Is there any 4k bluray burning software available?

Martin68

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Hi guys, as 4k video is becoming more popular, and cameras and smart phones can now also shoot in 4k, it makes total sense to use this format for best quality filming on your vacation.

I like to edit my videos and burn them to disc.
First it was DVD and now with 1080 hd i use blu-ray to master my home movies.

The logical step is to future proof my videos and shoot in 4k, and be able to play back the video in full 4k resolution from a disc.

I can see that BD-R TL is available with 100gb storage, and you can now also buy burners to support these discs.
So i'm wondering if there is any software available that can master 4k footage onto a BD as 4k format?

I use Nero, but that only supports 1080 as do all the other programs i have tried, but i have yet to find a true 4k burning software.

any advice?
 
It may be time to move away from discs and buy a media player that can play from hard drives. They're cheaper than BDXL and can hold more per disk.
 
This is the very thing i'm trying to avoid, and there are obvious reasons as to why i want to avoid media players and rather use discs.
Hard drive players means putting your eggs all in one basket, I used to have a Panasonic freesat-bluray/hdd recorder, I copied my old camcorder tapes onto the hdd, with the plan of transfering the videos from the hdd onto dvd or bd, but never quite got round to doing the latter, and then the hdd went faulty and the machine is totally useless now, and all my videos i had copied onto it are lost, so just as well i still have the tapes.
For archiving, removable media is the way to go in my opinion, Its also nice to be able to touch the product in its case with a printed insert and send copies to friends, which you can't do with a media player.
Ok a media player is an option if you want to have quick access, but it just does not feel like a final product and can fail totally unexpectedly.

So, anyone? is there a 4k blu-ray mastering software available?
 
Hard drive players means putting your eggs all in one basket, I used to have a Panasonic freesat-bluray/hdd recorder, I copied my old camcorder tapes onto the hdd, with the plan of transfering the videos from the hdd onto dvd or bd, but never quite got round to doing the latter, and then the hdd went faulty and the machine is totally useless now, and all my videos i had copied onto it are lost, so just as well i still have the tapes.

Multiple baskets just means you lose fewer eggs when something goes wrong, if you want to preserve the eggs then you need to create backups.

I rarely burn a disc these days and when I do I often have to throw away one or two DVDs before I get something that'll work because they were bought a few years ago don't work reliably any more. Burnable discs aren't particularly robust.

For archiving, removable media is the way to go in my opinion, Its also nice to be able to touch the product in its case with a printed insert and send copies to friends, which you can't do with a media player.

You can send the file to them, or stick it on a USB stick. Most TVs in recent years will play from a USB stick directly.

So, anyone? is there a 4k blu-ray mastering software available?

You could have a look through the VideoHelp forum software library, they usually have lots of interesting utilities:
Burn (CD,DVD,Blu-ray) Downloads - VideoHelp
 
Burned discs have a shelf life the chemicals in them will degrade over time so they are only going to last so long.

The home movie format for discs such as it was used AVCHD which allowed burning to BD with menus and I believe some reverse engineered Blu-ray menus to make their own too. It doesn't look like this been upgraded to some kind of 4K standard and even if it were what would play it other than a handful of 4K Blu-ray disc players which are a niche item these days as only high end AV people are buying these any more (average people are not).

On top of that what constitutes 4K, certainly not just a disc standard, you can make H.264, H.265/HEVC and VP9 videos in 4K not to mention AV1 in the works designed to replace all of those over the next decade. It would be safer to upload to Youtube these days as private video if you want to safeguard it and that will be turned into VP9 video no matter what.

You could make the video in 4K can burn it to existing Blu-ray discs for piece of mind but it will only play as a digital video file (MP4/MKV) not in a menu/structure in most 4K devices with disc drives I would guess.

Maybe the industry over the coming years will get around to making some kind of 4K AVCHD disc format but it doesn't look like it exists at the moment.
 
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I recently tried playing a Galaxy S7 4k mp4 video file transfered to a USB drive, plugged it into a 4k Panasonic tv and got an error saying that the file is not compatible, yet the same tv had no problem in playing the same usb drive with a 1080 mp4 file shot with the S7.
it makes me wonder what the point of Panasonic was in making a 4k tv that does not play 4k from all of its inputs. the mind boggles!!
 
