Will an iMac G5 work with HDV?

[Heath McKnight]

JVC has a pro DVD player that will play, I think, the Toshiba HD DVD and HDV DVDs.

heath

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Patrick Jenkins

the format of the data that will be written on the disc already exists and is set. It's why you can author HD DVDs with DVD Studio Pro - these aren't some funky format that only work with Macs. THOUGH, it just so happens the only guaranteed to work HD DVD player only comes with a Mac.

As far as I know there's nothing special about the DVD players in current Macs, so support for HD DVDs must be based on the OS and underlying hardware. If there are no other currently shipping devices which can play the DVD Studio Pro HD discs, then that means you have to play them on Macs until other compatible players (or PC playback support) start shipping.

[Dave Perry]

Kevin is correct. Apple is ahead of the curve on this and hoping that Sony gets Blue Ray to market in PS3 before M$ gets to market with HD DVD.

[Patrick Jenkins]

You're right, it's a standard DVD (+-R or DL, et al). It's not a newer style disc.. (Blueray or HD-DVD).

I think there's confusion about the technology and what it does, what it doesn't do. All these new discs add are higher capacity over standard DVD discs: 15GB, 30GB, 50GB, etc. They have nothing to do with what or how the data is stored on them.

The HVDVD_TS structure (high def version of VIDEO_TS) has been established as the way video data will be stored on one of these fancy new discs. That is here now and today. It's independent of the Blueray/HD-DVD media. All a DVD Studio Pro disc is is a normal UDF formatted DVD with a valid HVDVD_TS on it (rather than a VIDEO_TS). Blueray/HD-DVD players - when they are available - will also backwards compatible with existing DVD & +-R discs, so this scheme works. Manufacturers aren't yet producing HD content - though they could be - because, yes, there's no mass marketed way (other than a Mac) to play it back yet. It's not a question of things not being ready though (excluding Blueray and HD-DVD), it's a question of business risk - why make something that very few people can currently use.

Now, the only reason Macs are so graced to have a working High Def DVD player are the fact that Apple updated DVD Player.app to include High Def support (both because they tend to trendset and because they needed it for playback of DVDSP). Other than recognizing UDF, it really doesn't have anything to do with hardware. PCs could easily have a High Def DVD player but Microsoft doesn't ship dvd software by default with a Windows installation. There's no motivation for OEM dvd authors because there's no real way to author content yet on a PC.

All this being said, if you're a Mac user you've got everything available to you TODAY to start High Def DVD authoring. It's easy enough to keep everything HD in Final Cut/Motion/Effects, then export 2 final versions of your project: 1 SD (Downsampled from HD), 1 HD.

Then, just create a normal SD project in DVDSP when you are ready to author. Complete it all (make a backup of the DVDSP project), build the _TS disc, and convert it to HD. Just change all of your assests to the corresponding HD material and BAM - High Def disc. If you've got the hardware and software already, IMO it's a real disservice to not be doing things in both HD and SD. Gives your client the warm and fuzzies (don't charge extra for it) and for just a small bit of extra manual work, it gives you a version for now and a futureproofed version for later.

I hope I'm not beating the topic to death, but I thought I was seeing a lot of confusion on this topic. I've been doing HD alongside SD authoring for a while now (I give both versions to clients @ no additional charge) - one is for now, one is for later. Hope this clears things up if they were unclear before.

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Patrick Jenkins

PCs could easily have a High Def DVD player but Microsoft doesn't ship dvd software by default with a Windows installation. There's no motivation for OEM dvd authors because there's no real way to author content yet on a PC.

Actually, Microsoft has had a process for authoring and playing HD DVDs on PCs for several months now, but I haven't heard of too many people using that. It sounds like Apple may be more in tune with formal HD DVD specifications, which is good if those discs really do turn out to play on future blue-laser players. But in any case, agreed that this shouldn't have anything to do with the Sony HD players versus the Toshiba HD players, both of which should be able to play the same standardized file formats.

And by the way, Microsoft has thrown their full weight behind the Toshiba hardware, meaning that will likely become the most common solution for burning HD DVDs in the future. Nothing Sony can do can change that, so we've got a problem if their players become popular but all our comptuers come with Toshiba burners. Great.

[Edwin Hernandez]

What about the same 1.8 Ghz iMac G5 with 2 GB RAM, working in DVCPROHD from the HVX200? Will it be harder to handle than HDV considering more data, or will it be easier than HDV considering frame based editing?
-EDWIN