HD-DVD Authoring to DVD -/+ Media - Page 9

So is it working? I don't have MeGUI in the AVSynth Plugin folder and it works fine. Make sure all your Programs Paths are all correct under the tools/settings tab of MeGui. Also be sure you get the latest version of MeGUI to go along with the latest version of x264.


On another note. Does anyone know what the HD-DVD structure is like for h264 encoded movies? Does it follow the same structure as the earlier mentioned HVDVD_TS folders?

Hi everyone,

Ive been following this thread with great interest, considering it seems the perfect low cost way of getting my Sony HDR-HC1 videos to play in HD on the new HD player. Especially with no HD burners or blank discs out there yet!

I've got a few questions though...especially for those who are converting their captured HC1 files through MF5 into HD DVD folders.

I noticed that the default setting in the advanced settings menu of MF5 is at 1440x1080, as opposed to 1920x1080. Which one is preferable as far as superior PQ at the end product (especially for the HC1).....considering I am importing the video file into the computer straight from the HC1 (using the capture utility of MF5...which works smoothly, by the way...). Also, if no difference, will one choice improve the rendering time over the other??

Also, when delving deeper into the advanced settings menu, I noticed that the default quality setting of the compression slider(?) is set at 90%?...should I increase this to 100% ? This particular setting can be found by hitting the "customize" tab under the 1440x or 1920x resolution choice tab...and going to the second section. Hopefully, someone knows what Im talking about...excuse my poor tech speak.

Finally, at the last screen before you can burn the folder, when you have to check off create HD-DVD folder.....there is another option that you can check off called "normalize audio"....should this be checked off as well? What is its effect on the final product?

I made sure the "do not convert compatable file type" box was checked in MF5...any other tabs have to be checked for max performance/quality?

I'd be very thankfull for any advise/suggestions you might be willing to provide....the fact that this method can be used at all just blows my mind!
I can finally get my HC1 vids off the tapes and onto discs...hurray!

Thanks again......

Goldy

As per my last post, Ive found a slider for mpeg compression quality on MF5...the default setting for mine was at 90%...I also was curious as to wether or not I should bump it to 100%.

It is located under the "customize" button, in the advanced project settings menu, when you are given the option of checking either the 1920x1080 or 1440x1080 resolution for your video project.
On the second page/tab of the menu which pops up after you hit the "customize" button...you will find the compression/mpeg quality slider,...as I said, mine was default at 90%...maybe the little extra to 100 can solve your dilema....good luck!

When I play the HDDVD authored disc using MF5, I still get the 3:4 squeezed image to the left side of screen and the rest of the area on the right side is filled squarish color lines. The audio is missing as well. The disc would freeze inside the HD-A1 after 30 sec and the only way to get it out is to unplug the power cord on A1 and restart. So far I have checked the 1920 HD and "do not convert ..." in the MF5 settings before creating HDDVD folder and I used Nero 6 to burn the DVD which oddly enough didn't grey out the Burn option after I dropped the HDDVD folder in it. Can somebody please suggest some ideas of what might have gone wrong here? BTW the video clip seems to play back OK in MF5 before HDDVD authoring.

this is while playing back in your HD-A1/XA1 ??

yes, this occurs during the playback on A1, which actually only lasts about 30sec before A1 freezes. The playback of the original clips seem to be OK with aspect ratio on MF5.

Is there any way you can test the captures on a different computer? I haven't used MF5 for capture, but I do know that capture can be corrupted by both hardware and software problems. This may not be your problem, but it's one way of narrowing down the possiblities.

Yes, it seems to be working (I'm 14 hours into an encoding session now) , but only after I moved the DGDecode.dll into the AVSynth plugin folder. I only have a few of the applications in the path, but I dont think that is the problem. I do have GKnot installed but could never get it to work, which I think probably is is the problem.

Doesn't x264 install MeGui? I think that is where it came from on my system.


I second this question...does anyone know the answer? Also, if you feed a .h264 file to MF5, does it know what to do with it?

Someone's working on this - Techtom. I'm sure he'll come up with some answers to this and other questions.

I was able to get a double layer disc to play without issue when I set the Book Type to DVD-ROM. Unfortunately, I have only one burner that allows me to do this - an external Mad Dog unit. My Pioneer burners don't allow bitsetting. Anyone want to buy some Pioneers? I'm off to buy a PX-750a Plextor drive tomorrow.

I was able to get some longer material (tonight's two part episode of Battlestar Galactica and a couple of movies) to run through the process successfully. I was beginning to suspect MF5 might have a built-in limit to the length of a project. That doesn't appear to be the case. I still haven't come up with an answer as to why some material seems to work and others don't.

yes, I will try it on a different computer tonight and report back. Thanks for your suggestion, Joe.

Has anyone else tried to mix SD Digital Video and HD video on a single HD-DVD?

Just for kicks, I captured standard DV video from a Sony camcorder. Then I captured some HD video from a HC-3. MF5 converted the SD video, left the HD video alone and created the HD-DVD disc content.

