Best Delivery Format of HD Tradeshow Video
 

Hey Gang,

I'm not sure the best place for this thread, but since I'm editing with FCP this seems as good (or bad) as any.

Situation:

1) 3 minute tradeshow video that was shot in 1080i
2) They are using a Dell 1920x1080 LCD with component and PC ins at show

Options:

1) Somehow burn a HD-DVD and get them a loaner player for show
2) Export Timeline as a 1080 MP4 or MOV and hope they can play it from a Dell laptop over VGA
3) Burn regular SD-DVD and just let it be.

Assuming we try to play it from a laptop to a VGA (or DVI) input, what delivery format would be easiest for the laptop to deal with? I know it most likely won't be a powerhouse laptop.

I kind of hate the idea of trusting a laptop playing a HD video for 3 days straight. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.
Jeff

If you have the available resources, Blu-Ray works great in this situation. The downside to this is that FCP doesn't do Blu-Ray at this point so you'd have to invest in a second NLE. I had to put together a project similar to the one you're working on and opted to go the Blu-Ray route using Sony Vegas to burn the discs. I fully edited the video in FCP and exported it as an h.264 encoded mov file then brought that into Vegas to burn. It worked for me because I already run two workstations that I'm always bouncing back and forth between and the PC already had Vegas on it. All in all it worked out really well, plus we now have a way to hard copy archive the raw MXF data from our HVX.

A Sony Playstation 3.

Thanks Guys. I'm also a Vegas user (well, more FCP now) but I'm still on Version 7, so no Blu-Ray for me. But David's option makes sense since (I think) PS3 will play H.426 files right off of a regular DVD.

Does it have to be a DVD? Why not just upload an HD file in WMVover the net download and play it with the laptop.

John,

That was my thought when i posted this, but I'm not sure their laptop will be able to handle playing HD files. I have a similar laptop that doesn't play HD-sized MP4 files without dropping frames. Perhaps I can try to encode as WMV and test.

Thanks.
Jeff

Its funny Jeff, I have only been doing this for a year but it seems to me that Windows media 9-11 is much better at web delivery that quicktime when using HD.
Im still learning but feel free to look at what I have up on my site. Most files are put up in both quicktime and wmv
see what you think

http://www.ridgelinevideo.com/videos/

Costco here in San Diego had one Toshiba HD3 HDdvd player left last weekend that I gladly paid 80 dollars for with the HDMI cable. So that could be an option...and of course Toast 9 supports bluray out of FCP

Thanks, I'll check it. My concern is whether or not the laptop they use will be fast enough. For the next show I'm going to make sure they have a better unit.

The easiest and cleanest route is to make a beautiful H.264 mov file. Install Quicktime for Windows on the Dell - the newest version of QT accepts the H.264 codec. In the view tab of QT click the LOOP option... Whalla! Pristine HD.

Lonnie

A DVI port to the dell would be best - if not - borrow somebody's recent model laptop with a DVI out...

Good luck,
Lonnie