Delivering HDV
 

Until Blu-Ray players etc become more commonplace has anyone come up with any alternate ways of delivering full HDV content to couples?

I've seen on E-Bay you can get what look like External Hard Drive enclosures but are actually media players with TV out. I'm unsure as to whether they can actually handle HDV.

This is the kind of thing:-

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Portable-2-5-H...QQcmdZViewItem

If it worked, it would be a nice option to have.

TViX is prolly the best of these types of units..

http://www.tvix.co.kr/eng/Products/HDM5000U.aspx

You mean this?

Wow - that looks like a trash can. Only a seriously impaired industrial designer would have come up with something like that.

right now, the only viable method of HDV delivery is with WMV9. This requires, of course, a DVD player capable of playing WMV9. There are a few on the market, such as the Avel Linkpayer2. Note that with these non-standard DVD formats, there are no menus.

I had one customer who brought me an external hard drive and I copied the HDV version of their wedding video onto that, for computer-based playback.

Would you not all agree then that we are in a crazy situation? High Def cams have been around for a doo long while now and we can't deliver their true potential unless we shell out big bucks for a Blu-Ray Burner and our client does likewise for a Blu-Ray Player. Even then, what do we use to author our discs????????? We seem to got the cart before the horse in a big way do we not?

Alastair, you can't seriously be expecting that every part of the HD technology chain would become available, and mature, simultaneously?

WMV-HD 720P. I have been giving this as an option to clients this past summer and they are both blown away and in love with the quality that this format presents. I only use the lowest 720P setting (5mbs VBR) and am able to fit 2 hours of footage on a single layer DVD.

Considering the market penetration of windows, and that a 400$+ PC can play this format, not to mention the typical resolution of entry level 17-19" monitors is 1280x1024 (1:1 mapping for 720P) I can't see why any HDV videographer (not just weddings) is not offering this, frankly I am shocked that every videographer that I have met is either scared of this format and/or thinks HDV is unnecessary since they are solely relying upon BD/HD-DVD for HD Delivery.

Granted, I am lucky tho as my clients are largely tech savvy and @ the very least do hook up their widescreen laptops to thier plasmsa/lcd on occasion which fully exploits this delivery format. If they arent tech savvy, I take a quick look @ their computer and do my best to see if this format is suitable, if not then no biggie.

I do archive the M2t back to tape for Blue-Ray/HD-DVD re-delivery (a la geroge lucas) which I predict to be affordable for us guys 2 years from now. I don't see the excitment of delivery on Blue-Ray/HD-DVD just yet, I mean nobody I know has either player.

Micheal, could you explain further how this WMV-HD720P can be delivered? I'm using Vegas 7 with an FX1 and I have no idea how it could be done.

Early Blu-Ray customers a few months away
 

As I discuss in the post below, the earliest Blu-Ray players (Samsung BDP1000 and Sony BDP-S1 at least) will not play user created content written to the BDAV folder. Player updates in early '07 or second generation players in summer '07 will be required.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=75505

I'm thinking about delivering Quicktime H264 files. What's your opinion? Do you think WMV 9 is better?

h.264 blows wmv away, but its a codec which requires much more grunt.
IMO colour rendition of h264 (and divx for taht matter) is much more accurate than WMV..

H264 isdefinately better then WMVHD, but I considering the fact that H264 rendering time is considererably more then WMVHD it would not be even remotely practical for me to encode 2 hours worth of footage per job in H264.

Not to mention that everyone has Windows Media Player on their computer. I do not want to have to help each client potentailly install the latest version of Quicktime &/or have to explain H264 to them, I just want to simply take advantage of the format/player that would already have the greatest market penetration already.

Agreed 100%. Ugh ive been ridiculously lazy in posting up my recent stuffs (well no longer that recent) going to get my a$$ down to doing so by the weekend!

Absolutely! From an advertising/sales point of view how much easier does it make it to sell your product if you have/dont have the ability to deliver the end product. I think it's called planning:)

Would you rush to buy a car if the wheels were not scheduled for release 6 months later. Hey....I have the latest/greatest car....yeah....but, does it go?

Don't get me wrong, I am about to jump onto the HD bandwagon to and have HDV logos on my stuff to impress those that feel the need to be impressed, even though I can't truly/easily deliver them full HDV yet.

MICHAEL-Thanks, WMV-HD 720P sounds like an interesting stop gap.