Ulead MF6-PLUS and HD-DVD
 

Not in stores yet, but can be downloaded if you have broadband and are patient, 550MB.

With the new version, Ulead relieved all of the complication of producing HD-DVD compatible disks on red laser media from HDV video with the inclusion of a HD-DVD burning utility.

Smart rendering eliminates re-encoding of the video so it's fast.

Import, edit, burn.

Even rewritable media like DVD+RW burned with MF6 plays back in the Toshiba HD-DVD players.

Microsoft Vista compatible.

My other notebook bit the dust, not the HDD but the CPU/motherboard itself. It's terrible what that does because even your program backups may not transfer.

For the new notebook, I had to repurchase some software, either because it was registered to the old CPU or because it's not Vista compatible. The big joke around here is, "I'm a Mac...and I'm a PC." As I say that, I'm taping a web cam around my head, Lol...

Anyway, after a few days of downtime, I'm up and running again better than ever with MF6 Plus. Some additional features include Dolby audio support. But the big one again, is the burn utility that saves time and several steps by eliminating the specific need for Nero V7.

I just insert an RW disk into the drive, erased or not, MF6 Plus quickly authors my m2t into the HD-DVD folders, erases the RW disk and burns 1080i HDV video into an HD-DVD player compatible disk in one step fast. Sweet.

Playback from a Toshiba HD-DVD player over HDMI to a 1080p monitor is as good as it gets.

Pinnacle studio 10.7 has been able to do this for quite some time now, including DD5.1 sound. In fact, it was the first editor to be able to burn a hybrid hd dvd straight from the timeline with no other software. And it works flawlessly with double layer disks... Iv'e used both programs, and IMO, pinnacle does it better.

That's good George, glad you like Pinnacle! It's great to have these tools for HD-DVD/Blu-Ray support.

Well... either way you do it, the picture comes out absolutely stunning doesn't it! It sure costs a few extra bucks to set yourself up in the HD world.... but it's well worth it.

I will say that MF6 DOES have blu ray support, which Pinnacle still lacks.

I was just following up on this and making a few comments. It doesn't sound like Pinnacle has been actually doing all this for very long, just since V10.7 from what I can tell. Also the complaint that it is a "bloated mess that re-renders everything" would be an enormous drawback.

MF has been doing the HD-DVD authoring since about mid to late 2006, and it sounds like on several important levels, it's still ahead of Pinnacle for HDV applications.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&#post10206445

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&#post10213004

Yes... this is very much true. I started using MF5 I think it was, to do my hd dvd's. Nobody else had the ability at the time. But back then MF was not capable of actualy burning the hybrid disk. You had to import to Nero, or Roxio. Pinnacle however was the first to put together a COMPLETE one-stop-shop package. You could capture, edit AND burn right from the timeline. Pinnacle was also the first to perfect the double layer disk burning.

And I am not at all sure what you mean by re-renders?? I do my capture/edit with Vegas 7 (better quality than either MF or Pinnacle) then I export to file as M2V/WAV... That is then imported to studio. a 50minute time line takes me about 15 minutes to render and 15 - 20 minutes to burn (depending on the speed I use). At that speed NOTHING is being re-rendered, I can assure you.

I'm not the one saying it re-renders, but the comment is wrong in any case if you are able to author 50 minutes of HDV in 15 minutes. Although the times sound a bit longer than MF6, to be fair I surmise your burn time for DL media is the more significant constraint at 2.4x, versus 8-16x for a single layer.

My observation about MF6, is that it seems to handle the authoring and burning nearly concurrently. I'll have to observe this more closely.

I was viewing rough cuts, therefore putting them on the +RW single layer rewritable media at 4x, and allowing MF6 to handle the erasure of the prior content. It went very quickly, one step beginning to end, a definite timesaver over the previous MF5. But like you, I don't use MF6 for editing, just authoring into the HD-DVD format.

Yeah... I do nothing but double layer disks now (verbatim inkjet printable 2.4x). And the same goes for studio the author/burn is almost concurrent.... well ... not really concurrent, but at least back to back. The one thing I did notice about studio though is that you have to import as m2v/wav. You can import as mpg (for example) but it does not smartrender as fast as with m2v/wav

If I remember from my MF5 days it is much the same as studio... it writes the HVDVD_TS folder THEN you have to export for the burn.... maybe that has changed in MF6 and it's like Nero with a "burn as you go" feature?

It's changed. It's one step, "burn." It goes straight into the authoring and disk preparation at almost the same time, and starts to burn before the authoring is completed, it seems. I'll look into to it more closely next time.

Just to be clear, are you saying the MF6 will author and burn HD-DVD onto a dual layer dvd-r(w)? Why do you have to import as m2v/wav rather than m2t? I've got a number of saved m2t files now and would prefer not to have to lose any quality.

Yes for the dual layer and dvd-r(w).

As to why not m2t? You *may* be able to import m2t directly. I *was* able to do that in MF5 on my other computer before it died. Perhaps MF5 was using a codec already installed by another application on that computer? In any case, my new pc with Vista and MF6 won't import m2t. But that doesn't mean you have to re-encode it with a quality loss. Womble MPEG Video Wizard will transcode the headers without rendering, so you don't lose any quality and hardly any time. For simple editing, I use Womble all the time in lieu of vegas because it's orders of magnitude faster and doesn't re-render the video except around the edit points, i.e. "smart rendering." Not to be a salesman but Womble has very smart and speedy core processing. But in any case, I have not been able to import m2t into MF6 as I could with MF5. I'll just leave it at that.

Edit: Womble has a 30 day free trial, fully functional. I've been using it for years, they have continuously updated the product for free and it is by now, robust and stable, with lots of cool features. It's not your go to application for color correcting or chroma keys but it can't be beat for simple edits, speed, transcoding, lots of audio functionality, and intuitive and non-fussy interface that lets you mix almost anything on the timeline.

Can any of these programs create a disk
(either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) that uses AVCHD or VC1 for the format on the disk?

One other question but will any of the programs support importing a 1080 24p file or 720p 24p file?

Womble can output H264 at 1920x1080 at 8000 kbps, MF6 will accept 24F, neither will encode 1080p24.

I think I gave out some wrong information about Ulead not supporting 24p. I think it might. I wasn't able to test it, but in the custom templates is a selection for progressive frames.

curious as to wether version 5 will do the same with blu-ray projects. export the files and burn to a disc and play on blu-ray players. anyone know? if so, what formats? (720p30, 24?)