Here is a tutorial illustrating how to convert camera videos to Blu-ray movies and burn it on Blu-ray Discs.

What You Need:

High-def Camcorder: or called HD Video Cameras, used to record HD videos for fun, such as Sony HDR-XR100E and Cannon HF200.

One piece of blank Blu-ray Discs: Insert a blank Blu-Ray disc into the computer’s drive.

Blu-ray Disc Burner: Sony unveils BWU-100A Blu-ray burner, for example.

Blu-ray Burning Software: Sothink HD Movie Maker

Step 1: Transfer Camera Videos to PC

Attach the camera to PC and transfer the video from the camcorder into PC.

Step 2： Add and Edit Video

Add Files

Launch Sothink HD Movie Maker. Selecting “Add Files” from File in the Menu or directly clicking button “Add Files” on the Toolbar, a dialog pops up for choosing movie files to the program. You can add more than one movie file at one time.

Trim Video

There is a window on the bottom of the program for previewing the video added in. You can click button “Play” to preview your source video and, if you just want to burn a part of video content into Discs, you may realize it with Trim function:

Select the video you have added into the program, go to “Edit” – > “Trim” function, and then you can decide which part can be burnt by dragging the left/right slider to set start/end time.

As the picture showing above, drag the left triangle to a position you want it be the start of the converted video and drag the right triangle to a position you want it be the end of the converted video. Then the video will be trimmed before being converted.

Set Disc

After you’ve finished adding files and editing video, it’s time to set the recording parameters and burn to disc. This is the tricky part, as it’s the only step of the process where things can go very wrong.

Go to General Settings or Advanced Settings panel and do some settings for the disc.

Under tab “Settings”, there are four general setting items in the Settings panel:

• Target disc size: Click the arrow and select the target disc size from the drop down list.

  There are four options: “DVD-5 (4.7G)”, “DVD-9 (8.5G)”, “BD-25 (25G)” and “BD-50 (50G)”. Since it is to burn the video on Blu-ray Disc, here choose “BD-25” or “BD-50.

  Tip: If the video size is less than 8.5G, you may burn the video onto DVD and create AVCHD movie on DVD discs, which also needs to be played on Blu-ray player.

• Disc label: Write the label here for the disc.

  The default label is the current date. Here you can input other words for the disc.

• Video dimension: Click the arrow and select the target video dimension from the drop down list.

  There are three options: “1280*720″, “1440*1080″ and “1920*1080″.

• Video frame rate: Click the arrow and select the target video frame rate from the drop down list. There are two options: “25 (PAL)” and “29.97 (NTSC)”.

  Tip: “PAL” (short for Phase Alternating Line) and “NTSC” （short for National Television System Committee) are the two standards of TV broadcast.

If you are advanced users and familiar with video code, you may set more parameters, like Bit rate, frame rate, zoom mode and channels, for your Blu-ray Disc under Advanced Setting panel.

Step 3: Start Video Burning

Make sure the checkbox besides the video file(s) you want to burn is been ticked. If there is none movie ticked, the program prompts when starting burning. When all the checkboxes are ticked, the movie files added in will be burned following the order of the file list.

Select “Burn” from File in the Menu or directly click button “Burn” on the Toolbar, and then it starts burning:

Note: If there is no disc in the drive, it pops up a dialog for prompting and HD Movie Maker automatically creates a folder for saving temporary files.

The burning function requires Windows XP SP2/Windows Vista SP1 or above versions. If the system doesn’t meet the requirement, HD Movie Maker will automatically create a standard folder to store the generated Blu-ray movie.

Sothink HD Movie Maker supports multiple CPUs and multiple core CPUs, and supports concurrent conversion for multiple videos with high speed, so if your computer has multiple CPUs and multiple core CPUs, you may go to Options-Encoding dialog and choose the maximum number of CPU cores to make burning faster.

Step 4: Play Blu-ray Disc

When the burning is completed, you may enjoy the high-def BD video on HDTV with various Blu-ray players, for example, Sony PS3.

Below are the screenshots of two kinds of movie file: DVD and High Definition Blu-ray. Let’s see the picture quality comparisons between them.

