Ok, so I have an HD production all ready to go. Now, question is how to present it to the audience?

I was going to play it on my PC. I was thinking perhaps I would use Windows Meida 9 with integrated 5.1. But I don't love the quality and really would like to find something else. I'd much rather use a standard ATSC transport stream. But from Vegas, all I can get is an M2T and an AC3. How do I play these together?

Is there any software out there that will play the M2T and AC3 stream or allow you to multiplex them and then play them? Basically an HD-DVD authoring system, though not specific to any particular piece of hardware. Just a way I can present my movie to an audience using my PC?

Thx.

If I select MainConcept MPEG-2 as the output format I can select various HD
output templates which all include the audio. A good DVD player program
(like a recent version of WinDVD) should play those without any problems.

Most people do seem to think WMVHD is better, quality wise though. But the
movies they are watching with it are no doubt being made by something else
than the encoder from Vegas (not saying that it is bad, haven't tried WMVHD
encoding with Vegas yet).

I should have been more specific - I want to use 5.1 surround sound also. The Main Concept encoder doesn't support 5.1 surround sound.

Yeah the WM9 encoder for Vegas is not great. I also don't know how to use anything other than Vegas to get WM9 with surround sound.

The Microsoft Windows Media encoder might be better. I'm going to try that one.

search the ms website, they have video clip presentations that show you exactly how to encode hd video into wmv9, fields and all... but i'm not sure how the surround sound fits in... the video quality will blow the doors off of anything you can do with mpeg2, tho... no comparison at all.

I tried the encoder. It's good. But it white washes my HDV footage for some reason. I think it's something with the YUV->RGB but I can't figure it out.

Well that must have been a fluke, since it's gone now. And yes, it is definitely the best footage so far. Unfortunately, it took an HOUR to encode 2 and a half minutes on my P4 3.5 Ghz. Gonna have to brihg that down somehow...

Encoding to "small" filesizes takes a LOT of CPU power. The higher the resolution
and the more advanced the algorithm (ie, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, WMVHD etc.)
the longer it will take. Personally I have no real problem with that, here's why:

- I want the best quality

- It is only really irritating when you are testing things out. Just test smaller sections and use that to calculate your final file size. After testing you know what settings work best and you can just use those next time

- If I know it will take long I will have my computer compress a movie overnight while I'm sleeping

I have no idea if the WME can do 5.1 encoding. I checked Vegas and you are
right. You can't select AC3 5.1 with those HD templates. Bummer. I would
try to make it work with WMVHD first. If that doesn't work you basically will
need to encode an AC3 seperately, use a tool like bbTools to de-mux the
HD MPEG-2 stream into its elementary streams (video + audo), and then
use a muxing tools (not sure if bbTools can do this as well) to splice the
video and AC3 audio together.

Not a whole lot of fun indeed...

Yes, Windows Media Encoder supports surround sound - up to 7.1 channels, plus it also supports up to 24 bit, 96 KHz sampling. You have to choose the Windows Media Audio 9 Professional codec to encode surround sound.

WME can do 5.1. You give it 6 wave files.

So, Rob, if I set to a higher bit rate, then it'll take less time to compress, bottom line? Because .5 hours per minute is just too much. I don't have 60 hours to spend rendering this thing!

I'm not sure if bitrate has a real influence on compression times. Number of
passes (in variable bitrate) does however. Some testing might be in order to
determine what influences encoding. What kind of hardware are you running
this under?

P4, 3.5 GHz. About as fast as you can get for a reasonable price. :)

I'm afraid there isn't much you can do about that then. Encoding takes a lot of
time, especially HD encoding. Perhaps upgrade to a dual or quad CPU system?

Well, a couple of things to note though:

- Encoding with Vegas, even in WM9, is MUCH faster
- I am using the "complex" codec. I can try something faster.
- I am using 2-pass VBR.

I mean, for the _final_ edition, I perhaps can go the full monty and spend 60 hours encoding. BUt for my drafts that need to be watchable, this is not an option. But there are other things I can try.

For (editing) drafts why not output to something much simpler like plain DV?
That's what I do. I don't do the final encode until everything is ready.