HDV compatible with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD?
by Justin Ferar
on
Sep 5, 2007 at 3:36:39 am
I shoot 720p60. The footage is digitized as Apple Pro Res and edited. Up until this point I have been storing the finished programs as ProRes files on a raid array, but it's filling up as the files are pretty huge. I would love to convert those files back to HDV 720p60 for archiving. I did some tests and they look great.
Would those HDV files be suitable for authoring hi def DVDs? Obviously I don't want to have to re-encode to burn a hi def disc when DVD studio pro finally comes around to fully support HD discs.
Re: HDV compatible with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? by zrb123 on Sep 6, 2007 at 6:29:18 am
Any HD video will have to be encoded for HD DVD or BlueRay DVD, no matter what it was originally shot in.
Personally I would keep it out of the HDV format if you can because of the highly compressed format nature of HDV. Especially if you have added any graphics to the video.
Re: HDV compatible with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? by Nick Righton on Sep 6, 2007 at 7:01:48 pm
Hi there. HDV uses a nearly identical form of MPEG2 compression as HD-DVD. If capture the footage via firewire into Final Cut in it's native HDV format add that footage to the timeline export the timeline as a .mov file with the same presets as the timeline (HDV). Or convert your finalized edit to HDV. Then open DVD Studio Pro change the disc format to HD-DVD. Add the HDM .mov file asset. Very little time will be spent compressing the footage. You can then burn the info to a standard red laser DVD-R (4.7gig) and it will play on any HD-DVD player. The only caveat is storage. You can only fit 25 minutes of footage per DVD-R. If you don't have a lot of effects or layers it is a great way to go and very fast.
Re: HDV compatible with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? by Justin Ferar on Sep 6, 2007 at 11:09:23 pm
Nick, thanks for the reply.
What concerns me about buring HD to DVD-R (DVD5) is the bitrate limitation of DVD-R. If I understand it correctly HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have way more bandwidth to play with (3 times).
Compressor has HD presets for a DVD5 which I am about to try. Do your DVD's look as good as your original HDV footage?
Re: HDV compatible with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? by Nick Righton on Sep 6, 2007 at 11:59:13 pm
The bitrate is not limited by the DVD-R media. HD-DVD data plays at +/- 25Mbps and DVD data is around 7-8Mbps. Because of the higher bandwidth you can only store 25 or so minutes of HD-DVD content on a DVD-R as opposed to the 2 hours of SD content. The HD-DVD players see and play the DVD-R with the HD-DVD content exactly the same as a store bought HD-DVD. So in short, the HDV content looks exactly the same after conformed and burned to HD-DVD on a DVD-R (DVD5). Have fun.
Re: HDV compatible with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? by Justin Ferar on Sep 7, 2007 at 7:06:01 pm
So I did some H.264 tests.
10.3 Mbps - bad video qaulity so didn't burn a disc.
20 Mbps - nice quality but disc stutters in Mac Pro DVD player
15Mbs - good quality but disc still stutters in Mac.
I don't have an HD-DVD player to test but I sure hope they don't choke like they do on the Macs standard DVD player. I'll get down to Best Buy to try it out.
Re: HDV compatible with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? by Justin Ferar on Sep 10, 2007 at 6:10:58 pm
Hey Borjis,
14.1 Mbps at MPEG-2 or H.264?
Also, are you using AC3 adio?
Thanks.
BTW- the stuttering I reported earlier was due to AC3 combined with H.264. I reburned as MPEG-2 at 19 Mbps and it played fine in the mac. I went down to Best Buy and played it on a Toshiba player connected to a Toshiba 1080p model and it really looked like crap for some reason. Looks fine on my computer which doesn't make much sense. Either Toshiba's 1080p scaler really sucks or I'm doing something wrong.
Re: HDV compatible with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? by Borjis on Sep 11, 2007 at 3:53:52 am
14.1 mbps mpeg2 transport stream.
Unfortunately you must mux (multiplex) it with uncompressed audio. If you use AC3 the audio will not playback on a Toshiba player even though AC3 is supported with DVDs and HD-DVD store bought titles.
I have found it best to convert 1080i to 720P to maximize playback time and keep the stuttering down to a minimum since DVD-+R media doesn't have the error correction to go much beyond 14mbps.
Re: HDV compatible with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD? by Nick Righton on Sep 19, 2007 at 7:18:45 pm
I disagree. I use a modified version of the HD-DVD MPEG2 preset in compressor (yielding 13Mbps) along with AC3 audio with no problem at all. I do it every week and play back for hundreds of people on a Toshiba HDA2 HDDVD player to a Panasonic PT-DW5100. It looks and sounds great.
