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Bluray on Mac Pro

ildondeigiocchi

ildondeigiocchi

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 30, 2007
695
0
Montreal
I am planning on buying a HD camcorder to capture HD videos of vacations. I know this would involve needing to buy an internal Bluray drive for my Mac Pro. I am thinking of buying one of the PATA to SATA adapters on OWC. Will this work or not? Also does Roxio Toast 10 Pro allow me to import video onto my Mac Pro, edit and then burn it because I really don't like the idea of editing HD movies with iMovie since it cuts the resolution by half? Any ideas?
 
Can you please specify the camcorder model so that i can confirm that blueray disk will work in it or not..
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
I am planning on buying a HD camcorder to capture HD videos of vacations. I know this would involve needing to buy an internal Bluray drive for my Mac Pro. I am thinking of buying one of the PATA to SATA adapters on OWC. Will this work or not? Also does Roxio Toast 10 Pro allow me to import video onto my Mac Pro, edit and then burn it because I really don't like the idea of editing HD movies with iMovie since it cuts the resolution by half? Any ideas?
Click to expand...

You'd be better off calling OWC, than asking here or at least going with one of their solutions.
 
Ok so I guess this post needs a little clearing up. I am planning on getting a Sony HDR-XR520V which looks pretty good spec-wise! There's a link at the bottom of the page if you want to check it out. Anyways the Bluray drive I am interested in getting is the Panasonic SW-5584. I would also be getting Roxio Toast 10 Pro. The other thing is I will be getting a Sony DSC-H50 camera to add pictures in the movies I will be making. The thing I would like to know is whether I could edit my movie completely in iMovie 09 and simply burn it in Toast 10 or not? I love the editing capabilities of iMovie 09 and don't really know about those of Toast 10. Also I would like to know where BD-R 8X discs are available. I have read on previous posts that setting up a Bluray drive internally is quite difficult and I would definitely not be willing to disassemble the fans on my Pro which would leave me with the only other option of getting a SATA to PATA adapter. Will this work? I would love to get anyones feedback.:):apple::)

Camcorder: http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665736672


Bluray Drive: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Panasonic/SW5584BKMP/

PATA to SATA adapter
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Diskology/DISKSATA/
 
Before wasting the money on a BluRay burner, you should consider using what you already have. Did you know that if you buy the BluRay plug in for Toast you can burn up to 25 minutes of BluRay HD on a normal DVD disc with any DVD burner? I don't know about you but I don't want to watch a family movie longer then about 10 minutes so that should be plenty. Also consider the cost of media... $10 vs. about .30 cents.

You can edit the movie in iMovie and burn with Toast with no problem.
 
I have a question. If I buy a Bluray 8x drive and buy 4X BD-R discs (the fastest speed available for this format at the moment) will my Bluray drive burn the disc at 8X or 4X speeds?
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
I have a question. If I buy a Bluray 8x drive and buy 4X BD-R discs (the fastest speed available for this format at the moment) will my Bluray drive burn the disc at 8X or 4X speeds?
Click to expand...

It CAN burn at 8X since that burner supports it, but I burn at what it says, 4X or sometimes 2X.
 
scottydawg said:
you can burn up to 25 minutes of BluRay HD on a normal DVD disc
Click to expand...

Sure you can burn BluRay to a regular DVD, but not all BluRay players will play it back. The PS3 is fine with them, but many of the stand alone players are not.
 
Bartman01 said:
Sure you can burn BluRay to a regular DVD, but not all BluRay players will play it back. The PS3 is fine with them, but many of the stand alone players are not.
Click to expand...

Is there anyway to find out what players it doesnt work on? I had bought a couple magnavox nb500mg9 players on black friday.
 
Tallest Skil said:
That makes no sense (it's an hour, by the way). It's in regular DVD format, so if they can play DVDs, they can play these.
Click to expand...

It would be about an hour provided it was a dual-layer DVD.

However, it got me to thinking, because the Blu Ray laser format uses a much smaller beam, could this in fact affect a player's ability to play back hi-def content from a DVD, particularly a standalone player? On a DVD, though smaller amounts of hi-def could certainly fit, would it not be more work for the player since it would have to read off a much larger surface area, yet still maintain the proper frame rate?
 
Lucibelle said:
It would be about an hour provided it was a dual-layer DVD.