Just been looking to see whats available as a 4k media player, and it seems that all the brands i found are odd names usually cheap boxes made in China.
I can't find any Sony, Panasonic, Samsung or LG branded media players, which makes me ask why are the main brand manufacturers offering us 4K tv's, 4K cameras, and 4K blu ray players, but don't offer HDD media players if this is the future way to store home shot 4k video ? or am i missing something?
 
Digital file playback is definitely one of Panasonic's weak points they have some of the poorest digital media playback systems at least from my experience.

For 4K digital media playback I would recommend the Nvidia Shield,
* it supports 4K media codecs (H.264, H.265/HEVC and VP9 profile 1 & 2 for Youtube HDR)
* USB ports for playback, wifi network streaming etc
* AndroidTV OS allows installing a variety of different media players, best of the bunch would be Kodi or offshoots like MrMC. Kodi is one of the most robust digital media players available.
* Allows frame rate switching so you can output the display at native hertz like 24, 50 etc
* You can also enable smooth video as an alternative so it matches video to 60Hz output then resamples the audio (done in Kodi settings in expert mode).
* audio bitstreaming etc all that stuff.


As to why they the likes of Samsung or LG don't have digital 4K boxes, well not enough money in it for them, some of it is political so they don't want to support AndroidTV which compounds the fact they lack the software skills to properly maintain such a system, Samsung & Panasonic are notorious for bad software.

Sony on the other hand has embraced AndroidTV so you can run Kodi direct on the TV and not be stuck with the weak half hearted media player effort that ships out of the box on most TV's.

Nvidia on the other hand is a PC company with a long track record in graphics hardware, software development, they are far better suited to making a highly polished 4K box then the old school vendors you mention.
 
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Before I go down the media player route, I'm still wondering if 4k can be burnt and played on a stand alone 4k bluray player as an mp4 file, (like you can make FHD AVCHD discs on standard DVD-R's that play like a bluray on a 1080 bd player) if 4k players can play 4k AVCHD discs, then my problem is solved, but i have yet to buy a 4k player to find out, so if anyone knows which model to buy? also are there any media players that have integrated 4k BD players or vice versa?
 
Yes you can burn a digital 4k video onto a BD-R so long as the player can play the file from discs, but therein lies the problem a lot of consumer electronics companies digital media players vary greatly in compatibility.

Your best bet is to look in the Blu-ray player forum and ask if anyone is able to play 4K digital mp4/mkv media off a BD-R and what specifications does it allow, google searching the model number & manual can help as some of them at least put the media player data in there.

Edit: If your not averse to re-working the video, try using Handbrake to convert the 4K videos you made into something that the Panasonic might play.

After selecting your video scroll down through the presets on the right hand side and under devices you should see Roku 2160p30 4K surround, select that (or 60 version if source video is 60fps) then hit the start button in Handbrake. It may take a while but the video it generates might with a bit of luck play on the Panasonic.
 
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It may be better to move this discussion to the Camcorder Forum, as it will be of interest there - and some folks may already do similar to what you want.

FWIW. Blueray discs are said to be very reliable....but then "our" BD discs are not the same as commercial discs . . . . Using HDD is very reliable, provided it is protected from excess Shock/heat/Elec overload. With the price of HDD falling, it is quite cheap to double-up copies of old Movies,+Stills and audio-recordings, where you own the Copyright.
An external HDD make a lot of sense, too; since it can be hidden somewhere - but NOT in yr loft, which suffers extreme temperatures and if the house burns, so does your Data.
+ A water-proof electrical box might be a cheap starting place, if you can find somewhere to put it....e.g under the garden shed's floor. May be worth protecting that with wire-mesh to deter foxes...

4K is soon to replace HD movie stuff.... although many older folks can't see much difference . . . but that is usually because they have smaller-screens for viewing. If 4K is blown up to 100" the difference will be quite a lot more obvious.... IMHO.
 
I am using UHD CREATOR to burn my 4K camcorder videos, edited in PD14, to 25GB BR discs and they play fine in 4K resolution on my Samsung, my neighbors Sony and Philips UHD players. Similar to TsMuxer, UHD Creator will create 5 min chapters and allow more than one video to be burned. I use IMGburn to burn the UHD CREATOR files to disc.

UHD CREATOR converts my 8bit 4K videos to 10bit 4K, advise use of a GTX1060 or else the conversion will take forever.

All there is at this time, waited 4 years for this, that is when I got a AX100 4K camcorder.
 

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