My son tried playing a 10Mbps HDV wmv data DVDR (that I sent to him) on his PS3, reporting that it plays, but freezes periodically. Has anyone else tried playing such data DVDRs (either wmv or H264) on a PS3?

Does anyone know where to find the support specs for the PS3 (listing what red laser DVDR formats it will play at what bit rates)?

Russ Snyder

.m2t and DivX HD files on DVD+R to play on PS3
 

I routinely burn .m2t (i.e. HDV) files onto "normal" DVD+R's (i.e. data files) once I've completed editing them in Vegas 7 (as long as they are under about 20 mins long and under about 4.5GB or so, i.e. to get it on a DVD+R, they play beautifully on my 60GB Playstation 3.) These are 25MB/s files of course. In fact I'm watching one right now that I did of our Chinese New Year party at the weekend...it looks stunning on my big HDTV! The video definitely looks better than the "normal" Std Def DVD's I also do for distribrution to family and friends even when played on the very same PS3 with it's upscaling. There is no comparison!

This is also my current solution for archiving some of my projects - and for some others I keep the master, un-edited m2t files on numerous external USB drives ...but these are growing in number at an alarming rate!

Following the recent PS3 firmware update I have also viewed HD DivX files downloaded from www.stage6.com on my editing PC and viewed them the same way via the PS3. Again superb results, no stuttering - very, very smooth and razor sharp.

I quite often stick the files onto a Sandisk 4GB U3 USB stick as well (no pun intended!) and that works flawlessly too, but in that case the file size is limited to 4GB max for the PS3 to recognise the file since it's USB interface uses the FAT32 system. This is a shame as it would be great to hook up one of my 500GB external USB drives and just play HD from that! (they are all NTFS so it won't work that way.) I have several U3's and my model of PS3 has 4 USB slots so it's a rough and ready quick solution sometimes without the need to commit to discs.

Finally, the video file has to be in a folder called 'video' for it to work easily, so I've read (I've not tried it without this yet.)

I've not yet tried HD WMV's.

Hey Russ, supported files for PS3 can be found here:

http://manuals.playstation.net/docum...filetypes.html

And thanks to all for their input and info!

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your input. In fact I do something similar with my source HDV files. I capture them with CapDVHS in three overlapping segments (per source tape), then archive these captured files on three DVD-Rs. I currently preview these archived files or view any resulting edited HDV presentations (also archived to DVD-R as .m2t files) using a JVC SRDVD-100U HD Player, which does a good job, but has some quirks that have never been fixed. (This player is still available, but I think they gave up on the firmware several years ago. Actually, some earlier versions of this firmware work better than the later versions.)

As you suggest, at 25 Mbps, you can only get a little more than 20 minutes of video on to an SL DVDR. That is in fact often quite enough. I don't know about your videos, but, despite the stunning quality of HDV, 20 minutes is often about all my friends and relations can stand.

On the other hand, there are definitely times when I'd like to double or even triple that. (Beyond an hour there is no way I'm going to get anybody to watch!)

It appears that the new formats, wmv9 and mp4 (H264), are efficient enough that one should be able to achieve HDV playing times approaching an hour without compromising quality (on a single SL DVDR). Hence my interest in the capabilities of the PS3 (which I am thinking of buying).

Unfortunately, it appears to me that, unless there is something wrong with the wmv9 DVDR I sent on to my son (which was rendered out of Vegas 6 with a bit rate of something like 10 Mbps and which plays with my JVC player), his PS3 has a problem playing it.

I suppose that several years down the road, we'll all have affordable BD burners in our PCs and affordable BD authoring software to match, and BD media will be $.50 each, but I have to wonder what this will give us that we don't already (almost) have with standard DVDR. (I'm thinking that BD, which apparently has now won the fight with HD DVD, may be more valuable as an archiving and backup medium than as a consumer presentation medium for HDV.

Russ

Thanks, Mark.

wmv and mp4 (H264) are on the list, but there is no information regarding maximum bit rates. Could it be that 10 Mbps is too high for a wmv file input from red laser DVDR?

Russ

I've burned up to 50 Mbps MP4s - once you save them to the PS3s HDD they play fine.

But at what bit rate do they play as red laser data DVDRs?

Russ