Greetings! I want to author HD-DVD video using standard (red laser) DVD-R
disks, which I have heard can be done when played on the new Toshiba HD-DVD
player. What software is capable of doing this? Are there any special
steps to doing this? I also heard that menus don't work with this
arrangement, and the video is limited to 15 to 20 minutes.

My Computer:

Pentium D 830
Windows XP Pro
2 GB DDR2 RAM
Standard DVD +/- R /RW drive/burner (dual layer capable)

Current Software:

Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5
Adobe After Effects 6.5
Adobe Encore 1.5

Camera:

JVC GY-HD100 (normally 720p30, but sometimes 720p24)

Any help and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks much!
Max.

It is really extremely simple, Max. I have been doing it for some time with
excellent results. Ulead VideoStudio 10 Plus comes with the required
"template" and software to totally master an HD-DVD which can be played in
the Toshiba player using standard red 4.7 GB disks. It is true that the
length of the problem will be limited to around 20 minutes, since the 4.7 GB
disk has far less capacity than the newer blue-laser disks used in HD-DVD
and BluRay players. (Many home HDV movies are well suited to a short 20
minutes disk anyway, since the longer home movies tend to put everybody to
sleep!!)

There is a bug in Ulead's software which has a negative effect on menus, but
I imagine they will fix this in an update. Specifically, the end of play of
a particular track does not return back to the menu but instead loops in
some cases. I have only seen this in some disks I have authored and have not
made a real attempt to narrow it down yet.

Much to the credit of Ulead, the HD-DVDs look wonderful and seem to preserve
all of the HDV detail, color saturation, etc. You can also play these disks
incidentally on any Macintosh running Tiger (OSX 10.4) since the Mac DVD
Player software has properly handled HD-DVD format for almost a year now. In
fact, I have been authoring and playing HD-DVDs using Apple software for
nearly a year, and these disks also play on the Toshiba with no issues I can
detect.

None of the other low cost DVD authoring software on the market yet offers
HD-DVD authoring to a red laser DVD that I am aware of. I own and use 9
different authoring suites and Ulead seems to be the only one on the PC for
the moment as far as I know. On the Mac, the only choice is Final Cut Studio
Pro HD.

Hope this helps,

Smarty


"Maxheadspace" <maxheadspace@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:cKSdnRCk-MuNxfPZRVn-pQ@comcast.com...

Thanks for the info, Smarty! One more question, though. Can I produce my
HD video on Premiere Pro, save as a movie (AVI), and then use VideoStudio
10Plus to transcode the AVI and burn it on the disk as HD-DVD, or do I have
to use VideoStudio for the entire production sequence? I already have
productions layered in Premiere Pro, and would hate to have to start all
over again from scratch. Anyway, you pretty much spelled it out for me.

Thanks again!
Max.


"Smarty" <nobody@nobody.com> wrote in message
news:fcCdnQdpXPtX5PPZnZ2dnUVZ_uqdnZ2d@adelphia.com ...

Max,

I am almost certain that the output from Premiere Pro, if saved as an mpeg
file, will come over to VideoStudio ready to be authored. AVI files are not
typically used for moving HD material into or out of Ulead VideoStudio 10,
since the codecs are designed to handle mpeg2 content typically arising from
HDV camcorders. If you let Premiere do the transcoding / rendering of your
production sequence and then import this rendered mpeg file to VS10, all
should work fine.

Incidentally, I believe that the trial version of VS10 has all the
functionality working, so you should be able to try the experiment with no
cost / no risk.

Good luck!

Smarty


"Maxheadspace" <maxheadspace@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:8_-dnQxYhpfyu_LZRVn-jQ@comcast.com...

Do you actually have the HDV codec/plug-in for Premiere Pro? If not, then
you may want to get it.

"Maxheadspace" <maxheadspace@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:8_-dnQxYhpfyu_LZRVn-jQ@comcast.com...

