Slow Burning Movies to Blu-Ray with PE8

Question

For several months, I've been converting a collection of old B & W movies from VHS tape to DVD using PE8. I've been burning to DVD-R and DVD+R DL and the process has gone quite well. To try to increase the number of movies/disc I recently installed an LG WH10LS30 Blu-ray burner in my Dell XPS420. This drive burns 3 AVI movie files(55.7 GB total) plus menus to a DVD+R DL 8X disc in 98 minutes which I find quite acceptable although I have no benchmark by which to judge. Burning a Blu-ray disc has turned out to be a totally different story. I have successfully burned 5 movie files(98.4 GB total) plus menus to a BD-RE 2X disc twice, using the same procedure as with DVD's, and it took about 16 hours each time - far longer than I ever would have expected!
The LG drive doesn't appear to be the culprit as I think the actual burning portion of the process took under an hour. It's the encoding/compiling time that's the killer. Lack of experience leaves me in a quandary as to whether my workflow needs overhauling for Blu-ray or my time expectations are too high(low). Hence I'd really appreciate some advice!
My workflow has been as follows:
(1) Import each movie from VCR through my Sony DV camcorder to PE8 as AVI file, perform basic editing & resave file in AVI form;
(2) Run Disk Cleanup, defrag HDD's, shut down other programs, non-essential processes & services, disable Internet & security software and set PE8 priority to High before proceeding;
(3) Assemble multiple AVI files in PE8 timeline, add menu markers, create menus and burn disc using NTSC DolbyDVD preset for DVD & MPEG2 1440 x 1080i NTSCDolby(for testing) for Blu-ray.
My XPS420 has an Intel duo core E8500 processor @ 3.16 GHz, 4GB RAM, a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 240 video card with latest driver, and two 7200 RPM hard drives, each with its own page file. The 320 GB C drive holds the Vista Home Premium OS and programs. It is 53% full. The 640 GB D drive is dedicated to the video files and is 38% full.

Answer 1

If you're using Premiere Elements to burn our videos to BluRay, Donald, you're making a big mistake.
You've got standard definition movies but you're outputting a hi-def video format (BluRay) so you're essentially telling the program to triple the number of pixels. This won't make your movie look hi-def. It just adds pixels to your standard def (720x480) AVI, which will only results in a fuzzy, blown-out video. This is also why the process is taking so long.
So you're essentially taking two to three times as long to create a fuzzier movie. Which is not a good workflow.
I think I know what you're trying to do. It sounds like you're trying to take advantage of the fact that a BluRay holds over 5 times as much data as a DVD. But that only means you can fit 5 times as many movies on a disc if your video is DVD video. In Premiere Elements, the only option for outputting to a BluRay is a hi-def BluRay file.
Even if you use a third-party program to create the kind of hybrid you're trying to create, it probably won't do you much good. Most disc players wouldn't know what to do with DVD files on a BluRay disc -- so you'd probably only be able to play your disc on a computer.
I recommend keeping it simple. Put DVD video on a DVD and put BluRay video on a BluRay.