DVD Studio Pro 4.1.2 Released (Adds CORRECT HD DVD Support!)
 

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/DVD..._4.1_lbn_z.pdf

This release finally fixes the errors caused when trying to play the Red Lazer HD DVD's in the Toshiba players. XBOX 360 Player works as well! Both formats, .h264 and MPEG-2 will work in both players (I have checked) along with the Dolby Audio that previously didn't.

This is great news for the HD DVD crowd, because this progress shows us that Apple will likely be adding HD DVD Blu Lazer support in the next DVD Studio Pro (I imagine Blu-Ray as well).

Thanks very much for the prompt info, Steve. Talk about great timing! Our local JVC is giving a Pro HD event this coming Tuesday and have asked me to give a talk and show some footage from our upcoming feature. They'll have an HD projector and an HD DVD player at the event. I've been trying to think of alternate high-quality solutions (fruitlessly until now), so this is most welcome news!

I've just done some minimal testing, but I concur that the 4.1.2 update does seem to fix the HD DVD support. I was able to build a DVD-R containing an HDV (1440x1080) video file (with chapter marks), DD audio, and a motion menu with transitions and it played back on a Toshiba XA1. Very nice!

David, you should confirm that the DVD player is a HD-DVD player and not simply the JVC SR-DVD100player. I would suggest NOT authoring a HD-DVD in this case because the SR-DVD100 will not understand the format. Instead, simply output or encode a 720P m2t or WMs9 HD file and burn it to a normal DVD-ROM. This will definitely work on the SR-DVD100 player and should also work just fine on either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.

Thanks, Tim. I'll call him (local JVC rep) on Monday morning to double check. He did say "HD DVD" in his email, but he may well have been thinking "SR-DVD100 player".

And I'll recapture some very short .m2t files of selected clips from the original tapes with DVHSCap, even if it is an HD DVD player (now that you've informed me that it should play .m2t files) because I've already found that the HD DVD compression has introduced slight artifacts into heavy motion areas (when I play the HVDVD_TS folder on the Mac DVD player). I think I'd much rather play camera-original .m2t files on the HD projector. Heaven forbid the audience (with prospective 110/200/250 buyers) might mistakenly attribute HD DVD artifacting to the camera's encoder! (I've just ordered a training DVD which also covers using Compressor for HD DVDs, so I'll later be able to tweak the settings and hopefully be able to eliminate that sort of artifacting - but not before Tuesday.)

My only concern is that these .m2t files are 24p and we are in a PAL area so the players might be 25p/50p, but I'll check that out as well on Monday.

You're a great help as always, Tim.

Hi David,

The SR-DVD100 player will play all flavours of HD mpeg2 TS no matter what country you are in. 720P24, 720P25, 720P30 and even 720P50 and 720P60, as well as 1080i60.

The hardest part right now, if you edited your 720P24 material natively in FCP5.1.2, is exporting it natively without re-encoding. FCP disassembles the m2t stream and converts the audio into 48Khz. From that point on it is in the quicktime wrapper and it needs to be re-assembled into a mpeg2 TS to play on any other format without a generation loss.

The only way I can think of to maintain camera original quality and go back to m2t is to do a "print to tape" and then recapture from that tape using DVHSCAP or HDVxDV.

I wish Apple, Squared5, Focus or somebody would make a simple "in/out" app that would encapsulate m2t camera raw files into Quicktime HDV (without re-encoding the video) and then later take those QT files and convert them back to m2t (without unnecessary re-encoding.)


The other thing you should know about the SR-DVD100 player is that it will play whatever m2t files are on it automatically in alphabetical order. There is a two second long pause between clips. I don't think it is a problem, but use "_" instead of spaces in the filenames just incase. Burn your DVD-R or DVD+r at 1x or 2x speed to ensure no glitches. The player is very sensitive with recordable media.

I never tried to play a raw .m2t file in my HD DVD player...it should work since it is MPEG-2, but if I were you, I would bring all formats with you just to be safe.

Toshiba players will not play the raw .TS files. I wish they would though, it would be a great feature and would immensely help promote HDDVD.

Yes, I emailed Squared5 several months ago requesting the "in" part of your suggestion but unfortunately had no response. Maybe I'll try again.

I haven't even attempted to capture in native HDV 720p24 (after all the hassles and quirks with capturing HDV 720p25, I'd pretty much decided to wait until the probable/possible FCP 6 release at NAB, and then natively recapture only those portions that make it into my refined cut of the movie) but I'm keen to try your suggestion of native editing, print to tape and capture .m2t with DVHSCap. So today I'll try and capture natively the portions of a couple of key scenes I wanted to show.

And Steve, I totally agree with your idea of covering all of the bases. I've nearly finished authoring an HD DVD of the scenes I want to show, then I'll capture some brief .m2t clips off the tapes (it will have the advantage of being "pure" but the disadvantage of not showing the full scene that the clip is a part of) and then I'll follow Tim's suggestion above.

And I'll ask tomorrow if we can get BOTH an SR-DVD100 and HD DVD player. Then I can see them all before the event and get a good basis for comparison. (The projector is supposed to be 1920x1080p.)

Thanks guys.

Thank goodness for Tim!
 

Just an update. After spending the weekend compiling a VERY nice looking HD DVD (much nicer encoding) I rang our JVC rep this morning (Monday) and he couldn't positively confirm that it was an HD DVD player because the courier hadn't delivered it to his offices yet. He called back in the afternoon and confirmed that the player had now arrived and was indeed the SR-DVD100, so I immediately rushed home, pulled out some master tapes, got some quick .m2t clips with DVHSCap and then captured 2 of those same clips through FCP in native HDV 720p24 (as a basis for comparison).

The FCP capture went 100% smoothly (both clips were 40-50 seconds long) so I was VERY encouraged by that. Then I edited them together with some fades to black, titles and dissolves, rendered then Printed to Video. This went great. Then I played back the tape and captured the .m2t through DVHSCap. I burned all of the .m2ts onto a DVD-R at 1X speed (and named all of the clips alphabetically with no spaces in the names).

Then I rushed over to where they were setting up the projector and player (before tomorrow's event) and we did a test and it all worked like a charm! Also, we could not tell the difference between the camera-original .m2t's and the FCP edited footage .m2t's. If Tim hadn't forewarned me and walked me safely through all of the "gotcha's" this could have been a debacle. So thank you for your prediction and thorough advice, Tim!

An on a personal note, I was ecstatic to see just how good the images from this camera (JVC GY-HD101E) really are when projected. You shoot an entire feature but never see any of it projected (which is its eventual outcome) and so you start to wonder, "What have I really got here?" One of the JVC techs looked at the footage and said, "Wow, it looks just like film." I had to agree. Now, that's purely the subjective opinion of a couple of people, but I was considerably buoyed by the whole experience nonetheless.