However, it got me to thinking, because the Blu Ray laser format uses a much smaller beam, could this in fact affect a player's ability to play back hi-def content from a DVD, particularly a standalone player? On a DVD, though smaller amounts of hi-def could certainly fit, would it not be more work for the player since it would have to read off a much larger surface area, yet still maintain the proper frame rate?
Click to expand...

There aren't any Blu-ray players yet without both lasers in them.

That is, if they want DVD playback, they put both a blue and a red laserhead in the player.
 
If this camcorder records in AVCHD, which i think it does, iMovie will not edit AVCHD natively. It will convert this so you can edit it. You can then burn it to dvd.
 
ildondeigiocchi said:
Ya but I don't want to burn it on a plain DVD, I'm planning to burn the movie onto a BD-R via Toast 10.
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If your project output is less than 9GB you can burn BD-9. It is just using a DVD to produce a BD movie. It won't be playable in a standard DVD player though. This is due to it not being a standard DVD.

Otherwise you would need Toast to burn it to BD-25/50.
 
Tallest Skil said:
There aren't any Blu-ray players yet without both lasers in them.

That is, if they want DVD playback, they put both a blue and a red laserhead in the player.
Click to expand...

Ok, I got you, but what about the red laser's ability to read/process the information quickly enough to successfully play hi-def? Would it not at the very least need to be modified in some way (firmware?) to support this? I mean, that's a pretty big jump in data read per frame. I'm just trying to understand how this could work if the red laser is setup strictly for DVD functionality.
 
diamond.g said:
If your project output is less than 9GB you can burn BD-9. It is just using a DVD to produce a BD movie. It won't be playable in a standard DVD player though. This is due to it not being a standard DVD.

Otherwise you would need Toast to burn it to BD-25/50.
Click to expand...

This is not entirely true. What you are referring to with burning HD material to a DVD is referred to as BD-9 and as previously pointed out, not all BD players can play this as it actually requires specific implementation in player firmware.

Additionally the AVCHD format that is supported for BD-9 is at a lower (and more compressed) bit rate than is capable with Blu-Ray.

It would be more helpful if you guys would provide actual useful info about BLU RAY HARDWARE so that he can get what he needs, versus dumping in his thread about how he really doesn't need Blu-Ray, his Mac is perfect as it is, etc.

Will you guys continue dumping on Blu-Ray when independent and main stream studios start doing all of their post production authoring and pressing on Blu-Ray and have to switch to PC to do it? Mac still perfect just to stroke Jobs ego?
 
I personally like to have hard copies of my audio projects and other irreplaceable files, and the capacity of even single-layer Blu Ray backups appeals to me a great deal. As large and cheap as HDs have become, they are still capable of failing. I have multiple HDs for regular backups, but there always come a point where there are several projects in limbo, and I'd rather not have them cluttering up the drives.

Blu Ray backup would be nice, DVD is ok, but thank GOD I don't have to backup onto CDs anymore! :p
 
If you have a 2008 Mac Pro, about the only company that makes a Blu-ray drive with a PATA interface (as opposed to SATA) is MCE Technologies.

That drive is a direct drop-in because a ribbon cable with an open PATA connector is already present for the second ODD bay. However, this drive is a bit expensive at $399.

Alternatively, you can use any SATA Blu-ray burner with a PATA/IDE to SATA adapter like this one. That would allow you to still connect a SATA Blu-ray burner without the hassle of running a long SATA cable between one of the hidden internal SATA ports on the logic board and the drive.

And FYI, 8x BD-R media is still pretty rare (and expensive). Most of what you'll find is 2x or 4x media. I buy most of my blank media from rima.com. Reasonable prices.
 
Tallest Skil said:
That makes no sense (it's an hour, by the way). It's in regular DVD format, so if they can play DVDs, they can play these.
Click to expand...
If it is 720 or 1080 content burned to the DVD as AVCHD content with the Blu-Ray file structure then it is NOT in regular DVD format and will not play in any DVD player that I am aware of. This type of content is supported by some, but not all players.
 
JohnnyMac1 said:
Is there anyway to find out what players it doesnt work on? I had bought a couple magnavox nb500mg9 players on black friday.
Click to expand...

Only way to tell is to try. If the specs say the player is compatible with AVCHD discs then odds are it will work, but some player that initially had AVCHD support have had it removed in later firmware updates. I know for sure that my PS3 can play them but my Sharp can not.
 
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