I’m sure many others probably did too. Yes that was 2008. Almost 2 yrs past and of the 10 high level deficiencies outlined in my write-up supplied to CL, only one has been addressed since then in PD7 and/or PD8 and associated patches. Hopefully future patches will correct more menu issues as many users still complain about many of the other issues identified in the write-up, like, no text only menus, no still pic chapter thumbnails……..

If you are careful and understand menus you can get around most PD induced issues. It just would be nice if CL would address some of the menu anomalies. I realize it’s a video editing program; however, all aspects of the menu creation system they supply should function correctly.

You can also create more than 4 chapters per page in BD format if you wish. I think the limitation is simply CL imposed for now, not sure why. I'm sure they will address it in a patch or new release. Maybe it is copy write infringement like the BD write to folder, LOL (a PD7 feature and available in other editors too). The attached pics are of my TV playing my BD project, they show 8 menus in BD format, NO zoom effects in thumbnails and I’ve captured the bitrate shown by the PS3 during video play so you can see it is 24Mbps video, a BD not AVCHD on DVD. The source footage was Canon HFS10, MXP 24Mbps. The project menu structure was created with ONLY PD8 and I used ImgBurn to burn the BD folder to BD disc.

Jeff

JL,

Thanks for the info. I may be calling on you about some of those techniques and work arounds you've mastered for BD authoring.

I noticed you said you used ImgBurn to burn the BD folder to BD disc. From this am I to assume the Burning App in PD8 is not significantly improved? I don't have an issue if it is not suitable, as I've been comfortable burning with Nero for DVDs in PD7 so I can learn how for BDs.

The info just saves me burning a coaster or two in PD8 before moving to Nero. Thanks. Regards,

Jim

Asus Z87-A Motherboard - O/C if needed to about 4.6 Ghz.
Intel i7 4770K CPU
16 Gigs Corsair Vengeance DDR3 Ram
OCZ 448 Gig SSD (for OS and related Video Editing Programs)
1 TB, 1.5 TB, and 3 TB Data Drives - Slide in Drawers as needed.
LG's HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS30 Blu ray Burner
Samsung SH-S223F 16x DVD Burner
Gigabyte GTX 660Ti NVidia Geforce Graphics Card

Hello, JL.
You said "you can also create more than 4 chapters per page in BD format if you wish" also, "NO zoom effects in thumbnails" and then showed a couple of pix to confirm it.
I am very curious to know how you did that.
Is it possible to 'share' that with us?
Thanks, Bob The best thing about PD is the people in the Forums !!!
Win-7 Ultimate, ASUS Rampage III Extreme, Intel Core i7-980X, 12-GBs DDR3, Intel X25-M 160GB SDD, Asus nVidia GeForce GTX580 (1), Dell U3011 Monitor, Canon HF100 and HF-S21