DVD vs. BluRay authoring?
 

When I'm finished capturing all of my family's home videos to digital, I'd like to distribute them in a disk format. I don't own a BluRay burner at this point but don't mind getting a good one.

Question: is there a big difference in difficulty between authoring DVD and BluRay?

I'd like to do BluRay since it can hold more videos, but if it's a huge hassle compare to DVD, I'd rather pass.

DVD menus = easy (and crappy quality), to moderate (slight learning curve, artistic skill is biggest issue)
BDAV menus = PITA

If you go menu-less, both are easy with TMGPEnc Authoring Works ($100).

The BD specs require 15mbit MPEG 720x480.
With SD content, don't try to do H264, you'll just make a mess, and lose quality.

Something I think your not considering is that if you are distributing to family,friends, or anyone for that matter,they need a bluray player to watch your disks if you choose Blu-ray.

Many PCs came with Blu-ray drives, until the manufacturers cheaped out and removed them to save a few $$$$.

Authoring works allows authoring a BD or DVD, and then conversion of the file to the other format fairly seamlessly. Makes it easy to produce both from the same basic projecta as long as you have avoided exotic features in menus. FWIW, you can record HD (AVCHD) to DVD media giving HD playback on most BD players. The main limit is the amount of material (time) you can put on a disc.

My impression is that young people don't do DVD/BD anymore, while older people still like the formats. It is, all in all, easier to used on a TV - nothing new to learn.

If by "crappy" you mean functional, then I'm all for them. A simple, list-menu can' be beaten for access to a bunch of movies/segments/titles/subjects on a DVD.

DVD menus don't have to be Hollywood standard to look uncrappy.

I think it's late for authoring on a disc. Just capture lossless, encode to a good quality bitrate h.264 (manageable for sharing over internet) or a high quality h.264 for flash media sharing and save time and optical media.

These captures are going to family members young and old. Every one of them has a blu-ray player, but not everyone knows how to use a flash drive or search the internet.

I will have the lossless masters on a HDD of course, but I'm doing this so everyone can view them without much difficulty on their +1080p TVs.

For some people, yes, but it all depends on who the customer/client/end consumer is and what they want and/or are able to use. While no one has asked me for a VHS tape in the past 15+ years many people still want a DVD copy, a smaller percentage want a BD copy. (I suspect part of that is many a Joe and Jane Sixpack don't really understand the difference.) It seems to be mainly people under 30, and technology geeks that want long form things (over 15 minutes duration) streamed or on SD or thumb drives. However, that is changing as the 20-somethings become 30 somethings.

Related - a lot of rural America does not have affordable/reliable high speed internet access.

A lot of non-rural America has terrible speeds, especially the uploads. I often have problems getting 720p and 1080p with interruptions and pauses, and I'm not exactly in the sticks. Just not the heart of a major metro anymore. The USA is still a third-world country, in many areas, for internet speeds. Government could fix it, but never does, cowing to lobbyists (mostly the cablecos and telcos), and that truly is an "all parties suck" issue (whereas many issues are one-sided).

I'm always slightly amused by this, and the same goes for the Aussies with Telstra which I believe is similar:

Despite us occasionally being bizarrely Soviet (like our healthcare system) our telecoms were wholly and completely deregulated in the early 90s after years of simply only BT (British Telecom) owning the whole shebang, which I think happens in the US with Bell?

Upshot is mass competition drove costs down and service quality up, my most expensive broadband in one of my offices is around £60 ($80 USD) per month with gigabit service, my home is around £20 ($27 US) a month I think for basic 100mb/s service. Data capped broadband was mostly abolished here before 2010 which still seems to be alive and well in other parts of the world. The other benefit of this is that is knocked on to wholesale, and mobile data is very good value in the UK, I have unlimited (including tethering) 5G data on my mobile phone for around $30US a month.

We do need a $225 US a year licence to use a television though....:mad4: Oh and a tank of petrol/gas for the average family car costs around $120US at the moment so 'swings and roundabouts' jumps to mind.

We have "competition" here too! You can buy the expensive weak base package (only $99! :huh1:), or the overly expensive "premium" package (not f'ing premium whatsoever), from the allowed municipal monopoly that paid the city/county to keep out "riff-raff" (aka other companies, aka actual competition). See, choice! :rolleyes:

100 gigabit is the "premium" package* for "only" $149 (USD).

* Download only, upload is less than 1/10th that speed.
** Measured from max speed at 3am, when almost nobody online, from the node itself.
*** Max speed past the node drops off entirely, actual is about 80 gigabit at best at night.
**** Plus taxes, including fake tax-sounding fees we made up.
***** Plus fees, to pad out your bill by at least 20%

We "deregulated" too. Or so says (complains?) lobbyists and politicians. I call BS.

If $225/year actually guaranteed me some decent channels, take my money. BBC? Yes, please! (Although all that SJW/woke crap is getting annoying, ruined Doctor Who. I wanted scifi, not weekly shaming/PC lectures.)

This is getting a bit OT now, but I think the original post was over some posts ago.

Ours was, for once, wholly and completely deregulated, want to start your own telecoms company? You legally have to be allowed access to the core infrastructure in the UK (at cost, obviously) and be able to put your own equipment in a BT exchange and connect it in to the BT/Openreach system. It was derided at the time, but it's made telecoms especially cheap and of good quality in the UK. Thank you Mrs T. It was one case of solid and complete deregulations working out very, very well for all concerned.

There's growing (palpable) anger at the BBC in the UK at the moment, what started as a few people refusing to may has now created a groundswell of 'non-engagement' with the BBC and television licence is growing exponentially at the moment. The BBC is not popular in the UK at present, and I don't think it will recover in all honesty. As you've pointed out, it's made some curious decisions and it continues to double-down on them, although I've never watched Doctor Who and never will, but it goes much deeper than that. I won't be drawn in to politics here, but all I can say is that I nodded at your remark...

..Imagine what the news service is like! It's now making it's own television film about one of the biggest and sickest scandals in UK modern history. Trouble is that the individual worked for the BBC his whole career and there's considerable evidence that they covered for him, and several other household names in the UK convicted of similar offences.

That's not a wholesome topic though, and I won't post any more about it - but as we've wandered off-topic, it might provide a bit of background to the present feelings toward the BBC in the UK.

Why don't we just have an off-topic thread, if people can natter it might ease a few tensions anyway?

That was the case for a while (thanks a bunch Mr Keating and Mr Howard!) Basically Telstra was privatised without being split into multiple companies and you ended up with one private company controlling virtually all the telco infrastructure. This was fixed fairly recently with the introduction of the NBN putting the infrastructure back into the hands of the government where it should be. Our internet is still shit though because the Liberals decided to scrab Labor's plan of installing fibre into everyone's home, instead opting to buy the ancient copper networks from Telstra for a ridiculous price. It soon became obvious that the copper network was not fit for purpose and we are currently gradually switching over to the fibre system that was proposed in the first place. Massive waste of taxpayer dollars. I've got fibre to the node myself (one of the worst options) Enjoying 25Mb/s downloads and 5Mb/s uploads.