Can you put HD and SD on a single layer DVD?
 

I thought it would be easier to offer one dvd that allows the customer to choose in the menu HD or wide screen SD version of the video. This way I don't need to create two separate discs. Naturally I've encoded each and offer a button for HD and SD. And since its only 4 minutes of video there won't be a space issue.

So is a SD Dvd player going reject the disc if it has HD footage on it?

One other question:

Can the audio from the SD version be used in the HD version? Is HD audio different than SD? Does it need to be encoded separately?

a DVD if its authored for video is NOT HD capable. its an SD only format.

there is no way to play HD in a dvd player, so you still can add the file (to view in PC) but there is no need to set a moneu for choosing.

I understand if a person tried to play the HD track wouldn't work in a standard dvd player but would it work if the person had a hd player or does the entire dvd need to be formated in HD?

depends what you mean by HD player.
some like the sony PS3 are able to accept almost anything (even a simple mpeg4 in the root of disc) because they are basically a PC with almost same features.
others like blu-ray players are very finnicky about discs, and even a properly authored Blu-ray disc could not play, so....

Most likely blue-ray kind. If I owned an HD player I could test it out. The reason I was asking was that on my mac, using dvd studio pro, I was allowed to author a dvd menu with an hd and sd track, but of course that still doesn't mean it would work once put into an hd player.

i think you can do it, since most blu-ray players play HD from DVD (if there is a proper BD structure).
since the folder names are differents for DVD and BD, you can probably burn them both to the same disc and pray for your users having a good BD player.
ayway, it cost nothing to try...

Unfortunately, HD discs created by DVD Studio Pro at this point in time are not in the Blu-Ray format, but in the HD-DVD format. So it won't work in a Blu-Ray player, and it won't work in a DVD player either.

Even when it eventually does gain the ability to burn Blu-Ray discs, you still going to have to burn one disc for HD and one for SD. That's just the way the formats work.

While I'm waiting for DVD Studio Pro to add Blu-Ray compatibility, I'm focusing on making my standard definition DVDs look as good as possible. A nicely mastered DVD can look very decent, even on an HDTV.

Also, to elaborate on what someone mentioned above, you can add HD material in the DVD-ROM portion of your DVD. This means you could have a standard definition DVD that plays in a standalone DVD player, but when you insert it in a computer (and maybe PS3/Xbox), you can have an HD file on the disc in any format you want, H.264, MPEG-4, WMV, whatever. But that portion will only play on a computer (or other device that can play that filetype), not a standalone Blu-Ray player.

lol I didn't even think about the blue-ray thing, i get used to on the camera end where HD is only one format (pro-sumers. When I looked closer at Compressor its HD-DVD format not blue-ray.

Correction: Your right it won't work. When I first tried it I imported the ProRes that was captured from the camera into DVD Studio Pro. It must have just converted it to SD without telling me. When I used Compressor to encode it as an HD MPEG-2 it wouldn't import it saying it was incompatible.

I'm really conflicted about HD, I keep leaving it and coming back 6-12 months to see if its do able. I'm now using the ProRes format and works good for editing except if you have to adjust things like a simple white balance forces you to render it before exporting it. In addition down converting it takes a lot of extra time. I think I'm going back to shooting and editing in SD.

Thx for the suggestion about the data file. I don't think I'll go that route because my customers aren't tech savvy enough.