This is a picture from DVD movie file.

This is the picture from a high-definition Blu-ray movie. Captured from the ISO image file of an AVCHD demo video created by Sothink HD Movie Maker with high-definition.

Download and view High-Definition Blu-ray Demo now >>

The regular high definition movie displays clearly enough. However, the Blu-ray movie shows more picture details. The Blu-ray movie’s outstanding picture clarity, ultra-smooth video, vivid color, and precise image scaling make video enjoyment more real.

You may create your own Blu-ray disc with some Blu-ray Disc burner or Blu-ray movie maker, like Sothink HD Movie Maker. And then just enjoy your movie with great visual experience.

Download the free trial version of Sothink HD Movie Maker now >>

]]> http://www.sothink.com/blog/what-kind-of-visual-experience-does-blu-ray-brings-us/feed/ 0 http://www.sothink.com/blog/how-to-back-up-your-blu-ray-disc/ http://www.sothink.com/blog/how-to-back-up-your-blu-ray-disc/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 02:01:24 +0000 mirrorking http://www.sothink.com/blog/?p=2427 We know that Blu-ray is the newest innovation and currently expensive, so it is better to back up your Blu-ray discs in case they break or get damaged. It is recommended that burn the Blu-ray Movies from your original disc to another Blu-ray Disc with Sothink HD Movie Maker, which can easily burn HD Blu-ray movies to Blu-ray Disc of 25GB or 50 GB capacity.

Here is a simple tutorial illustrating how to burn Blu-ray movies to Blu-ray Disc with Sothink HD Movie Maker:

What You Need:

• Blu-ray Movies: Save the Blu-ray movie files, which are from the Blu-ray Disc you purchased or downloaded from Internet, in the computer.
• Empty Blu-ray Disc: Insert an empty Blu-Ray disc into the computer’s drive.
• Blu-ray Disc Burner: Sony unveils BWU-100A Blu-ray burner, for example.
• Blu-ray Burning Software: Sothink HD Movie Maker

Start Burning:

• Step 1: Add Files

Launch Sothink HD Movie Maker application program.Before burning Blu-ray movie(s) into Blu-ray Disc, the movie files need to be added in first.

Selecting “Add Files” from File in the Menu or directly clicking button “Add Files” on the Toolbar, a dialog pops up for choosing movie files to the program. You can add more than one movie file at one time.

The movie files added in will be listed in Details mode or Thumbnails mode. If you want to delete some files, just select the movie and click button “Remove”. You may also click button “Move Up” or “Move Down” to change the movies’ burning order.

• Step 2: Set Target Disc

Go to General Settings or Advanced Settings panel and set target disc size:

Click the arrow and select the target disc size from the drop down list. Since it’s to burn Blu-ray movies into Blu-ray disc, here we select the target disc size as “BD-25 (25G)” or “BD-50 (50G)”.

Note: Besides burning Blu-ray movie to Blu-ray Disc, Sothink HD Movie Maker also can convert other various video files to High-definition (HD) Blu-ray movies and burn the movies into common DVD or Blu-ray Disc. The discs supported are DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, BD-R, BD-RE, etc.

If you are interested in those high definition movie formats, you may link to SothinkMedia Glossary page for detailed information.

Besides the target disc size, you may need to do some other setting, like choosing video dimension:

Also under General or Advanced Setting panel, click the arrow below tab Video dimension and select the target video dimension from the drop down list. There are three options: “1280*720″, “1440*1080″ and “1920*1080″. Since all the HD televisions are 1920 x 1080, which is full high definition and is the standard for today’s TV’s, here it recommended to select 1920 x 1080.

If you are advanced users and familiar with video code, you may set more parameters for your Blu-ray Disc under Advanced Setting panel.

For more details, please link to http://www.sothinkmedia.com/hd-movie-maker/help/pages/advanced.html.

• Step 3: Burn Blu-ray Disc

Make sure the checkbox besides the movie files you want to burn is been ticked. If there is none movie ticked, the program prompts when starting burning. When all the checkboxes are ticked, the movie files added in will be burned following the order of the file list.

