Printing onto BD discs

[Roy]

Hi. Seasonal greetings to all. Can anyone tell me if the Epson Stylus Photo R300 will print oK onto BD Inkjet printable Discs.

[Dave Watterson]

I cannot imagine why not! If the discs have the same blank white label side as any other printable discs then that printer should handle it fine.
Or have I missed something?
-Dave

[Geoff Addis]

Yes, I do it all the time.

Geoff

[Michael Slowe]

Yes but Geoff what software do you use to encode for BD? My favourite, BitVice doesn't do this yet. I know I could burn with Toast 10 but what about the encode? I agree that the printing on the disc is exactly the same as for SD provided you use printable surfaces.

[ned c]

I use Toast 9 with the BluRay plug-in on a Mac Pro. It can be set up for "automatic" encoding, which I have used, there are three settings, "good" "better" "best", what this means in bit rate I have no idea but the results are first class at "best". There is also a "custom" setting where the rates can be set up to average, preset at 8 mbps plus variable and maximum with a sliding scle up to 16 mbps; there is a setting for "motion estimation", "good" "better" "best" and a on/off for half PEL, also settings for "reencoding", "filed dominance" and "aspect ratio"; sound can be dolby or PCM with a wide selection of data rates plus on/off "dynamic compression". Obviously encode is to MPEG 4 AVC; I can get about 25 minutes on to a standard DVD. Results? Amazing, I have a 52 " Sony Bravia and the quality is better than some of the HD programs I get via satellite.

I edit in FCP7 and create a QT movie by export from the timeline and then drag the QT file into toast, set up and enjoy my coffee whilst it all happens. I print the face of printable DVDs using the software that came with my Epson Artisan 710, no problems.

All recommended.

ned c

[ned c]

Quick p.s. to the above post. I work in both 1920x1080 and 1440x1080 and Toast happily handles both. I have also transcoded SD files using Toast from PAL to NTSC and created very acceptable DVDs.

ned c

[Geoff Addis]

Michael,

These days I use the Matrox MX02 mini with Max if I'm editing from FCP or Firecoder Blue if I'm on the Edius system. Prior to that I used Toast 10 Platinum on the FCP system. Firecoder Blue is a stand alone hardware solution that goes into a PCIex slot and operates under Windows; you don't need to have Edius as it will accept files produced by other editors. Like the Firecoder Blue hardware, the Matrox MX02 require a free PCIex slot and it may be used with FCP and Premiere on either Windows or Mac's operating system. Both provide encoding to H264 format suitable for BD in slightly better than real time.

Geoff