HD content on hard drive.
 

I do not yet offer Blu ray to clients. However one of them wants a HD version of their wedding on a hard drive to play on WD media player.

does anyone have any idea how large a file 2 hours or so would be in HD in wmv format?

It depends on the bitrate. In my experience, "pro" HD encoding begins at 8Mbps H.264, and "consumer" HD encoding begins at 4Mbps H.264 for 720p and 6Mbps H.264 for 1080p.

Two hours at 4853MBPS will fit onto a blank DVD, two hours at 9030MBPS will fit onto a dual-layer DVD.

Use this bitrate calculator:

Bitrate Calculator

I would encode at 8MBPS WMV 9.0 and burn that to a double-layer DVD as a file, then hand it to the client.

-- Brian.

Will that play in a standard DVD player?

Sounds like their only HD device is the WD player.
And the WD HD player only takes a USB input...

If the files are as small as Brian says, maybe a 8 or 16GB flash drive will work...that would be cheaper than an external HD....

Bob

Thanks guys, both of you.

I encode to 10mb H264 and put the files onto a 16gb usb stick. The video plays back fine through my WD TV Media player. It looks amazing on a 42" HD Plasma

..why WMV ? ... You can render to BluRay spec mpeg2 file... very high quality ... I've made some clips for WD media player and looks amazing on a HDTV (just like playing a bluray)... make some tests, compare and show to your client..

good luck