I want to convert a Cineform .AVI to a HD MPEG-2 (or HD MPEG-4) format, so I can burn my movie to a Blu Ray disk. Is there a Cineform tool that can do this (eg HDLink)? Or should I use MainConcept to do this (assuming MainConcept handles Cineform .AVI files)?

My original source was HDV 1080i50 and here is my Cineform .AVI file
Video: 1440x1080x16, 25.000fps, 00:00:14;19, Alpha=None, Field Order=Upper field first, Cineform HD Codec 3.11
Audio: 48,000 Hz, 16 bit, Stereo, 00:00:14;19, Uncompressed

Can someone also advise me on what output format should use (for above Cineform .AVI to a Blu Ray format). I assume I want to keep my frame rates, etc, unchanged to minimise the loss of quality during conversion, so I'm thinking HD MPEG-2 1080i50 or HD MPEG-4 1080p25?

You should be able to load the CineForm AVI directly into you BluRay authoring software, and it will transcode it to MPEG2/4 as needed.

David:

Quick question in relation to the Blu-ray question. Have you guys seen any difference in transcoding the Cineform MOVs to the MPEG2 or 4 format or the AVC (or is it ACH??) Do you know what has the best visual quality?

I recently tried the free PS 9 program that will convert files so the Sony PS3 can read the videos. I used it to convert my Cineform files to a format and then loaded it on a jumpdrive and plugged it into the PS3. Worked like a charm. I now have a bunch of HD clips in both 720p and 1080p on my PS3's hardrive, I'm just not sure I am converting them in the best format.

If I use MainConcept for the transcoding, wouldn't I get a better result? After all, MainConcept is a specialist program, so it should do a better quality transcoding job than the BluRay authorising software.

Either way, I would also like some advise on what output format I should use (eg HD MPEG-2 1080i50, HD MPEG-4 1080p25, etc). Any idea?

Thanks in advance.

MPEG2 uses more space for its compression. High bit-rate VC1 or H264.AVC will edge out MPEG2, if the bit=rate is high enough, but it will take many times longer to encode. If you have a short program, 1 hour or less, use MPEG2, for feature lengths use VC1 or 264.

Terry,

Not necessarily, Mainconcept licenses their stuff to many, you may in be use Mainconcept within you authoring tool and not know it. Also I question that MC is the best in this space -- TMPEGEnc is often thought as a better MPEG encoder than MC, but I haven't done any direct comparisons. TMPEGEnc is also licensed to others. There are very few MPEG encoding developers.

Terry, use x264 (h.264/avc) freeware codec.
More info about this codec and compression for BD or HD-DVD you can find on doom9 forums.
Also read this: http://www.nero.com/nero7/enu/AVCHD_Authoring_and_Playback.html
http://www.nero.com/nero7/enu/BD-AV_Authoring_and_Playback.html

If you have a short program, 1 hour or less, use MPEG2, for feature lengths use VC1 or 264.

But if you're planning to use Blu-ray discs to store the content you can fit over two hours of HDV material on a single-layer disc, so there's no need to take the extra time to compress to other formats. This is one of the advantages of Blu-ray over HD-DVD, as the latter is more likely to require long render times to pack a big project onto one disc. This isn't a trivial difference either: in my tests I can generate a rendered HDV file in under two hours per hour of HD timeline, while WMV (VC1) takes many hours to do the same thing.

I use the exact same HDV files to author both HD DVD and Bluray. There is no difference whatsoever in either the encoding time or the playback quality.

What is different is that I can author an HD DVD on a regular DVD+-R (up to 25 minutes on a single layer, 50 on a dual layer). It will play back consistantly on all HD DVD players (so far at least). Production cost is less than a dollar.

Contrast this to the current situation with Bluray: yes you can author Bluray to a regular DVD+-R, but it will only work on a couple of players IF they are updated to the latest firmware. They won't playback properly on the most popular Bluray player, the Playstation 3. If you buy the new $499 Sony BDP-300, it won't play back a burned HD disc even if it is burn on a real Blu-Ray blank. It is (unfortunately) not BD-R compatible.

