DVCPRO HD and high-def DVD
 

Anyone yet burning Panny HD to HD DVD or Blu-ray ? I believe that some further compression of the 100 Mbs signal will be required - I think I read that the top data rate for either DVD is about 33 Mbs. Anyone have any experience yet ?

The video data would absolutely have to be compressed further.

DVCProHD at 1080p30 is about 1 gigabyte per minute.

2 hours of DVCProHD is about 120 gigabytes. It would have to be compressed by a factor of about 5 to fit on a 25-gigabyte disk.

At the moment there isn't any way to burn to HD-DVD on a desktop system; there aren't any burners available at the retail level yet (and it looks to be some time before they are) and the media is also not yet readily available as you can only buy discs in 1000-unit blocks.

Many are looking into Blu-Ray as a method for backup/archive since the contents of (3) 16GB cards will fit nicely onto one 50GB Blu-Ray disc. Panasonic will be introducing a 30-disc robotic arm Blu-Ray changer tower with web-GUI interface specifically for those who wish to use Blu-Ray for backup/archive.

However, if you're referring to being able to fully author HD-DVD or Blu-Ray media just like current DVD's that's still not 100% available yet. DVDSP4 can author an HD-DVD but as mentioned before, there's no way to burn a test copy yet, you'd have to go to a replicator for that and most have 1000-unit minimum order requirements. Currently you can author *tracks-only* Blu-Ray disc on a Mac or do limited menu authoring using Sonic Scenarist on the PC, but be ready to spend $20k for the software.

I create HD DVDs out of DVD SP 4.2 using h.264 encodes at 10 mbps.

Burn to standard red laser dye DVD5 on a SuperDrive and play these on Toshiba HD DVD A-1 set tops.

How about using Sonic's (ROXIO) DVDit Pro HD? Will that work instead of Sonic's Scenerist?

It certainly looks like BR support for a fully authored DVD is now available for the PC. (Of course we Mac users with Toast 8 can only use BR discs for data - so far) I'd say get it, try it. Certainly looks worthwhile.

In fact, you can get DVDitPro HD for half price - usual is US$500 (about there) - but, if you own any of the Roxio's products, they sell it to you for US$250. That's how I got mine in. Very cheap for a HD BlueRay authoring software.

I've made a HD DVD on a REGULAR DVD-R. You can burn up to 18 minutes on a regular DVD.

I used DVD Studio Pro...and compressed the video using Compressor.

Plays great and looks fabulous on a Toshiba HD DVD player.

Making the HD DVD is not the issue. It is the standalone player that is the problem. Very hard to find standalone HD players right now. Costs an arm and a leg - expensive. Playing it on computer won't be a substitute for testing the video on a non computer based standalone player.

In reading some of the other threads in this site, it seems that some of the HDV folks are having excellent results making HD-DVDs using any one of several of the cheaper authoring programs and standard DVD burners with standard blank DVDs. Apparently the HD-DVD players can read HD-DVD data off of standard DVDs and output it as a HD signal. The only downside is that each regular DVD only holds about 20 minutes of HD content. I believe that they are authoring them in MPEG-2. Has anyone tried this with DVCPRO HD from any of the Panasonic cameras ? I would guess that the NLE would have to convert the DVCPRO HD to a MPEG-2 or H.264 file for this to work.

I recently bought an HD-DVD player at Costco for $250, and they currently have a Blu-ray player for $450. Not cheap compared to regular DVD players, but not bad compared to this time last year.

Blu-ray burners are selling for about $450 now and Blu-ray capable authoring programs are available from $70-500. 25 GB Blu-ray discs are about $18 each for write-once, or $25 rewritable.

The problem is partly due to the lack of DVCProHD native support on a PC.

Encore CS3 will author blu ray on a Mac, but you need a burner, and they are still pricey

David, I don't understand the previous statement. How does the lack of native DVCProHD support prevents one from creating a MPEG-2 encoded file designated for HD playback?

If I use, say, Canopus EDIUS or ProCoder, to generate a MPEG-2 file (from P2 card or DVCProHD encoded material) at the correct specifications for HD - and then use a HD DVD authoring software to burn that image into a DVD (via a DVD image route) - isn't that possible?

Mark, standalone DVD players plays MPEG-2 encoded video. Not aware of a DVD player that can play H.264 file. (I am not talking of HD-DVD or BlueRay players).

I think for more people the problem is lack of Blu-ray authoring support in the latest version of Final Cut Studio, something many were expecting. And there is excellent DVCProHD support in some PC editing applications, so that doesn't have any bearing on producing a Blu-ray disc. Overall delivery is still a pain no matter what you're using, but we're finally getting close to having reasonable solutions.

I've read that these also will play on the HD Xbox