Levels of Blu-ray Disc Authoring

Emedia by Jan Ozer

Sooner or later, if you’ve been shooting or otherwise producing high-definition video, you’re going to want to create a Blu-ray Disc. At this point, your Blu-ray authoring options range from well under $100 to burn on a desktop recorder or duplicator, to close to $100,000 for a program capable of producing Blu-ray projects that you can have pressed at a replication facility. In this article, I’ll identify the relevant categories of Blu-ray authoring software and identify the features that differentiate programs within each category.

A SHORT BLU-RAY TAXONOMY
Let’s start with a brief Blu-ray taxonomy. At a high level, there are two types of navigational schemes used with Blu-ray Discs: HDMV, which stands for High Definition Movie Mode; and BD-J, or Blu-ray Java. Each spec comes with a certain set of features. For example, HDMV mode includes pop-up menus, picture-in-picture videos, browseable slideshows with background music, button sounds, user changeable subtitle styles and other features. read more...