For watching commercial releases, Blu-Ray vs HD DVD is six of one, half a dozen of the other. Either one looks the same and has plenty of space for a movie and the pointless extras, but for homebrew HD content delivery, HD DVD is way ahead, at least for now.

I use the exact same HDV files to author both HD DVD and Bluray. There is no difference whatsoever in either the encoding time or the playback quality.

Sounds good, but if you're putting HDV files on a standard red-laser DVD you can only fit about 24 minutes on a single-layer disc or 45 minutes on a dual-layer one. That's not nearly enough for many projects, which means you'd have to switch to a more compressed HD format for longer videos - and those formats can take a very long time to render (think days, not hours).

The good thing about Blu-ray is that you fit over two hours of full-bandwidth HDV content on a single-layer disc without resorting to long rendering times or use of finnicky dual-layer discs. That makes Blu-ray the most practical HD delivery format as far as I'm concerned, especially since proper HD-DVD burners are hard to find. If someone wants to pay me to deliver on HD-DVD I'll do it, but I'm about to buy a Blu-ray burner so that's what I'll be recommending to customers.

Most of my projects are small enough to fit on a single layer red laser hd dvd disc. On a double layer, you can get closer to an hour by lowering the bitrate to 18mbps, which still looks very good (I can't see the difference). Then, as we both know, you can get at least twice that (albeit with longer renders) by using an mpeg4 type of encoding. A day or two of encoding (I have a single core P4) vs $20 blanks and a six hundred dollar burner ... I think I'll go with the long render.

As far as HD DVD vs Bluray goes, if there was to be a single winner, it would be Bluray. I'm hoping that eventually dual standard players can be the norm and we'll be free to use both formats. I like being able to burn projects on the cheap discs and this is the only real way this will happen.

A day or two of encoding (I have a single core P4) vs $20 blanks and a six hundred dollar burner ... I think I'll go with the long render.

And I'd rather not wait two days for a render just to realize I need to make a change and do it again. My time and sanity are worth more than the price of a Blu-ray burner, which is down to about $450 now. In another year or two that price should be negligible, and at that point it just depends what kind of players people are buying. If people buy HD-DVD players I'll buy an HD-DVD burner, not mess around trying to pack 90 minutes of HD content onto red-laser discs.

The latest Blu-ray player won't playback BD-R discs! I can't believe Sony has so little respect for the independant film crowd, but apparently that is the case. As far as using real HD DVD-R discs, yeah that is a great idea...when you need that much storage. I really like the idea that for short projects you can use a thirty cent DVD-R, for medium length projects you can use a dual layer DVD-R, and for full length projects you can use either a real HD DVD-R disc, or use mpeg4 disc compression and a single or dual layer DVD-R. Contrast that with the new Sony $450 Bluray player that won't play your hi definition discs no matter what you do!

While Sony and the rest of the Blu-ray camp have written off us indie types, the HD DVD camp is actively pursuing us. Check out the following link:

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/58132.html
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=200100017
http://www.toptechnews.com/news/Microsoft--Amazon-Sign-HD-DVD-Pact/story.xhtml?story_id=002000866FEW

Look, I feel like I have to support both formats. I have both types of players and authoring software for both formats. I am certain that I will end up buying both types of burners as well.

I sure do prefer HD DVD so far though. With HD DVD, I am already there. With Blu-ray, even after buying a $500 plus burner and $20 blanks, I'm still not going to be able to make discs that play on their latest player. I'm still going to be talking on the phone to customers and stepping them through updating their Bluray player firmware. All this was completely avoidable except that Sony couldn't care less about our little slice of the market. What do you expect me to think?

My big issue with Cineform and authoring Bluray is that when I use a Neo HDV 1440 x 1080i master, Roxio DVDit Pro HD mistakenly formats the aspect ratio as 4:3 rather than 16:9. Because of this, I can't use Cineform Neo HDV masters as a source with this program. I have mentioned this on the Roxio forum, but other people say that it works on their systems. I sure can't make it work though.

