New way to distribute Hi def video now possible

[diogen]

You know what they are talking about with the term "Computer farms" don't you? I have that here with Vegas. One computer controls the process and then distributes the rendering on other computers.

Yes, that's the "big boys" computer farms... Today the barier of entry is much lower.
The existing free encoders (VC-1, don't know about x264) can handle up to four CPUs/Cores, i.e. you can have a quadcore Intel/AMD box and reap the benefits of a 4-way computer farm.
Commercial encoders can probably handle more but even this setup makes encoding very reasonable in both, time and expenses required.

...I located a flaw in their information on I and b frame ratios that was just wrong. Once that was fixed they could air the files I was encoding.

With Comcast's agressive plans to increase the number of their hidef channels, they probably will do what Bell did - dramatically increase GOP size (Bell quadrupled it from 15 to 60, 2B-frames).
Helps a lot in compressability and bitrate reduction.

Diogen.

 

[TheForce]

Had some time this afternoon to get down to a real test of this process-

Here's the work flow:

Shot 4 short clips in both DD5.1 and DD2.0 with the SR12.

I used the software that comes with the SR12 to transfer the files from the SR12 hard drive to my hard drive on my XPS1210 laptop drive. Here I have a DVD-R burner as well as Sony Vegas 8 installed.

I was able to load all the *.m2ts clips imported to the Vegas timeline and was quite surprised how well it played live from the timeline in preview mode. Even with some long dissolves and some transition effects the video played well. I added some title graphics and then set out to render. While the render did process a file I can see in the timeline and play fine in Vegas, I haven't yet figured out the work flow and settings to get the 1080p x 1920 file to burn to the DVD. After 3 tries with different settings I gave up and posted some questions and call for help over at AVS. We'll see what I am not doing right with this step.

Meanwhile I decided to use the process of building a DVD-r single layer video authored with a nice graphic menu with chapters from my imported clips. The Sony software that comes with the SR12 allows for a basic menu structure with custom graphics and window buttons and titles similar but cut down like DVDA. But this software is specifically designed to work with the AVCHD files. Not bad for a simple authoring package. It will certainly do until something professional is out.
The burn process was easy and without events. It burned the DVD pretty fast.

So down to the HT and test in first my HD DVD A30. ERROR message, Disk is unreadable. No surprise there. Next I put it into both drives in the XBOX 360 and neither the internal drive nor the HD DVD drive would recognize it.

So folks... What was it you were telling me you've been doing this since before Blu Ray?

One more test. The BD1400 BluRay player. The disk was immediately recognized as an AVCHD and the output was native 1080p x1920. The menu popped up with the windowed buttons and the default text I didn't nother to redo. The navigation on the buttons worked flawlessly and the video quality was, as expected. real life like. The rendering left no visible artifacts and played like any other flawless blu Ray disk.

I am very happy with this as what I expected to do is actually quite easy. With BluRay the winner in the format war, and this process making DVD duplication without the need to spend a fortune on blank media, we're on the way to where I want to be with this. Nice when a plan acutally works out. Too bad on the HD DVD but then again, I never expected it to work.

I want to do some additional testing of capacity in minutes of programming at the FULL HD quality. That limitation needs to be determined. The SR12 has several lessor quality HD settings but I chose to work with the highest one for this test.

Now if I can figure out the settings in Vegas for the render output, I'll be well on the way to making this all happen the way I want.

 

[diogen]

So folks... What was it you were telling me you've been doing this since before Blu Ray?

Careful reading would answer that

Storing hidef content on DVD media is very old. Since satellite/cable started broadcasting in hidef this was doable, using an HTPC as a player.

And you've proven it yourself by playing your result on the XPS.

When talking about playing AVCHD on HD DVD players, I said at least three times it won't...

Diogen.

 

[John Kotches]

Don:

Burning an unsupported format to a DVD, and then saying it doesnt' work isn't what I would consider to be big news.

I have discs from Ron Economos (he works in semiconductor engineering) that are HD-DVD authoring burned on DVD. I have also successfully played back discs authored with Joe Clark's methods and played them fine. I go them from the originator of the thread.

 

[TheForce]

Had some time to do a few tests here with some footage shot with the SR12. The clip was shot through a double window so the quality is not very good. But, I was looking to just credate a rendering and file size comparison between HDV video and AVCHD of the same shot.

Index of /AVCHD

I assembled in Vegas 8 to look for differences. and rendered to a wm9 file so it could be played on a computer without use of the Sony special player codec for AVCHD installed. Comes with the PMB software or included in Vegas 8 Pro. Maybe others too but still it is special.

The cam original clip was 15 sec duration and was also converted to mpg2 HDV format. The SR12 camera and software included will make mpeg 2 files as well as the AVCHD transfer but it will down convert to SD in that process.

The result was with the AVCHD 1080 x 1920 I calculate I can get 34.9 minutes of content to a DVD-r 4.7Gb standard disk with menus.
With HDV video the program length was restricted to 22 minutes before exceeding capacity. Also note that HDV is HDCAM resolution (pixels) which many believe to be HDlite by their own definition.

I rendered a split screen comparison of the two files but as I am in a hotel room with only a laptop I can't see the difference if there is any. For picture detail, I may need to shoot a lab setup with res charts and some lock down as opposed to using a clip on the fly. It did fine for the purpose of this test, however.

This resolves the question of whether I'll have enough capacity for my intended use which is half hour of content at Full High definition quality on a standard compatible with BluRay player dvd-r recorded format.

 

[TheForce]

News from NAB - Sony

At the Sony party tonight they announced that DVD Architecture v 5.0 (4.5 is out now) will fully support the AVCHD media in addition to Blu Ray media.

Plus- for any who have purchased and are registered Sony Vegas 8 + DVDA 4.5 packages, the upgrade will be free to the new version. Expected release date is June and it will be a download based on your serial number registered.

Another feature in DVDA 5.0 is animated buttons.

I also thought I heard them say that people who have the consumer version of Vegas, will get a free downloaded upgrade to a new version that will support AVCHD which is only available in Vegas 8.0 pro now.