HD format for distribution on data DVD to Mac and PC?

[Jay Massengill]

Hi All, What is your recommendation for an HD video file format to distribute on a data DVD for non-technical users to play back on either Mac or PC?

The original material (dance recital) is mostly 50Mbps 1920x1080 30p mxf from an XF300 with some shots from an XA10 at 24Mbps mts 1920x1080 30p (in a 60i stream), all edited in Vegas.

The total material is 2 hours and I'd like to distribute just one HD data DVD with two files (first half and second half) that any computer user can play back at 1920x1080.

I'm also distributing SD DVD's to the people who requested them, but I don't have a Blu-Ray burner or Blu-Ray blank disks and want to use data DVD's to distribute in HD.

Thanks for your recommendations.

[Juris Lielpeteris]

You may burn BD content directly on the DVD disc if total bitrate is not too high (up to 17 Mbits). You will get about one hour of video on a dual-layer DVD discs to be played on a standard BD player or PC (MAC).

[Nate Haustein]

An .mp4 file encoded at around 10 Mbps using H.264 compression.

[Jay Massengill]

Due to the nature of the footage (movement, color, contrast, lighted backgrounds, length, etc.) I'm pretty sure this is going to need two discs each for both the HD data version and the SD DVD version.

Rendering from Vegas in mp4 HD and mpg2 SD was neither good enough nor small enough to fit on one disc for each version.

So I have rendered two Sony mxf422 HD files, one for each of the two halves of the recital to use as sources for HandBrake and VirtualDub. The first half is 65 minutes long and the second half is 54 minutes long.

I have rendered an HD mp4 in HandBrake of the second half that looks great and will fill about 80% of a regular data DVD.

However the AUDIO, despite several attempts at specifying audio settings, comes out at double-speed, low-bit-rate MONO. I'm not sure what is going wrong with the audio? Any guidance?

Also, HandBrake isn't picking up the chapter markers that are in the mxf422 files.

Next I will try VirtualDub and see what results I can get from that. If VirtualDub doesn't pick up the chapter markers from the mxf422 files when I make the SD mpg2 files, how do you guys get the chapter markers into DVD Architect?

Thanks in advance!

[Jay Massengill]

What's the safest and best quality mxf plugin for VirtualDub?

[Jay Massengill]

No matter which settings I use in HandBrake, on two different computers with Windows 7 and Windows 8, I can't get HandBrake to correctly interpret the PCM audio from the 422MXF renders that I did.

What settings are people using when rendering to 422MXF to use in HandBrake? There is no other choice for audio except PCM in both the 422 and EX MXF templates. And I've tried both 24-bit and 16-bit.

I'm preparing to render to lagarith, but would like to avoid that if someone can relate the audio details for their workflows that have been mentioned for mp4 HD output.

[Juris Lielpeteris]

XDCAM HD format never contains any multichannel audio tracks, only 2, 4 or 8 mono tracks unlike XDCAM IMX with the one 8-channel track.

[Jay Massengill]

I only needed HandBrake to correctly convert the two PCM audio tracks of the 422mxf file to two tracks of compressed audio for the mp4 file. Something was preventing that from working properly regardless of the numerous audio settings I tried.

So I'm rendering with the Lagarith codec now to archive and put in HandBrake for the mp4 compression. The tests I did with that were successful.