By the way, I like the idea of BD-R much better than HD DVD-R for backing up projects. 15 or 30 gig is just not enough room for backing up an HDV project. Not when you can have 25 or 50 gig on a BD-R for about the same price. Also, being able to play back raw footage from the backup discs on my PS3 is way cool!

Make sure Roxio knows of this bug -- it is their bug. When you say others are having no problems, are also using NEO HDV, or are they using NEO HD or another intermediate?

You know, I'm not sure. The guy who responded said he was using a 1440 clips, but with AspectHD rather than Neo HDV. Here is the thread:

http://forums.support.roxio.com/index.php?showtopic=22427&hl=cineform

I have found a way around this problem: that is to export as an HDV mpeg from Vegas, then strip the m2t transport off the render using MPEG VCR from Womble.com. It is a round-about way of doing it but it works. I would much rather be able to use the Cineform Neo HDV master directly.

I'm not sure it is a Roxio problem since it seems to work with the Aspect HD version of Cineform. The lack of previewing capability probably is likely a Roxio issue, but the aspect ratio problem, especially if it only exists in the Neo HDV version, is probably on your end.

NEO HDV and Aspect HD use the same codec components. Possibly a version issue. I'll see there have been any other reports.

When Neo HDV first came out, there was a brief period where the aspect ratio was mistakenly played back in WMP as 4:3 rather than 16:9. By the time I reported it, a new revision was out and it was fixed.

Some time later, I ended up reformatting my hard drive and doing a complete reinstall of everything to fix some horrible CPU inefficiency and crashing issues. When I first reinstalled Neo, it was of this first version that was messing up the aspect ratio. I immediately updated it and the problem went away again. Anyway, the point is, that at some point, something that had to do with the aspect ratio WAS changed during the change from Connect HD to Neo HDV, and the problem I'm having now with DVDit Pro HD may be related to that.

I really like the idea that for short projects you can use a thirty cent DVD-R, for medium length projects you can use a dual layer DVD-R, and for full length projects you can use either a real HD DVD-R disc, or use mpeg4 disc compression and a single or dual layer DVD-R. Contrast that with the new Sony $450 Bluray player that won't play your hi definition discs no matter what you do!

Fair enough, except that a single-layer HD-DVD doesn't have enough capacity to hold a 90+ minute video in HDV format. Sure, you could use a dual-layer disc, but that will cost more and be less reliable than single-layer...and dual-layer HD-DVDs aren't yet readily available. For my purposes this is a significant difference between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, since most of my video projects run at least 90-100 minutes in length. And while Blu-ray discs do cost more at $18 each compared to $13 each for HD-DVD, the price per GB is substantially less for the former (69 cents versus 87 cents).

I agree that the option to put HD content on a red-laser disc is a good thing, but it's not enough to make HD-DVD a compelling format. The big point in HD-DVDs favor is the lower price of the players, and if that turns out to be a deciding factor for consumers then I'll make the best of the situation. But Blu-ray fits my workflow and delivery requirements better, so I'd just as soon see it become the favored format - as it is currently doing.

By the way, I'm not too concerned whether a Blu-ray burner can also function as a player, but it's useful to know that could be an issue. For those who do care about this, you should also read up about problems with HD support in most computer video cards due to problems with HDCP implementation. That may not matter for playing back your own work, but if you want to use your computer to watch commercial HD movies make sure you know what you're getting into.

I get 50 minutes of full bandwidth HDV on a dual layer DVD-R. At the same data rate, a 15 gigabyte HDV disc would give you over 80 minutes playback time with 25 mbps HDV mpeg 2 encoding. Dropping the quality down to 18 mbps or so will give you over 90 minutes at excellent quality and, as you said, there's always dual layer discs and mpeg4 encoding. Personally, I don't see that length of project very often. I expect to be able to do most of what I do in the HD DVD format with regular old DVD-Rs.

Also, I expect that both computers and mpeg4 encoders will continue to get faster and I wouldn't be surprised to see most people using mp4 or V1 encodes on both Bluray and HD DVD in the next year or so even if they don't need the space. I do DivX mpeg 4 encodes regularly and they are superfast. There is no reason an mpeg4 encode has to take any longer than an mpeg2 encode. It's just a matter of time before mpeg 4 is quite practical.

