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I've been using BD Rebuilder and x264 to backup and remove the garbage (endless copyright notices, trailers, logo screens, etc.) from my purchased BluRays, and

I've been using BD Rebuilder and x264 to backup and remove the garbage (endless copyright notices, trailers, logo screens, etc.) from my purchased BluRays, and it's been doing a great job. I'm amazed by how far I can compress them down and still have an incredible picture quality, even all the way down to DVD-5. Recent builds have even been able to give me this quality with single-pass video encodes, cutting my processing time drastically. Many thanks to the x264 project (and for jdobbs's great BD Rebuilder) for all your impressive work.

jerf 17y ago
One of the quiet secrets of the format war is that most people would have been perfectly content with DVD-9 in conjunction with the new codecs, even for 1080p HD. Videophiles might have noticed a few things on long, action-packed movies, and a new format isn't all bad anyhow (I'd love a BD-burner for some backup stuff that is getting annoying on DVD-5, oh look, DVD-9 media is getting reasonably priced), but the Great and Terrible Need for a new optical format was somewhat oversold. 9GB really is a lot of data.
- WiseWeasel 17y ago
  Well, 25GB BD-R blanks are going for around $2 a pop, so the format is still more expensive per MB than DVD-R. That will hopefully change by the end of this year. If you're only interested in using it for data, and don't care about the convenience of consolidation, you might do well to wait just a bit longer until the blanks and drives come down further in price. That said, I've been getting great use out of my BluRay burner, and it's really done a lot to convince me to switch completely from buying DVD movies to buying BluRay, as I can now make backups and keep them protected.
  - jerf 17y ago
    I am planning on waiting anyhow. (I'll get one with my "next laptop", which is at least a year away most likely, barring accident.) But what I look forward to with BD is being able to back things up in fewer chunks. At the moment, 1 25GB chunk would cover all my highest-priority "critical" data. I'm clocking in at 15GB declared "critical" right now, so, not a DVD anymore, thanks to digital cameras and a baby. I commented on the price of DVD9s because last I had looked (a while ago!) they were about $4 a piece. Now they are only 2-ish, same as your cited price for a 25GB BD, and that's getting down to where I might pay for the convenience.
- MikeCapone 17y ago
  > One of the quiet secrets of the format war is that most people would have been perfectly content with DVD-9 in conjunction with the new codecs, even for 1080p HD. Definitely. And if 1080p isn't required, 720p content would definitely look really good on a DVD-9 if encoded with h.264.

jerf 17y ago

One of the quiet secrets of the format war is that most people would have been perfectly content with DVD-9 in conjunction with the new codecs, even for 1080p HD. Videophiles might have noticed a few things on long, action-packed movies, and a new format isn't all bad anyhow (I'd love a BD-burner for some backup stuff that is getting annoying on DVD-5, oh look, DVD-9 media is getting reasonably priced), but the Great and Terrible Need for a new optical format was somewhat oversold. 9GB really is a lot of data.

WiseWeasel 17y ago
Well, 25GB BD-R blanks are going for around $2 a pop, so the format is still more expensive per MB than DVD-R. That will hopefully change by the end of this year. If you're only interested in using it for data, and don't care about the convenience of consolidation, you might do well to wait just a bit longer until the blanks and drives come down further in price. That said, I've been getting great use out of my BluRay burner, and it's really done a lot to convince me to switch completely from buying DVD movies to buying BluRay, as I can now make backups and keep them protected.
- jerf 17y ago
  I am planning on waiting anyhow. (I'll get one with my "next laptop", which is at least a year away most likely, barring accident.) But what I look forward to with BD is being able to back things up in fewer chunks. At the moment, 1 25GB chunk would cover all my highest-priority "critical" data. I'm clocking in at 15GB declared "critical" right now, so, not a DVD anymore, thanks to digital cameras and a baby. I commented on the price of DVD9s because last I had looked (a while ago!) they were about $4 a piece. Now they are only 2-ish, same as your cited price for a 25GB BD, and that's getting down to where I might pay for the convenience.
MikeCapone 17y ago
> One of the quiet secrets of the format war is that most people would have been perfectly content with DVD-9 in conjunction with the new codecs, even for 1080p HD. Definitely. And if 1080p isn't required, 720p content would definitely look really good on a DVD-9 if encoded with h.264.