How much HD material can be put on a regular 4.7 DVD
 

If I were to author a 4.7G DVD from footage captured on the Gr-HD10 (at 720p) how many minutes can that DVD hold?

With the advant of the V Inc HD capable DVD's it would be great to author short DVD's that can be read and transmitted to my HDTV at full resolution...

The DVD is max 4.5 GB, just so you know. If you want to store
it as a DVD-video you are downconverting to 480 and you can
fit as much as normal. If you are making a DVD-data disc it
depends on the bitrate of the file. Easy to calculate. Size / time
is bitrate. Max disc / bitrate = time you can fill.

For Windows Media 9 HD content, 720p30 looks good at around 6Mb/s (it gets even better at 8 or 9Mb/s.) At 6Mb/s you will get about 90 mintues of HD content on today's DVDs. It would seem that DVD with SD material vs HD material fits approximately the same length of time. This is only trus as SD is recorded in it standard MPEG2 format, and HD material will need to be encoded into a newer format like MPEG4 or WM9 for it to fit on standard DVD.

Cool..

But I now have one more question...I read it here before but I can't seem to find it now...I tried searching but no luck...

When you download the m2t files from the camera, what is the data bit rate? How many Gigs per hour? DV stream is about 13 gigs an hour...

Thanks

David posted that the m2t data rate is around 19 megabits per second which equals around 2.375 megabytes per second or roughly 8 gigs an hour. The data rate is lower than DV due to mpeg2 compression. VLC could be used to watch the half hour or so of footage stored as m2t on a 4.5 DVD

Paul, m2t files on DVD confuses the matter a little as those will unlikely ever be played by a standalone DVD player. The new DVD players that decode MPEG4 or WM9 can play HD off and normal (red laser) DVD. This makes storing HD on DVD worth while.

I agree David, I was answering Carlos and his question specifically about the data rate for JVC m2ts. For a 6Mbs wmv you can fit more than 3 times the amount allowing for around 1.5 hours of footage on a 4.5 DVD.

The reason I was asking was not for watching but for archiving the m2t files for future use. I back up all my current DV stream work onto DVD and I can get a 21-23 minute segment per each DVD...I find this method cheaper than hard drive space since my archived stuff will sit for months before I ever use them again...

So if the GR-HD1 data rate is about 8 gigs an hour that means I can archive 30 or so minutes of raw footage per DVD...

Not too shaby...

Actually is only about 3.9GB in a 4.5GB disc.

Zip up the files and you'll get a little extra out of it...there some heavy duty compressors out there that'll give you a little more than others.

Just a thought..if you're in pc, winzip and a mac its stuffit.

murph

Check out this site as you are able to Master a DVD then remaster it in a smaller size.

http://www.metakine.com/products/dvdremaster/

Carlos, it is about the same for .ts files. I can store about 25-30 min of .ts files on a DVD.

Carlos,

Using the bundled software that comes with the camera, I get about 1 hour of video onto a 4.7GB DVD. Their is some overhead for menus and such creating the DVD. I video a lot of HS basketball games and convert them to DVD to share with the coach and parents.

The software that converts the video from the camera to a format destined for the DVD produces a High Quality bitrate (8Mbps), and doesn't give you any other choices. The resulting video on the DVD is great though.

If you want to try some other software, Tmpeg and Tmpeg DVD Author. They are faster, and offer more options but not an NLE. I like the menus that Tmpeg DVD Author generates, and I seem to be able to get more onto a DVD than with ImageMaker DVD.

but that is 480 not 720p.

right, John H. is referring to standard DVD-video mpeg2 resolution. If you want the 720p in a .ts file, you can only store about 20-30 minutes.