Imation Introduces Dual-Layer 50 GB Blu-ray Discs in India

Imation India Pvt. Ltd. has announced the availability in India of the TDK LoR's (Life on Record) new Blu-ray Discs capable of recording at 4x speed. The four new TDK LoR Blu-ray Discs include the BD-R25 (single-sided, single-layer, 25GB) and BD-R50 (single-sided, dual-layer, 50GB) write-once type discs, as well as the BD-RE25 (single-sided, single-layer, 25GB) and BD-RE50 (single-sided, dual-layer, 50GB) rewritable discs.

The press release said TDK LoR Blu-ray Discs incorporate a recording layer comprised of inorganic material. The discs are further highlighted by TDK LoR's exclusive DURABIS 2 hard coating technology, an ultra-smooth cover layer created through the innovative spin coating method, and a host of other advanced TDK LoR technologies that enable the creation of high-reliability media.

A TDK LoR 4x 25GB Blu-ray Disc can be fully recorded in 22 minutes, and a TDK LoR 4x 50GB Blu-ray Disc can be fully recorded in 45 minutes, cutting the recording time in half in comparison to 2x Blu-ray Disc media.

A recording layer boasting high sensitivity is utilized for compatibility with 4x recording (144Mbps transfer rate). 4x recording reduces recording time by half compared with the previous 2x disc. 4.7GB of data can be copied in less than 5 minutes, which is comparable to a DVD-R recording speed of 16x.

Since the area of the laser spot on the Blu-ray Disc is small (about one-fifth that of the DVD), scratches or dirt on the recording surface can have an especially detrimental effect, causing errors. DURABIS 2 overcomes the issue by offering significantly higher resistance to scratches, and exceptional resistance to dirt and grime (particularly fingerprint smudges).

Previous write-once optical media such as CD-R and DVD-R utilized organic dye for their recording layers. Write-once type BD-R media is based on a completely new concept for the recording material wherein a two-layer structure composed of silicon (Si) and copper alloy (Cu) inorganic materials is utilized. When heated by the recording laser beam, these melt and the Si and Cu alloy become a composite to form recording marks. Because the material is inorganic, it is not affected by light, and offers superior archivability.

Create Your Own Blu-ray Video Discs

If you’re enough of an early adopter to have an HD camcorder as well as an HDTV and a set-top Blu-ray player, you’re probably itching to create high-def discs from your footage and present them on your HDTV.

Sure, you could just plug your camcorder into your TV and press Play, but then you would miss out on all the great HD features that Blu-ray has to offer. I’ll show you how to burn your video onto discs that will run on your Blu-ray player.

For this project, you’ll need a high-def camcorder and a Blu-ray video editing application. Surprisingly, you don’t necessarily need an actual Blu-ray recorder (which can cost upward of Rs 20,000) to do the job. You can burn regular DVD discs in a high-def format—complete with Blu-ray menus—using a standard DVD recorder, though it fits substantially less footage onto a disc.

Of course, if you’re creating an epic saga of your family’s vacation adventures, you’ll want a real Blu-ray burner such as the LG GGW-H20L, which can record more than 4 hours of 1080i video footage from your HD camcorder to a single 50GB disc.

Within your favorite Blu-ray-compatible video editing application, trim and edit your clips, mark your chapters, and customize your disc menu. For high-definition 16:9 discs, size the background art to 1280 by 720 pixels before importing it.

Burning Your Blu-ray Disc: Avoid Missteps
After you’ve finished editing and creating your disc menus, set the recording parameters and burn to disc. This is the tricky part, as it’s the only step of the process where things can go very wrong. First, be sure that all of the needed Blu-ray codecs and plug-ins are installed, and confirm that your Blu-ray drive (if you have one) is attached to your computer. Most Blu-ray software requires separate registration of Blu-ray components, which happens only when you attach a Blu-ray drive and start to author with it.

Next, make certain that your output settings are at the highest quality, and that they match your source video. For example, if your source video is HDV (.m2t), confirm that MPEG-2 1440 by 1080 is chosen as the video format. Similarly, for AVCHD (.mts), choose MPEG-4/H.264 and either 1440 by 1080 or 1920 by 1080, depending on the resolution at which you recorded the video. If you need to mix HDV and AVCHD clips, choose AVCHD and 1440 by 1080 as a common output format.

The purpose of carefully matching your output settings with your source video is to maximize quality while minimizing the need for re-encoding by your video editor—a process that can take many hours. CyberLink PowerDirector has a special “smart rendering” technology that skips encoding of any parts of your video clips that have not been modified. So if all you’ve done is trim the ends of clips, you’ll avoid most production and encoding time. By contrast, Pinnacle Studio 12 does not have equivalent capabilities, so it ended up spending more than 30 minutes saving a BDMV disc image of a tiny 3-minute AVCHD clip, even though I had not modified the video at all. Pinnacle says that smart rendering is not yet implemented in Studio Ultimate for AVCHD files, although it is for HDV.
The settings box will also ask you about your disc format and media. This is where you specify that you want to burn a BDMV, and choose Blu-ray or DVD media for your project. The burn-setup box in Pinnacle Studio has similar options, plus a setting for creating a disc-image folder on your hard drive as well as for burning a disc. This is a great feature, since you can go back and reburn that disc image, without waiting for production and encoding, at any time. You can also use the disc image as a test file, burning it only when you are satisfied that your project is perfect; this approach saves you from cranking out a stack of expensive drink coasters.