You should be able to load the CineForm AVI directly into you BluRay authoring software, and it will transcode it to MPEG2/4 as needed.

Hi David,
When I try loading my Cineform avi files into my HD-DVD burning program (Ulead MovieFactory 6+) it crashes the program every time :( Any Ideas why?
Thanks - PK

Hi David,
When I try loading my Cineform avi files into my HD-DVD burning program (Ulead MovieFactory 6+) it crashes the program every time :( Any Ideas why?
Thanks - PK

That is likely a bug report for ULead. Our codecs are standard Video for Windows or Direct Show components, they work in nearly all PC tools that support one of those interfaces. Although, do file a trouble ticket with CineForm so QA can test this with the Ulead trial.

Laurence, thanks for all the interesting information!

Presently, are there any of the current HDDVD players that you would NOT recommend as being suitable for playing backing red-lazer disks in the way you describe.

Obviously, I'm particularly interested in the cheapest ones...

That is likely a bug report for ULead. Our codecs are standard Video for Windows or Direct Show components, they work in nearly all PC tools that support one of those interfaces. Although, do file a trouble ticket with CineForm so QA can test this with the Ulead trial.

Yes David, you are correct that its not a cineform issue, sorry. It almost seems its something with Vegas (at least my installation of it). When Ulead tries to open my Vegas file, I always get a message "access is unavailable/denied (I can't remember the exact verbage).
I can take the Vegas edited mpeg file and open it up in PPro 1.5, use the Adobe media encoder to make a file to export to Ulead Movie Factory, and it works fine. The only problem is that when I send the file from Vegas to PPro, the sound is way into the clipping range. Obviously I will have to experiment with how much to lower the volume in Vegas before opening in PPro. Have a Great Day David, and Thanks - PK

I use the exact same HDV files to author both HD DVD and Bluray. There is no difference whatsoever in either the encoding time or the playback quality.

What is different is that I can author an HD DVD on a regular DVD+-R (up to 25 minutes on a single layer, 50 on a dual layer). It will play back consistantly on all HD DVD players (so far at least). Production cost is less than a dollar.

Contrast this to the current situation with Bluray: yes you can author Bluray to a regular DVD+-R, but it will only work on a couple of players IF they are updated to the latest firmware. They won't playback properly on the most popular Bluray player, the Playstation 3. If you buy the new $499 Sony BDP-300, it won't play back a burned HD disc even if it is burn on a real Blu-Ray blank. It is (unfortunately) not BD-R compatible.

For watching commercial releases, Blu-Ray vs HD DVD is six of one, half a dozen of the other. Either one looks the same and has plenty of space for a movie and the pointless extras, but for homebrew HD content delivery, HD DVD is way ahead, at least for now.

Well, I am glad I read this because I just purchased the Sony BDP-S300. I can't believe that Sony wouldn't provide support for their own format and their computer blueRay burners. Fortunately I am still within the 30 day return period, so back to BB it goes. Are there ANY BlueRay players that support DVD-R ? Any that support BD-R ? Does PS3 support BD-R? Does anyone know which make/models they are? Thanks - PK

I have the original Panasonic player, and as I understand it, this unit has always played BD-RE from its initial release. Now there is a much cheaper player that may not (the "A" model), per someone on the Roxio site. However, in a following post someone else said it plays BD-RE fine. The difference may be that there were versions of the discs, believe it or not, and the passage in the manual says it won't play "BD-R,RE v1,2."

Here's the thread:

http://forums.support.roxio.com/index.php?showtopic=23715

Tip McPartland

The latest Blu-ray player won't playback BD-R discs!


This is a bit misleading. The Sony BDP-S1 player with since ver 1.55 firmware (March 12th) has played BD-R/RE discs built as BDMV projects. These projects with menus can be produced by DVDit Pro HD, Ulead and other products.

The newest player, the BDP-S300 shipped with firmware identified as 2.0, but apparently was released to manufacturing before BD-R/RE support was worked out. Same story with the European BDP-S1E. I expect Sony to fix this soon. [They had better!]

