It's coming:

http://www.research.philips.com/InformationCenter/Global/FNewPressRelease.asp?lArticleId=2822&lNodeId=13

Jake

And just when you cough up the cash for your first DVD writer...

Well word is that they might not be availiable for the public for quite sometime. -R version may be out before the +R version also.

Normal dvd writer is still a great buy as you can't get your hands on new stuff for over a year atleast and then it'll be new stuff so tried and tested will be a good thing to have your hands on,

Jake

-R version:

http://www.pioneer.co.jp/press/release125.html

Jake

Interesting to store more of our DV files... But then again,
blue ray might be here sooner with 23 gb

Hmmm I'm sure blu-ray will have a blu-ray price. Over £3000, plus more for media. It took years for dvd to drop in price & authoring drives are still not cheap. I think it'll be a data storage media for awhile.

Jake

Sorry for jumping in here with a "newbie" question, but if I'm understanding this thread correctly... currently, there are no DVD-R's available for home users to burn their own dual layer DVD's but this technology should be coming out soon? And as of now, only professional DVD authoring houses can do it?

I just got DVD studio pro 2 and have a mac with a superdrive so I'm trying to figure out if I can currently make my own DVD's that have over an hour and a half in content without having to compress so much that it looks all pixelated.

Very cool news on the dual layer stuff.

Anyway, I'm wishing for faster DVD-RW support. Most of the
time, I'm just tweaking menus and chapter points, so I'd prefer
less time between edits. Currently, much of my experimentation is limited by DVD write time.

Krishna,

Well your footage will depend on your encoder. Some 'hollywood' movies are encoded at under 3 Mbps avg and look great. The QC is high but I'm just saying. Not all encoders will make your footage look the same with the same settings.

Thats correct, there is no dvd-9 recordables yet but they are coming. New drive will be needed, expect them to cost quite a bit and media to cost more also. Who knows about compatibility....

The way to do it professionally is to specify the layer break when you're authoring. And then write the two layers to DLT. One for each layer. So then you send those two DLTs off to the replication facility. There are many advantages going with pressed discs over recordable media. Having high bitrates is one of those, that goes for dvd-5 through to dvd-18. But anyone with a app that supports dvd-9 can write this kind of project to DLT, dvdsp 2 is one of those apps. It's still a bit buggy so it'd be risk to do a dvd-9 but possible still.

Actually there are ways to do it even if your app doesn't support it :-)

Jake

Jake, thanks for your response. I've tried two different encoders in Final Cut Pro - Compressor and the Quicktime Exporter both at a Two-pass VBR averaging around 5.0 Mbps (max rate of 7.5). My edited video is exactly 3 hours long (it was a cultural show at UCSB my company taped), and I'm splitting it onto two discs, 90 mins each. Neither Compressor nor the QuickTime encoder yeiled an image comparable to the miniDV source video. The colors looked better (less saturated at least) than a VHS copy, but the whole image on the DVD has a "computerized" look where you really notice the pixels.

I know I probably won't be able to make a Hollywood quality DVD with "prosumer" camcorders and computers but I'd be more than satisfied if the DVD looked relatively close to the miniDV the footage was recorded in. I'd hate to have my VHS dubs look better than the DVD.

Do you know of any better encoders for the Mac? Is there some other step in the process I'm missing?

Thanks again. Really appreciate the wealth of knowledge on DVinfo.
Krishna

Well with my experience of Compressor, I lost days playing with the presets, I found that it's not responsive at all. I now only use the presets that it comes with, 2-pass VBR 60/90mins HQ but thats only if I use it. It's ignors the settings anyway so it's just easier to go with those and see what happens!!!

If you make a short sequence, 3 - 5 mins with some of your footage see if you can get anything that you find acceptable. Then if you have time see if you encode at that setting and get the footage on the disc. Compressor produces small files compared to many encoders.

Make sure you run your PCM audio(wav/aif) through A.Pack and that will give you some more space and bandwidth.

Well encoders on the mac can cost. Hardware ones anyway. Depends on your budget. I'd say your best software mac bet would be BitVice http://www.innobits.se I use it over Compressor and there is a demo. A Lite version also but I use the full version so I can't really comment on the Lite version.

Lets us know how you get on,

Jake