[KustMichaels]

Originally Posted by saltman

Please explain the licensing issues of Bluray and how that relates to stealth video recordings that are not for profit. or link me and I'll read it.

That would take a while to explain, I will come back later.

Here is one FAQ, here is another. A quote that is often tossed around is this:

All those authoring houses intending to purchase an “off-rack” tool and engage in simple authoring task only, may opt not to obtain a Commercial Audiovisual Content License.

Which would theoretically allow what we are up to. I do no BR authoring yet and I am no lawyer, all I know is from reading freelance producer webboards. The DVDA (DVD Association) *off the record* says that all puclic documents of the BRDA are not obligatory. Fact is that the BRDA only considers cases where the author owns the material, which is somewhat dubious about stealth recordings.

Another matter is throwing the BR logo on a package, like the guys over at bootlegcoverart.com would do, that can't be legal, I'd say watch out.

Another matter is HDCP and AACS. Afair most if not all HD TV streams have the HDCP flag enabled. I don't know if by burning a BRD the flag gets removed. Fact is that most stand alone player manufacturers respect the HDCP flag to get their products approved. Thankfully HDCP is coming slowly, afair it was 2015 where manufacturers are not longer allowed to produce players with analog = no copy protection signals.

Originally Posted by AAR.oner

note: the only HD footage i work with is recorded to tape, so i've never worked with .m2ts/.mod/.tod/etc, but i thought for sure Sorenson Squeeze could handle what yer tryin to do

Nah, I don't know, I heard only bad things about Squeeze, encoding is average, it costs money and it does not take HV20 streams directly.

Originally Posted by AAR.oner

also, i think Handbrake accepts .m2ts files, but i'm not positive...i've heard that the newest version has an h.264 encoder that is damn good, especially considering its freeware

I love Handbrake for DVD ripping, and I was happy to see HB recognizing the HV20 streams, but no encoding. Forum says it's not a considered feature.

Originally Posted by pawel

I red somewhere that next release of Apple's DVD Studio Pro will include BD. If it is as good as SD version then... eh.. I wish I have a Mac

Rumor said Apple would do that for the last revision but they didn't. I am somewhat dubious Apple wants BR authoring in the hands of their customers, even if the market is there. They are on the BR board, but they did not much to draw attention. Maybe they are still trying to figure the legal situation as we do. Rumor has it Apple is coming in early 2009 with BR burners, but then they need new software, too. It's crazy seeing Apple partnering with RED and talking about HD since 2005, but no real solution for low end users by 2008?

Rumor also says that Apple might even leave the Mac video market to Adobe, but I doubt that. However, Adobe is there with CS3 and CS4 now, but they are not obliged to give customers legal advice.Workflow is FCP -> Compressor -> Encore CS4 -> Toast9+Plugin. I wonder what fidelity can be reached by that for menus for example. People say you can only use Roxio's design templates, and those suck.
I do not own the latter two apps and don't plan to.

Let's also not forget that all the Java code on BR discs right now is alpha-ish beta 0.3 software. I wonder what progress on that front means for us.

I'd love to look at FFmpegX/mencoder which I guess is the highest quality x264 encoding on the Mac right now - and it's free. But that's rocket science I don't have the time for.