When I try to play back the disc in the Toshiba A1, it doen't recognize the disc at all and gives me a "No Play" message on the display.

I tried different capture methods with no success. I'm thinking maybe that MF5 doesn't "upconvert" the video properly for the Toshiba to recognize.

I've just used x264 to encode a 2 hour 1080i MPEG file as a h264 file that will fit on a single layer. It looks wonderful when I play it on my PC. Of course, MF5 cannot read it in, so I'm still forced to use the MPEG format.

Looks like the resolution loss in the testpattern disc is not improved by sliding the compression quality up to 100%. I think the problem occurs in the interlacing process in MF5, but I'm not sure I can control that. I'll try to find an AVI to MPEG2 converter that will do a good job and allow MF5 to leave the format intact.

I appreciate your efforts and your sharing with us.

Has anyone authored a 720p disc yet? I'm curious to see if 720p content looks fine at 720p, and how it looks scaled at 1080i.

Mike,

I would suggest you go back to your original pattern generation step. This time save it as an PNG or some other lossless format rather than a JPEG which has it's own built in degradation. I doub't it will help your current issue, but it'll give you a much cleaner starting point. Also, encode the disc at 1080P, not 1080I.

Vern

EDIT: This did not work. I was wrong. ulead MF 5 actually converted the file to MPEG-2 and then it authored the HDDVD


I was successfully able to author an HD-DVD using VC1 source.

Here's what I did:


Download "the living sea" from the wmv-hd web site. I used the 1080p version.

unzip the exe file into "the living sea.wmv"

I downloaded trial versions of Ulead's movie factoy 5 and Nero 7.

I followed the instructions on this thread to author and burn the project.

It played on my Toshiba HD DVD player, but the "display" button showed "mpeg-2". It was not converted, because it only took a couple of minutes to burn the project. Also there was a slight motion judder on the image.

-Techtom

PS I also tried h.264, but I used a 1280x720p@29.97Hz which dr1394 said wouldn't work, and it didn't. I'll try h.264 again when I get another clip.

well, finally I found what my problem was. The setting in the MF5 has to be selected in each step instead of just one time at the beginning of the new project. I picked 1920HD before capturing thinking that the MF5 would retain the setting throughout the project, but actually it went back to 1440HD before the authoring process so the video came out 4:3 and had a lot of artifacts.

Now the video is playing perfectly on A1, but the audio is only available on analog stereo. is this the case with your burned HD DVD discs using the process described in this thread as well?

Thanks guys for your help.

I posted this under the HD-DVD hardware forum, but thought I should post in this thread, since a few people have reported audio problems with their homemade HD-DVDs when they have tried them in some stores, yet not in others.

I've been making some home-made DVD HDs from HD recordings, and all playback perfectly on my Toshiba player. On the weekend a friend of mine bought his player, and I brought my discs over to his place. The same discs that play fine on my setup, have stuttering audio on his setup. We both have Yamaha recievers, but he has one model up from mine, in the same series. We are both outputting via a coaxial digital cable. He tried optical with the same results. Switching the DVD player to 2 channel PCM fixes the problem, albiet with no 5.1 audio. How come my setup works great, but his doesn't?

An incompatibility in his Yamaha reciever or possibly a different firmware revision of the Toshiba player??




Any thoughts??

Thx Aaron, I will always leave that box checked. It seems that of the 3hrs it takes to author my HD file (of maybe 20 minutes of HC1 footage..) almost 95% of the time is when it is creating the in DVD menus...the actual content seems to fly by...so I think that boads well!

Although I can capture and author the files according to this threads instruction, I seem to be having problems getting Nero 7 to burn the DVD's. Yes, I ususally get the 2 warning messages, which I ignore (or more speciafically, click to proceed anyways....) but then I usually get a "burn failure" pop up. After trying with a DVD+ RW many times, I actually got it to burn once out of maybe 10 attempts....is there something Im doing wrong, or perhaps out of sequence?

I go the the burn ron area for dvd videos, I create a new disc, and get the setup screen that is mentioned many times in this thread. I drag my HVDVD folder to the left side, so that it is with the video and audio folders , and then I place the Video-ts.VOB file into the video folder .When the burn option lights up, I press it to start the burn. Then, I get the standard 2 messages that there are "errors", which I bypass, and then, just after my buffer loads, I get the burn fail popup, and have to start again. Is there a specific order in which I should be dragging and dropping these folders and files in? why would it work some times and not other times....Ive made sure to follow these instructions to a "T".

Any suggestions?

[quote=Techtom]I was successfully able to author an HD-DVD using VC1 source.

Here's what I did:


Download "the living sea" from the wmv-hd web site. I used the 1080p version.

unzip the exe file into "the living sea.wmv"

I downloaded trial versions of Ulead's movie factoy 5 and Nero 7.

I followed the instructions on this thread to author and burn the project.

It played on my Toshiba HD DVD player, but the "display" button showed "mpeg-2". It was not converted, because it only took a couple of minutes to burn the project. Also there was a slight motion judder on the image.