"Smarty" <nobody@nobody.com> wrote in message
news:fcCdnQdpXPtX5PPZnZ2dnUVZ_uqdnZ2d@adelphia.com ...
Ulead's $50 Movie Factory 5 writes Blu Ray and HD DVD formats.

"Smarty" wrote:
A few questions:

1) Can you author an HD-DVD iso/disc with this method (that will play on
the Toshiba player) using non-HD source content (D1, Half D1 or CIF
resolution) and H.264/AVC encoding? I would love to be able to take
advangtage of the better compression codec on NTSC material to pack more
content onto an existing red-laser disc.

2) Is there any kind of theoretical or actual cap on the bitrate that the
Toshiba player will support for HD-DVD content on DVD media?

3) Does the HD-DVD (or BD-ROM) specification support author-defined
video resolutions for either MPEG-2 or H.264/AVC? (For instance: 528x480,
which is not currently legal under DVD Video specification, although
some players will play it properly). This would be useful for directly
authoring some MPEG-2 digital cable streams to optical media playback
formats without reencoding to standardized resolutions.

4) Which H.264/AVC encoders will produce compliant bitstreams for the
HD-DVD format? Moonlight/Elecard, CoreAVC, Nero Digital, etc...I'm
familiar with the names but without playback hardware (until now) I had
no reason to experiment...

-SG

Steve,

I will respond to your questions your numbering scheme:

1.There are no provisions for using H.264 in the authoring process that I am
aware of. The HD-DVD disks can either use an 18 MBit/sec "standard" bitrate
or a 25 Mbit/sec high quality bitrate, in both cases using an MPEG2
encoding. Any content in lower rez will (it appears) become transcoded up to
the higher bitrate (with no improvement in image quality).

2.It appears the 25 MBit/sec rate is the Video Studio 10 limit. I am not
sure if there are ways around this. The Toshiba player may, however, play
disks authored at higher rates.

3. I don't know. Perhaps others on this newsgroups know the specific details
of the BD and HD specs on this particular point.

4. I have not used H.264 to author HD-DVD disks, but see the attraction of
doing so when the software is available to author them, particularly on
red-laser disks with limited storage capacity. I would only be (extremely)
concerned that the long GOP mpeg2 HDV content itself would be further
degraded by transcoding into mpeg4/H.264, thereby sacrificing quality for
playing time. If the original HD content came from other (non HDV
compressed) sources, this concern would disappear.

Hope this helps,

Smarty



"Steve G." <steveg@eris.io.com> wrote in message
news:N6-dnZ6OS7WYk-_ZnZ2dnUVZ_tmdnZ2d@io.com...

Just a few Blu-Ray facts:

1. A single Blu-Ray disc can hold 25GB on a single layer BD-R write-once or
BD-RE re-writable disc.

2. Using MPEG-4 AVC and encoding at 12Mbps, a single 25GB BD-R disc will
hold more than 3 hours and 47 minutes of High Definition video along with 3
audio languages using full HD 1920x1080 resolution. Amounts of video time
will vary according to the codec and bitrates used.

3. The Blu-ray Disc supports: MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 video codecs, and
the LPCM, DTS, DTS-HD, Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus audio codecs.

This should give a little perspective on what format/codecs to use for the
Toshiba player in general.




"Smarty" <nobody@nobody.com> wrote in message
news:wsSdnUFsVsZeiO_ZnZ2dnUVZ_tidnZ2d@adelphia.com ...

Smarty <nobody@nobody.com> wrote:
Smarty,

Thanks for the responses. I appreciate you taking the time. In my
particular case one of my immediate interests in AVC isn't to recompress
existing compressed sources, but to use better compression for new A->D
SD captures; so I'm not primarily worried about generational losses.
Any HD content I have are ATSC streams rather than HDV sources and I'm
probably fine with leaving those in their original MPEG-2 format. Thanks
again.

-SG

Glad to help you, Steve.

Smarty



"Steve G." <steveg@eris.io.com> wrote in message
news:RomdnUYdEY-7G-nZnZ2dnUVZ_t2dnZ2d@io.com...