I also use my Cineform Access HD .avi files directly into DVDit Pro HD and the results are great.\
I also have made short HDV projects to red laser DVDs that play on my BDP-S1 by omitting the AACS folder, this is not an exclusively HD-DVD story

I have currently a 30 minute 720p Premiere/Cineform work-in-progress timeline that I would like to have people view in something higher than 720/480.

If I burn a 1080 60i mpeg2 file (approx. 5.5 GB) to a DL DVD-R disc in my current DL DVD burner, will it play on a Toshiba HD-A3 HD-DVD player or do I need to burn with a dedicated HD-DVD burner?

For 2 years we have burned 1080i discs and played them beautifully on an I-O DATA AVel LinkPlayer2 but those players are scarce as hen's teeth. I am hoping such a mpeg2 1080 60i disc will play on the newer and far more common Toshiba HD-DVD players.

Many thanks for your thoughts.

If I burn a 1080 60i mpeg2 file (approx. 5.5 GB) to a DL DVD-R disc in my current DL DVD burner, will it play on a Toshiba HD-A3 HD-DVD player or do I need to burn with a dedicated HD-DVD burner?



No purely DVD player, per se will play an HD project. You will need an authoring product to make a suitable HD project first, then you burn where you want. Only short projects that fit will burn to DVD media. For longer projects, there apparently is only one HD-DVD burner in limited supply, a few HD-DVD -R single layer (15GB) media choices and no -RW meida, so few people are using it seriously.


For Blu-Ray players, you need an authoring program (like DVDit HD Pro) that can make a BDMV project so the result can be evaluated by the player. Once in BD image or folder form, it can be burned to a DVD or DVD-DL. In the case of my Sony BDP-S1, this will play if you delete the (empty) AACS folder before burning the folders. For longer projects, there is a variety of BD-R and RE media in 25GB and 50 GB sizes and a couple BD-R25 brands that are inkjet printable.

If you search for mf6+, you'll find lots of info on burning HD DVD video on standard DVDs. You get about 20 min on a single layer.

No purely DVD player, per se will play an HD project. You will need an authoring product to make a suitable HD project first, then you burn where you want. Only short projects that fit will burn to DVD media. For longer projects, there apparently is only one HD-DVD burner in limited supply, a few HD-DVD -R single layer (15GB) media choices and no -RW meida, so few people are using it seriously.


For Blu-Ray players, you need an authoring program (like DVDit HD Pro) that can make a BDMV project so the result can be evaluated by the player. Once in BD image or folder form, it can be burned to a DVD or DVD-DL. In the case of my Sony BDP-S1, this will play if you delete the (empty) AACS folder before burning the folders. For longer projects, there is a variety of BD-R and RE media in 25GB and 50 GB sizes and a couple BD-R25 brands that are inkjet printable.


Hey Don in the case of encore Cs3
could you tell me what is that AACs folder?
I dont see any folder with that name when I create my BDMV structure using Encore.
Does any body knows I really want to test my BDP-s1 with DVD-r discs
Thanks

Hey Don in the case of encore Cs3
could you tell me what is that AACs folder?
I dont see any folder with that name when I create my BDMV structure using Encore.
Does any body knows I really want to test my BDP-s1 with DVD-r discs
Thanks


Sorry, I didn't see your query earlier. I keep calling that folder AACS, but it is really CERTIFICATES. I use DVDit Pro HD, not CS3, but the final disc structure should be the same. In DVDit, I "burn to a volume" which is really a folder on the authoring system's hard disc so use CS3's equivalent. Then I use the Blu-Ray disc burning software (Cyberlink for me), and make a "DATA DVD", select just the BDMV folder, correct the disc's filename to something useful and just before burning go into preferences to set file system to "UDF 2.5", not default "ISO9660/Joliet".

I can get 20 minutes (40 on double layer) of mpeg2 HD at a bitrate of 20mbps, all on a cheap DVD. Longer projects go on BD-R/25 discs. Don't go over the 20mbps bitrate by much because you risk stuttering on playback.