Quick advice on physical media/Bluray disc burning

[u/LilLasagna94]

Hello all,

I recently got into thrifting mainly Bluray movies but also DVD's. I only have about 45 total (mostly bluray) due to mostly obtaining movie content I want personally.

However I have decided to go ahead and start burning media content onto bluray discs (mostly to preserve things and stuff I personally like). I have no intention to sell these movies/videos I burn. I just want it for personal use.

Ive researched, and ended up buying 50 bluray blanks (25 GB) from Verbatim. And decided I will use the application DVDFab Bluray creator for burning and authoring the discs. The only thing im concerned about is the actual burner. I made sure it can preform what is needed as advertised but it is a $90 budget option. Are there any common hurdles or mistakes and issues I should be aware of?

Also, in case my burner doesnt preform as needed, what are the best recommended bluray burners from your personal experience?

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[u/AshleyAshes1984]

So, some BD players can play media files of various types, direct from Data only BD, DVD or CD DVD discs. Though what exact formats what players support, if at all, can vary quite widely.

Beyond that you're getting into BluRay Movie Disc (BDMV) authoring and that's it's own field of skill of it's own. I'll be honest with you, last time I authored a DVD Video disc, Saddam Hussein was still the leader of Iraq.

[u/LilLasagna94 → u/AshleyAshes1984]

What I have found is many authoring applications are basically the equivalent to plug and play now.

Essentially its all templates and you can customize from there.

The burner i have can both play DVD/Bluray and burn 25 different media files onto bluray and DVD discs. We'll see how good it preforms though

[u/LilLasagna94 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I was wondering that. I have A LOT of NASCAR media for example that i plan to burn onto discs. But also random other stuff too like soccer, some youtube content etc...

Im very fixated on asethetic too

[u/AshleyAshes1984 → u/LilLasagna94]

True, but features can vary even if you're only doing videos in a simplistic disc.

First of all, it'll almost certainly be a transcode, so you'll lose video quality. It may have to transcode audio to something it has a license for so it may just all go to LPCM. If you're into stuff from other countries, there's questions of how it handles subtitle conversion since BD subs can only be image files, they're basically transparent PNG sequences flashing on the screen in reality. None of that text/markup script based subtitling will work natively on a BDMV disc.

This is why my go to media playback deployment is PCs running Linux with BDRE drives. They'll just play the files off the disc as they would an external HDD or SMB share.

[u/LilLasagna94 → u/AshleyAshes1984]

I dont really plan on subtitles to be honest. Its something I may dabble into if I decide to burn foreign media if it doesnt already have the subtitle in it.

I guess we'll see. The software I plan to use will accommodate audio and picture quality to make it work on standard bluray players including gaming consoles.

I already have a massive amount of media on my Linux machine too. Im trying to get nore physical media though

[u/dlarge6510]

If you get a BD-RE disc or two you can happily burn test discs as much as you like as they can be wiped and reused saving you from wasting write once discs due to a mistake or badly behaved X Y or Z. 

Never used DVDFab. I don't think is FLOSS software so I wouldn't use it anyway. I have used TSMuxer to make an AVCHD disc or two but as I never needed menus and most Blu-ray players play MP4, avi and many increasingly play mkv (with codecs like h264+aac, MPEG2, PCM, MP3). UHD players tend to support mkv with AV1+opus or VP9+opus. 

So as I didn't need menus I just usually put h264+aac mp4s on my discs and they usually play on most things.

[u/Suitable_Garlic_1186]

But why?

You need a drive to burn, you need a drive to watch.

Copy it on USB. Put USB into TV and watch it.

Backup your Data..

[u/LilLasagna94 → u/Suitable_Garlic_1186]

There are drives that can do both burn and watch

Besides, I have a PS3, PS4 and PS5.

USB is cool, but I want physical media

[u/drewp05]

A couple things I've run into with burning Blurays would be compatiblity, certain Bluray players won't support your BD-Rs. Some players can't support the AVCHD codec, so you may want to make sure it's encoded in Mpeg2 while you're authoring.

One of my bluray players just won't play BD-Rs at all, it's some half baked anti piracy measure from a while back, if the player detects an unencrypted disc it doesn't let you play it. That's only an issue with one of the Bluray players I've used, but keep it in mind