Going to a Redbox, picked up the Avengers: Endgame disc, the idea of creating my own Blu-ray movie disc became unstoppable.
- I had the source – some videos I recorded for drama class, me doing Hamlet and Mac Beth.
- And I had the passion – I went online and searched for all the knowledge of creating a Blu-ray disc at home.
What’s next? I did it. I created a Blu-ray movie disc myself and play it on my LG TV for my parents, my brothers, and my girlfriend to let them see my excellent performance. They were glad and I was flattered.
Want to learn how? Let me show you. To begin with, you need to prepare something.
What we need to make our own Blu-ray Movies
1. A blank writable Blu-ray disc
To create a Blu-ray disc, go to the local store and get yourself a Blu-ray disc. You may find so two types of discs there, BD-R and BD-RE. How to choose? Let me tell you.
- BD-R (Recordable): You can take it as a one-time disc. After you burn some files to a BD-R disc and pop it out from the drive, you’re not allowed to burn again since it supports one-time burning. But this disc is cheaper than the BD-RE.
- BD-RE (Rewritable): As the name suggests, you can rewrite the files of the discs. If Wikipedia is right, you can rewrite for 1,000 times. And relatively, it’s a bit more expensive than the BD-R one.
For me, I picked up the BD-R since I have no plan of reusing the disc for another creation and it’s cheaper. You can choose BD-RE if you plan to rewrite. Also, pay attention to the tags of 25, 50, and 100 of those Blu-ray discs. Those numbers stand for the capacity of each. Get the one that suits your need.
2. A Blu-ray drive for your computer
To create a Blu-ray disc at home, we will need a computer and a Blu-ray burner connected to your computer. Get one if you don’t have it yet.
3. A Blu-ray creator app on your PC
Since both Windows and Mac don’t have a pre-installed Blu-ray creator program, we have to download one by ourselves. I used the echoshare Blu-ray Creator, a very easy-to-use Blu-ray creator program.
The interface is simple and all the buttons are easy to navigate and understand, so you can master the program for the first time you use it.
What makes me surprised is that this program lets me create a disc menu. I’m available to choose a template from its library, but no, I won’t do that. I will create my own.
So, I added one of my favorite photos as the background image of the menu and then tried to get audio from an opera show. I ended up having a classic menu with mysterious opera singing.
Note:I used an audio recorder program to extract the audio from the opera. If you are interested, you can record desktop audio with OBS on your Windows or Mac machine.
Other than the menu part, the program has done a pretty good job in blu-ray burning.
- I imported 20 more files in different formats (.mov, .mp4, .mkv, .avi, .mp3, .aac, etc), echoshare handled and burnt them all to my disc with exactly the same resolution (HD plus HDR 10) and audio quality (Dolby 5.1).
- The speed is amazing too – 20GB in 5 minutes as I turned on the Hardware Acceleration option.
If you want to try this Blu-ray Creator as I did, you can download it now with the buttons below. And of course, you can try other Blu-ray burners as well.
4. Media files for creation
I think you all have the target files to create your own movie disc, right? Other than the necessary clips, you can also get some extra files like music, subtitles, background image for disc menu, etc.
Get all stuff ready, let’s roll.
Steps to create your own Blu-ray movies
Step 1: Connect the Blu-ray drive to your computer and insert the blank disc into the drive.
Step 2: Launch your Blu-ray creator program (From now on, I will use echoshare Blu-ray Creator as example).
Step 3: Prepare all your files and drag them all to the Blu-ray creator’s interface, loading them up.
Step 4: As the files load up, there’re several things that you can do to modify the movie.
For instance, locate 3 buttons at the top of the interface: Audio Track, Subtitle, Edit;
- Audio Track & Subtitle: Choose them to add or edit your audio and subtitles for the movie;
- Edit: Click it and modify your videos – add filters, change the brightness, hue, contrast, saturation, etc.
Step 5: Finishing those, you can now focus on the most important thing – the menu. Click on the Edit Menu button to proceed.
Not fond of a menu? Tick the No Menu option and move to Step 6.
- To begin with, the program offers you several menu templates in 2 categories: Classic and Festival. That’s not enough and the producers realize that. So, they put an external link for you to access and download more templates. You can find more there.
- Or, you can customize one. Locate the Background Music and Background Picture options on the lower part of the window. Choose your favorite ones. Besides, locate the Menu drop-down list and choose from Frame, Button, and Text. Then, you’re available to decide the formats for buttons, frames, and texts.
Click Save to confirm.
Step 6: Back to the main interface, locate the Target option, and make sure it’s the label of your current active Blu-ray drive.
Then, click Create to start the burning. Wait for a sec or two, your Blu-ray movie disc will be complete as the program notes.
Pop up your disc, start to play it, enjoy.
Ending note:
Hope my experience can help you create your own Blu-ray movie disc. If you find my post helpful, don’t forget to leave a comment below and let me know. By the way, if you find that create your own Blu-ray movie disc is too expensive – a Blu-ray drive and a Blu-ray disc. You can start by creating your movie DVD. Indeed, DVD is less advanced than a Blu-ray disc. But it’s a lot cheaper and you can burn it with your built-in computer disc tray.