Select “Burn” from File in the Menu or directly click button “Burn” on the Toolbar, and then it starts burning:

Note: If there is no disc in the drive, it pops up a dialog for prompting and HD Movie Maker automatically creates a folder for saving temporary files.

The burning function requires Windows XP SP2/Windows Vista SP1 or above versions. If the system doesn’t meet the requirement, HD Movie Maker will automatically create a standard folder to store the generated Blu-ray movie.

Sothink HD Movie Maker supports multiple CPUs and multiple core CPUs, and supports concurrent conversion for multiple videos with high speed, so if your computer has multiple CPUs and multiple core CPUs, you may go to Options-Encoding dialog and choose the maximum number of CPU cores to make burning faster.

When the burning is completed, you may enjoy the high-def BD movies with various Blu-ray players, for example, Sony PS3.

Click here to download Sothink HD Movie Maker and try to back up your Blu-ray Disc now >>

What is Blu-ray Disc? Blu-ray Disc (also known as Blu-ray or BD) is an optical disc storage medium designed by Sony to supersede the standard DVD format. Its main uses are high-definition video and data storage up to 50GB per disc.

What formats that Sothink HD Movie Maker can export to? What does BD9 or BD5 mean? What……OK, maybe the video formats that Sothink HD Movie Maker can convert or burn to confuse you. Here are some information listed below, and you will find some clue about the popular high definition BDMV formats:

BD9/BD5 Blu-ray Disc
BD9 and BD5 are lower capacity variants of the Blu-ray Disc that contain Blu-ray Disc compatible video and audio streams contained on a conventional DVD (650 nm wavelength / red laser) optical disc. Such discs offer the use of the same advanced compression technologies available to Blu-ray Discs (including H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2) while using lower cost legacy media. BD9 uses a standard 8152MB DVD9 dual-layer disc while BD5 uses a standard 4482MB DVD5 single-layer disc.

BD9/BD5 discs can be authored using home computers for private showing using standard DVD±R recorders. AACS digital rights management is optional. The BD9/BD5 format was originally proposed by Warner Home Video, as a cost-effective alternative to regular Blu-ray Discs. It was adopted as part of the BD-ROM basic format, file system, and AV specifications. BD9/BD5 is similar to 3× DVD for HD DVDs.

AVCHD
The “AVCHD” is a brand new high definition (HD) digital video camera recorder format recording 1080i*1 and 720p*2 signals onto certain media by using highly efficient codec technologies. The “AVCHD” is jointly established by Panasonic, the brand name for which Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. is known and Sony Corporation.

Mini Blu-ray Disc
The Mini Blu-ray Disc (also, Mini-BD and Mini Blu-ray) is a compact 8 cm (~3in) diameter variant of the Blu-ray Disc that can store approximately 7.5 GB of data. It is similar in concept to the MiniDVD and MiniCD. Recordable (BD-R) and rewritable (BD-RE) versions of Mini Blu-ray Disc have been developed specifically for compact camcorders and other compact recording devices.

Blu-ray Disc recordable
Blu-ray Disc recordable refers to two optical disc formats that can be recorded with an optical disc recorder. BD-R discs can be written to once, whereas BD-RE can be erased and re-recorded multiple times. The theoretical maximum speed for Blu-ray Discs is about 12×. Higher speeds of rotation (10,000+ rpm) cause too much wobble for the discs to be read properly, as with the 20× and 52× respective maximum speeds of standard DVDs and CDs.
Since September 2007, BD-RE was also available in the smaller 8 cm Mini Blu-ray Disc diameter size.
On September 18, 2007, Pioneer and Mitsubishi co-developed BD-R LTH (”Low to High” in groove recording), which features an organic dye recording layer that can be manufactured by modifying existing CD-R and DVD-R production equipment, significantly reducing manufacturing costs.

You may link to SothinkMedia Glossary page to view more detailed information about Blu-ray video formats. And if you would like to know how the Blu-ray video exactly looks like, you may download a Blu-ray video converted and burnt by HD Movie Maker and experience the HD visual enjoyment.

Click here to download and try Sothink HD Movie Maker >>