Stability of homeburnt Blue-ray disc?

My question is will a Blu-ray disc burnt by myself be as stable and reliable as a BD made by a post production company from my quicktime?

BACKGROUND:

I have a 72 min project that is having a VIP screening to 400 people in a cinema. (We do not have the budget to make a DCP so are screening from Blu-ray). I have had a post production company made a BD from my quicktime. It looks fine on domestic equipment but when screened in the large cinema is over saturated.

As the cinema is 10 mins away and the post production house 4 hours away it would be easier for me to do an overall regrade to reduce saturation and make my own Blu-ray using the 'Share' function on FCP7 then burn on my LaCie BD burner via toast (as I have done in the past) test screen it at the cinema and repeat the process till it looks ok.

My question is will my self burnt BD be as reliable and stable as a professionally burnt disc? It would be a disaster to have it stick, or jump ot drop out on the night.

(It does seem odd that BDs burnt by me or the post production house look fine on home projection systems, and flat screen TVs, but are oversaturated in the cinema from a 2k digital projector)

sorry, i cant answer your question.
you say you have made BDs in the past. how did they fare?
if well, can you take your own BD player to the cinema?

but can you adjust the projector?

FWIW, we have run screenings in cinemas from our laptop by playing files out of FCP, through a black magic intensity box,
and into the projector via HDMI


nick

I have been in this situation before and the cinema allowed us a QC session before the screening where they adjusted the projector.

My software:
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One of the problems in adjusting the projector is we are being slotted inbetween the cinema's normal feature presentations so they wouldnt want to recalibrate the projectors. I have burnt BDs successfully, and they look fantastic on my home system - so it's a shame we can't fit 400 people in our lounge room!!! Running off a laptop may be a problem for us to get together at this late stage as I haven't done it before. Thanks for the suggestions

Here's a software to convert your files to DCP. But make sure both the picture and audio are 24p and in sync. Not 23.976. Not 29.97. Also the audio needs a minimum of 3 channels (L,R and C).

[opendcp.org]

And do at least a short test way in advance unless you want people to look blue. You can use your BluRay as a fallback, it better yet, master it to HDCAM or HDCAM SR and play it off a deck. Playing off VTR is more reliable than optical disks or hard disk, although you will still need a bit of time to configure the projector and test it out.



www.strypesinpost.com

Quote
tonyw
My question is will my self burnt BD be as reliable and stable as a professionally burnt disc?

No. Pros at least match the disc brands to the burners, avoiding some of each.
Also it can't be wise to test self burnt discs on the same drive that burnt them, since some deviations can self-cancel.
Consider testing your self burnt BDs on several BD players, if not on the very one that will play it at the screening.
Also consider a certain grotesque test. Put big finger prints all over the disc. If it still plays then its own errors must be well within correctable range. Carefully clean off the finger prints.

Quote
tonyw
...when screened in the large cinema is over saturated...do an overall regrade to reduce saturation

Is it over saturation you're seeing or too high gamma (which includes some oversaturation)? Conceivably the cinema has adopted gamma 2.6 for everything. You might try an overall regrade to lower gamma.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

>Conceivably the cinema has adopted gamma 2.6 for everything.

Some projectors are able to support broadcast color profiles off SDI. So gamma won't be a problem. The BluRay won't look fantastic, because it is a heavily compressed stream. Depending on the source format, HDCAM or HDCAM SR master may be more robust as a mastering format for screening.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks for all those comments. I have taken the easiest way out in the time frame. Went back to my quicktime and reduced saturation, burnt another Blu-ray and tested it at the Cinema (Cinema didn't have time to play whole disc unfortunately) It looked heaps better - and colour was normal. I tested it at home on two different Blu-ray players from the burner and it plays through ok. (The projectionist brought along one of his own Blu-rays and confirmed it looked as bad as my original, so it is obviously in the caligration of the projector). I will now take my latest BD to the post house and they will just duplicate it so at least I have a studio burnt disc. Thanks for all the help and fingers crossed for the screening!