XL-H1 and HD-DVD...awesome...

[Barlow Elton]

Hey everyone,

I made a simple 1080i HD-DVD today in DVDSP4, brought it over to the local Best Buy that had the new Toshiba HD A1 player hooked up to a Westinghouse 1080p LCDTV. (note: NOT projection TV...very nice, and unforgivingly sharp)

In a word--amazing. 24F material played perfectly and looked VERY sharp on a true full raster screen.

It was "pinch me" kind of stuff. It actually looked quite good compared to the 1080p trailers they played off of the demo HD DVD. Maybe even better in some ways, just because it looked so clean compared to 35mm stuff. The 1080p trailers had a constant dance of grain, which I happened to like just for texture of it...but it did show that film has its limitations in HD too.

I think when H1 owners begin to encode 1080p HD DVD's from their 24F material...and play them on the best 1080 displays...they will be quite happy they chose the H1.

[Brad Schreiber]

I was not aware you could burn HD-DVD's yet, what kind of burner do you have? This is awesome, I'm shooting something in mid-May with the XLH1, and I can't wait!

[Barlow Elton]

I just used the DVD burner in my dual 2.7 G5. (Sony?) Used a memorex 4.7 DVD-R disc, (8X rated speed) and DVDSP4 did the rest with a 3 min. edited 24F piece.

The compression chain was this:

HDV 24F/DVCProHD1080i/MPEG2 to disc @ 25mbs

I'm going to try it later on with a high bit rate h.264 encoding.

[Yasser Kassana]

Something i learn everyday. DVDSP4, didn't know did that, Barlow thanks for the info man, I learn so much for you and you don't even know.

[Barlow Elton]

Glad to help. Just wanted to let people know that you can do an HD-DVD right now. I just had to verify it for myself by playing it in an actual shipping consumer player, not just the computer.

And of course, had to comment on how the H1 holds up on the toughest HD display.

[Ken Diewert]

Barlow,

Thanks as well. I'm purchasing a cam in the next week or two and have been leaning toward H1, but have been hung up on the 1080i vs 720p issues. But much of what I do will be geared to DVD/HD-DVD markets and it is great to hear the H1 performs well on this level.

I do note that there are JVC reps on the dvinfo board continually, whereas at H1, we rely on guys like you, and Robert from Starway and such to keep us enlightened on the cameras strengths. To learn about the H1 weakness, we just need to read the JVC board :P (Just kidding JVC guys!!!)

I still haven't figured out the best post NLE config yet. I know you and Robert both are Mac (FCP) guys but I am just looking for the flat out best system to use the H1, more to DVD out then say film out.

[George David]

That's awesome, Barlow. Maybe we could try the same with the HD100 this weekend? I'm on my way to check out that Toshiba HD player @ Best Buy today.

Wow - my 1st post after months of reading!!!

[Barlow Elton]

Yeah George. We'll have to do that! Hopefully the Best Buy near you has it hooked up to the Westinghouse. If the Toshiba's hooked up to a 720p projection TV it's doing the product a disservice.

[Robert Sanders]

Another great post by the Elton man!

[Tony Tibbetts]

What was the res of the mpeg2?

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Barlow Elton

I just used the DVD burner in my dual 2.7 G5. (Sony?) Used a memorex 4.7 DVD-R disc, (8X rated speed) and DVDSP4 did the rest

So you're saying that HD content authored on a standard red-laser DVD played successfully in the new Toshiba player, complete with functioning menus? If so that's great news, because it means we don't have to buy new burners or discs to deliver HD content: just author with existing discs subject to the 4.7GB data size limitation. Very cool.

[Barlow Elton]

Originally Posted by Tony Tibbetts

What was the res of the mpeg2?

1920x1080

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

So you're saying that HD content authored on a standard red-laser DVD played successfully in the new Toshiba player, complete with functioning menus?

Yup. I made an extremely simple menu. I am by no means a guru in that program however.

You can get pretty good HD at current DVD bit rates using h.264. MPEG2 required a much higher bit rate to maintain quality.

If you have one of these new "affordable" HD cameras, it's time to consider acquiring everything in HD. You never know when a client might ask for an HD-DVD.

[Barlow Elton]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

just author with existing discs subject to the 4.7GB data size limitation. Very cool.

Forgot to say that you can author to dual-layer DVD+R with 8.5 GB of space right now too.

[Barlow Elton]

Originally Posted by Ken Diewert

I'm purchasing a cam in the next week or two and have been leaning toward H1, but have been hung up on the 1080i vs 720p issues. But much of what I do will be geared to DVD/HD-DVD markets and it is great to hear the H1 performs well on this level.

Actually, as soon as I'm able to test an HD100 with George, I plan to encode material from that camera and see how it compares.

One thing I will try to do is upconvert HD100 to 1080p material. The reason? I watched movie trailers from the Toshiba HD DVD demo (King Kong, Jarhead, Bourne Surpremacy, etc.) and they all looked the best when played out of the player in 1080i resolution. The Toshiba HD-A1 allows you--from the remote--to switch the DVD's playback resolution on the fly, so I'll be interested to see how the HD100 720 24p material holds up on a 1080 monitor compared to H1 24F.

[Jonathan Selesu]

The Toshiba'd HD-A1 isn't 1080P, from what I've seen, so it'd be pretty useless to output to 1080P. It's very interesting to see that the red lasered discs can give off HD DVD quality without having the toshiba "upconvert" to that resolution, I really should give it a shot!

Jon