Burning HD / HDV
 

I'm starting the transition from SD to HD, but I wanted to make sure I have a few things understood first. One of the components I still need info on is burning HD. I searched on the forum and only got more confused. My question is this:

How do you burn a disk in HD once it's been shot and edited? I THOUGHT it would be just like all the SD stuff. Apparently, it's not. I'm working on a mac (which I can list the specs if needed), but it just has the CD/DVD burner. How do you go about burning HD? Can you get external burners like you could when DVD burners were new? I'm so confused.

Also, is burning HDV the closer to HD or SD in the process? I'm sorry I'm dumb. Thank you!

You need a blu ray or HD-DVD burner. And player. Else you must watch it on a PC.

DVD Studio Pro let's you burn a HD-DVD with a normal DVD burner, but not all dvd players can read it, if I'm not mistaken. You are also limited to about 30-40 minutes per single layer disc.

Otherwise you'll need a HDDVD burner, as Seun said.
You could also take a Blue Ray burner, but remember: at this moment DVD Studio Pro doesn't let you burn Blue Ray, you should look at Adobe Encore CS3 for that.

Although, I also have to say, this could change... On the 16th of january, Apple announced a meeting with pro FCS-users, nobody knows why. *maybe* they'll announce Blue Ray support in DVD Studio Pro.

googled it ... I can't find any anywhere ... All the results seem to come up with is DVD burners and HDD's. Useless! What am I missing out on. Too many people have HD cameras to not have HD burners.

Indeed, distribution is bit of a problem with this still pretty early days of HD...

A blanc HDDVD or Blue Ray costs pretty much money too, I think something like 10 euros a piece.

So I'm lost now. Are you saying that with all of these people with HD cameras that they can't burn the disks? Much less, if they could, it costs 10 euros? (i don't know exchange rate, but that's a lot i know) Then why have HD cameras?

The authoring/burning processes are very similar, if not somewhat easier. HD-DVD and DVD both use MPEG2 compression. HDV is already MPEG2. Authoring simply requires taking the HDV MPEG2 data and putting it in the right "container". For DVD, these are VOB files. For HD-DVD, the equivalent is the EVOB file.

Two types of HD-DVD exist - Standard Content and Advanced Content. The former is the most common and the word standard has nothing to do with resolution.

Authoring packages do exist as do the burners:

Apple DVD Studio Pro
Ulead Movie Factory Plus
Pinnacle Studio Plus 11
Cyberlink PowerProducer

The first consumer HD-DVD writers have been around since October 2006:

http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/commen...riter-for-pcs/

for about $500 to $600 (US). Although, they seem to be very, very hard to find.

For testing purposes, supposedly you can create test HD-DVD's on DVD-R discs:

http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/sho...&tf=0&pageid=1

So is it common for everyone to have these uncommon burners? Why are they so hard to find if it's something that would be needed? I understand supply and demand, but that's just ridiculous.

some people are burning clips to regular DVDs and playing them back in players that can handle that approach...

The HD-DVD v. Blue Ray looks to be coming to an end, and I'd suspect you'll see an array of burners/players and consumables once the dust settles...

SD DVD's finally look great from HD source material FWIW, it's been adequate IMO. I save the tapes and edit files in case I ever need to go HD. I'm a bit intrigued by the archiving issues with tapeless, but it's clearly the direction we are headed...

These new technologies take some time to get "ready for prime time"!

Well, hold on a second . . .

As someone else noted, HD DVD players will read a standard DVD burned in HD-DVD format. I've been editing in Premiere Pro CS3, exporting to mpeg2 and burning the resulting mpeg2 on Ulead Movie Factory (I know -- it's a toy program, but it supports this function). Because PP CS3 gives me control over the transcode, I just pick a data rate that will result in the appropriate size file to fit a standard DVD. I just finished a 52 minute HDV-sourced project that I burned to a dual-layer standard DVD. The video quality, when played in my HD-DVD player, is terrific.

This can also be done with some, but definitely not all, BluRay players. However, most BluRay will players will playback a high-def mpeg file as a media file. I've just copied mpegs exports from PP CS3 to a standard DVD as a data file and played it in my BluRay player. You do not, of course, get menus or other functions that are in the BluRay spec. I have not, however, had any luck doing this with dual-layer standard DVDs, so I'm limited to around 50 minutes for this approach.

Many, if not most, of Sony's BluRay players will only play BD-ROMs, i.e. commercial glass-mastered BluRay DVDs. They will not play BD-R and BD-RE, meaning that even if you get a BluRay burner and use a program like Encore, which can author BluRay, you may not be able to play the resulting disk. Hopefully, Sony will offer a firmware update in the future, but I wouldn't bet on it -- my guess is that Sony did this because it was concerned with piracy of commercial HD films.

so lets see if I understand this. blu ray just won the war. duplicated blu ray discs do not play on most blu ray players. so if I want to sell an HD version of a video, I need to either have it replicated, rather than duplicating it myself, or I have to continue burning to a standard type dvd-r? I have not yet upgraded to HD, and if I understand you correctly, I am very glad I have not yet done so.

Well, I'm not so sure about that. There still hasn't been an unconditional surrender.

That's my understanding -- or, you can buy an HD-DVD burner (assuming you can find one -- they've been announced, but I haven't located one yet), and burn HD-DVD format HD disks.

You may consult this post to see what players play the discs Roxio DVDit ProHD users are making.

http://forums.support.roxio.com/inde...howtopic=20850

The upshot is that all the Sony players with up-todate firmware play our Blu-Ray creations. The early Samsung players don't (...until they used the chip all the other players use).

All my projects over 50 minutes go on $20 inkjet printable Blu-Rays from Imation. My shorter projects go on DVD single (25min) or double (50min). You do have to keep the bit rate to 20mbps for DVD media (HDV 1080i is 25) but the results still look great.

There is apparently a digital rights management twist in process, such that players introduced after Nov 2007 may need home grown content to be on as yet unavailable BluRay version 2.0 media. You just have to figure we creators will always have to stay out of the way of Hollywood. The added DRM features in BluRay is probably one of the reasons "the war" is going Blu.

Is that right? I just updated the firmware in my BDS-300 last night -- if it will support BD-R, I'll go out and buy a BluRay burner today! :)

The last HD-DVD I did on standard DVD media had, as I recall, a maximum bit rate of 21 mbps, average bit rate of 18 and minimum of 8, and looked (and played) great.

Interesting. I think I bought my BluRay player in October, so it should be okay. This reminds of the flap over the surcharge on cassette tapes and CD-Rs to compensate the record companies, while totally ignoring the fact that many of us create these for our own content.

Yup, the updated BDP-S300 is on that list as playing our projects. The "trick" for DVD media projects on Sony players is to "burn to a volume" (disc folder), then use your burning software to burn a DVD data disc as UDF-2.5 and burn only the BDMV folder, excluding the (empty) CERTIFICATE folder.

I've been burning using this setup since March 12th.