Does anyone know if it is possible to put High Definition Content on a DVD-R that will play in a standard bluray player, one incompatible with MKV or Divx?

To put it another way, can the Bluray file structure work on a DVD-R?

12/16/2010 10:23:21 AM

Maybe but you'd have to split it up onto multiple DVD-Rs to maintain quality if you want to use the native mpeg-2 format. I think Blurays also use mpeg-4/h.264 so maybe if you just re-encode the video at a much lower bitrate in h.264 then put it in the bluray folder structure it might work.

Or buy a bluray player that supports more formats? MKV is just a wrapper for h.264 so most of them support it anyway. At least I thought they did.

12/16/2010 1:09:12 PM

Most bluray players will read AVCHD high-def footage reworded ( in it's particular folder structure) on a standard DVD. I think you are limited to about 20 mins total playtime. Is this for camera footage or what is the source file?

12/16/2010 3:30:38 PM

You can burn blu ray content on a DVD-R, but you won't get the space available on a blu ray disc (~50GB)

So a short clip on a DVD-R will fit.

12/17/2010 11:53:25 AM

Quote :

"You can burn blu ray content on a DVD-R, but you won't get the space available on a blu ray disc (~50GB)"

really? i wasn't aware of this.

12/17/2010 2:15:55 PM

Yep, you can. I've burned MKV files to a DVD+R and and it worked in my BluRay player. I've also burned DVD+R discs with a BluRay file system and the compressed rips.

12/18/2010 6:42:28 PM

MKV files on a Data DVD-R only work in a select few Bluray players. Mine plays, but two others in my family do not.

12/19/2010 12:44:59 AM

Since MKV is just the container (my favorite container, but that's besides the point) then you might still be able to burn the content to a DVD in a format that will be readable by a standard blu-ray player without re-encoding. That is assuming the audio/video information is of a format that your blu-ray player will be able to play though. The fact that the files won't play on it as they are now only tells you that the player does not support the MKV container format though.

To find out what audio and video encoding is supported by the player, you could probably do a google search based on the model number and find a reference or two. To find out how the contents of a particular MKV file are encoded you can open them in a player like VLC or MPClassic and click file->properties. It should be listed on one of the tabs there depending on the version of the player. If all the formats of the contents are supported then you can go to http://www.matroska.org/downloads/windows.html and download one or more tools to extract the core contents.

Depending on what (if any) file formats your blu-ray player supports this could end up being as simple as extracting the contents and merging them into a different wrapper - with no re-encoding needed. Other wrappers (mp4, mpeg, avi, wmv) may not be compatible with some of the contents of the original MKV. Subtitles, particularly fansubs, are the one of the most likely pieces that will not be able to be saved into some of the other more universally readable container formats as-is. Meta-data is also unlikely to be able to be transferred as-is though it is usually simple enough that most programs can just copy the info into the other format as it's just text (dropping whatever info there is not a corresponding space for).

If your blu-ray player does not support any of the container formats you can re-wrap the content in but does still support the compression formats then this likely means you can use any number of free DVD creation software programs to write that video into standard DVD format. If the content is actually HD though this is less likely to be the case though.

As I said earlier though, the issue is not so much the file extension but how it is encoded. In the case of the DivX encoded files you mentioned they must be re-encoded since your player does not support that codec - so regardless of what container (*.whatever) you put them in it does not matter because the content may as well be nonsense as far as the player is concerned. The same goes for any MKV files where the Audio and/or the Video formats of the actual media contained within is encoded in a non-supported format.

Anyways- find out what the video and audio formats of the files you want to play are and what formats (audio/video and container type) your player can handle first. Post back and you can get more detailed instructions. I say that because depending on how much is required and what the formats are, the number of tools (and compatible tools) and steps required can vary from 2 to... well more than 2.

12/19/2010 4:51:07 AM