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.

H264
 

LOTS of grunt. I downloaded some demo h264 footage when it came out and using my roommates tiBook we could NOT play the footage. too much computing power needed to decode the footage. Granted the compression was amazing. But that doesn't matter if a system can't play it.

So we switched over to my alienware (3ghz P4). :-) my system could play it and still occasionally had small glitches. I'm sure the core 2 duos won't have problems though.

jason

To me good WMV-HD looks fine and will play on many computers at the 720p resolution, so that's an option worth considering in some circumstances. Both WMV and H.264 take too long to encode with today's software-based solutions, and hardware encoders are expensive, so MPEG2-TS may also be useful for quick HD output.

The most practical way to deliver HD projects today is to downsample them to widescreen SD DVDs with high quality encoding, and leave the HD output for another day.

i agree Kevin, with many of todays clients not updating their machines for at least 3 years, 720p is usually the only HD format they can watch...

I agree with your views on the SW encoders.. for todays machines, the speed jsut doesnt cut it, and as time = money, the more time it takes to encide this stuff, the more time it takes us away from our work. So offering this content to clients IMO should be charged accordingly

Am I right in saying WMV cannot be played back on commercial DVD Players?

I also read that Pinnacle Studio (can barely bring myself to say the name!!!!!) has a pseudo HD plug in available that will burn HD onto DVD. From what I can make out, it can just about burn 1hr onto a dual layer disc.

Anybody know what authoring programmes are in the pipeline.

My preferred choice would be Sony DVD Architect.

when I used the pc to do all of my editing I loved DVD architect. it was simple to use, and extremely powerful.

I do know that DVD Studio Pro and iDVD HD have an HD workflow built into the program, but it will only play on a mac computer. It is fairly simple to use at least in iDVD, i havent tinkered in DVDSP yet, but that will be coming soon. I have seen the format used for demonstrating HD to clients, but I have never seen it used as a final delivery method.

I believe that there are several consumer DVD players
that will play WMV, e.g.;
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/1116/wmv_hd_dvd

Nice one Greg! Now....all we need are loads of cheap DVD Players that play everything (therfore not made by any of the Big Brands!). If they are cheap enough, you can factor the price into your deal and give one away as part of the package.

Anybody aware of any other makes of player that can handle WMV?

For Info, if you want to see some WMV Samples go here:-

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...tshowcase.aspx

For those interested

I made it a point to finally put up a WMV-HD 720p example from a wedding footage shot in HDV. Mind you however I purposely ran it thru MB Editors to soften the image abit via various filters.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=81781

Anybody heard any further news on authoring software that will allow us mere mortals with limited means to author blu-ray or HD-DVD?

Pinnalce Studio 10.7 is a mere mortal type program you might want to look at. From their website at www.pinnaclesys.com:

"Powerful new Studio 10.7 update now available Experience Studio 10 today
Download the Studio 10.7 patch and enjoy these great enhancements to your Studio software:

HD DVD Authoring Pack – burn HD DVD-format on standard DVD media discs using standard DVD burners. Play in new HD DVD players (purchase required to activate this feature) "



I haven't tried it because I don't have an HD player, but I do author regular DVD in this program all the time.

Wow Chris, you can actually use Studio 10 these days without it taking a dive into oblivion every 15 minutes?

Most unstable POS I ever used. Maybe it's better than the earlier version of 10 I used but the Studio forums don't seem to indicate much improvement.

My wife and I have used Pinnacle Studio 9 for some photo montage projects and it's worked fine for us.

I know someone on these forums uses Divx HD and includes a player with his wedding package. The players are about $250. A $350 model has wireless networking and can play video from your computer.

Well, even though you may not be able to put HD to DVD yet, at least the HDV footage converted down to SD looks 100 times better, sharper, etc. than recording in SD. HD will be available soon enough to the masses at affordable prices, but until then, you may as well have your current stuff look better than it did while still being ready for the explosion when it does happen.

It's all about the detail, baby!

"HDV footage converted down to SD looks 100 times better, sharper, etc. than recording in SD"

err.. OK, if u think the home video look is schmick... go for it.. lol Persoanlly i DESPISE interlaced footage and of the progressive scan footage ive seen from many producers, over 90% dont know how to shoot it/handle it/edit it effectively...

Dont get me worng, but theres more to "video" than sharpness.. and by "better" that argument has gone on in this and other forums since the advent of HDV, lets not rekindle that fire..

"It's all about the detail, baby! "
hmm.. and motion, and colour, and sound, and edit and finally the compression.. keyword being compression... u might wanna look it up before you start throwing comments like the above around.

I agree, and in fact it actually automatically fits the existing photo to the frame, leaving bars on top or sides. You can adjust from there, but for a quick photo montage, it is great !! Only Friday, I arrived in Oregon with the idea of finishing a 80th BD video I did for my father in law. Family there had additional photos they wanted added to the project - about 45 in all. I had limited time. I started adding them in my Premieire 1.51 project on my lap top, but I was having to resize and crop each one in the project. I scrapped that, and went to the Pinnacle Studio 9 I had on the laptop, dropped the photos into a time line, and they were cropped to fit. Added some music track, and, presto, instant photo montage...

We use a tvix for HDV demo's and it works great, portable and it only cost us $250 versus a $600 blue ray player and or ps3! The tvix box plays everything, xvid and others. I highly recommend it!

We have been delivering last years weddings on Blue Ray. It's been working very well, we charge $100 per copy. It cost us $30 to make one and $750 for the burner!

Rick:

Pinnacle has a pretty good product that is sold world wide to the general public. It is consumer oriented, and certainly, you would expect to see a lot of complaints from the less technically oriented. I have always considered that when I have read the complaints on their forums. You can tell that by the level of expertise exhibited. I also know that Studio will occasionally clash with other programs on board, or will have issues when it is reinstalled over itself, if the "regdele" utility is not used. However, to pan this product is a mistake. 10 Plus provides effective HDV editing, using the Liquid engine. And its simple DVD production element, while it does not afford for extensive creativity, is great for many simple and quick DVD projects.

No HD for me so I can't speak for that end of it. But I was a loyal Studio user from the start and I know more unnecessary tweaks for that silly application than I can count.

But, it's the most elegant and easy interface ever developed in a simple NLE though. And of course it only costs $80 and some consider that a real value.

I'm just glad I gave it up that "mystery-ware" long ago.