-Techtom

Hi Techtom,

I did the same steps as you say. I already made many trials using VC1 source, and it is true and possible to have VC1 as SOURCE, but the video is converted to MPEG2.

Take a look in the file size of the movie and please tell me, The_Living_Sea_1080.wmv in VC1 was 153.969 and the output folder without menus 334.400 the convertion is fast depending on the computer configurations, but unfortunatelly the file is MPEG2.

I'm also trying to use DVDSP4 and as all other users in the Apple forum the menus and h.264 don't work... The menu appear but you can't see the subpictures an d H264 just show I frames and about 5 seconds...

I still looking to find a software to use VC1 and H.264

PS: I tryed in the Toshiba XA1 player

Well, I dont seem to be having the same success as you guys. My first disc I burned from an iso that I created with MF5 and it came up as notread on the player. The second disc I burnt from a folder through Nero 7 was seen as a CD in the player....

I did attempt a menu in those discs so I'm redoing without now.

Wes

Tried again from an ISO with no menu. Still no luck.

I'll get some different media tomorrow and see if that helps. I have been using Ridata -R

Wes

I've had similar results, but a lot more success. Your problem could be related to your burner or your source files (or bugs in MF5 - I still haven't gotten menus to work consistently).

The burner could be the problem. I could not get double layer discs to be recognized without setting the Book Type to DVD-ROM. Unfortunately, most players don't give you that option. They set the Book Type automatically. I have one burner that can set the Book Type, a Mad Dog external 16x. My Pioneers don't allow it. (In Nero 7 you set the Book Type under the "Options" button when you select the recorder. I'm not sure if you can do it in earlier versions. Plextools for the Plextor writers allow you to do it, also.)

The source files could be part of the problem. Most 1080i files work well, but I have a series I really like called HD Getaways. None of these shows work well with this process. Even though they report being 1920x1080i, normal files, they have to undergo a serious conversion process. It takes forever and the resulting HD DVDs don't play well in the Toshiba.

Most files seem to work well, as long as I haven't run them through HDTVtoMPEG2 or VideoRedo. These files choke Movie Factory 5 and so far I haven't been able to come up with a way to salvage them. Unfortunately, I have a lot of programs that I've run through one or the other of these programs. (HDTVtoMPEG2 converted files mostly work OK as long as I haven't done edits in the middle of the program. Edits at the start and end seem to allow them to be used in MF5. In fairness to both these programs, I 'm not at all sure if they are at fault or it is simply that MF5 isn't flexible enough to manage the files. It doesn't seem to know what to do with 720p files, at least not without serious conversion).

Some feature films work and others do not. I haven't picked up on a pattern here yet, just as I can't tell which Discovery HD programs will work. It may well have to do with the original source equipment with which the programs were shot. That's just conjecture.

We have to keep in mind that this is the first stage of a process that allows us to begin to author HD discs. It will only get better. Take the menuing system, for instance. It allows you to create very DVD like menus, but not the more interactive menus used on commercial HD DVD discs. Those menus can overlay on top of the video while it plays.

I'm just happy to be able to create some discs inexpensively and effectively. They'll no doubt look fairly primitive down the line, but at least it's possible to do it now. I didn't expect this to happen for some time. If you look back to earlier posts in this thread, I'm the one who got so excited about this process that I broke my vow to stay out of the format war. I bought a player based on this thread. It was worth it to have a player for my own stuff, much less the possibilities with recorded content from OTA and satellite.

I've been able to improve the test pattern disc I discussed earlier by converting my avi file to mpeg2 with Sony Vegas MSPE6.0 before feeding to Ulead MF5. The vertical resolution is now fine all the way to Nyquist. Horizontal resolution looks OK on component out, but a little fuzzy on HDMI. There's a strong shimmer/waviness around the narrowest stripes. I'll update the HVDVD_TS zip file at the web link I mentioned earlier.

I should also mention that on discs I burn, the single frame advance feature works, and slow/FF shows on-screen indications of speed (1/2,1/4,1/8,>,>>,>>>). Wish the commercial discs would do the same.

Vern - thanks for the comments on PNG. I'll do that next round to avoid JPG artifacts (although I did save with quality level "12" in Photoshop which is not so lossy). I was also able to confirm with QuickTime Pro that the avi maintains full resolution and the resolution loss was happening in MF5's transcoding.

Also, remember that the Toshiba doesn't officially support DVD+R.

Vern

Maybe not officially, but that's all I've used with it and that has not been an issue for me.

Pioneer burners automatically set DL discs as DVD-ROM. It's in their firmware.

I haven't been able to get the Pioneer burners to give me a good burn (one the Toshiba HD-A1 can read) on a DL disc. Do you know any software that can read the Book Type from a disc that's already been burned (Nero maybe)? Nero comes up without the option to set the Book Type for the Pioneer burners. The Mad Dog allows bitsetting, and it gives me a disc the A1 has no trouble reading.