HD-DVD Authoring to DVD -/+ Media - Page 10

I have converted several hours of video from the Sony HC1 to DVD.

I use HDVSplit to capture in .TS format.
VideoReDo to convert to Mpg.
UMF5 to create the HD folder.
RecordNow to make the image and burn to DVD.

This may sound like few extra steps but it goes extremely fast.
Capturing the video in UMF5 took forever because it wanted to render
after it was done.
I also tried Nero7 and could not make a disk that the A1 could read, RecordNow
by Sonic works every time.

Thanks for all the effort to all who made this possible, I can't believe I can actually record HD video on DVD this early in the game.

Has anyone else had a problem downloading the trail version of MovieFactory 5?

I've DL'd it twice, tried to extract it on 2 different PC's, and both times the setup tells me the file is corrupted. When I click "Trial Version" on the Download page, it says the trial version 5 is 82 MB, I click Download Now, it directs me to FTP Site 1. The actual DL'd file size is 85,629,868 bytes and is named "dmf5_tbyb_e.exe".

EDIT for "LovesMovies' post: Well Windows & the favors it does for you. In Win Explorer it says the file is 83.623 MB, but then in "Properties" it gives you the true file size - 81.6 MB (85,629,868 bytes)

I notice on the Purchase page it says "The DVD MovieFactory 5 download (ESD) file size is approximately 176 MB."

What is the actual files size of the Trial Version?

I just tried it and got exactly the same results "cannot unpack file, file is corrupted". I got 83.6mb.

Hmmm. In looking through the Ulead site, has anyone tried authoring an HD DVD witt their Video Studio 9 software? It looks like it's more designed for folks who want to edit their home camcorder movies and turn them into DVD's. But, there's a free HDV add-in for registered owners:
"HDV Plug-in for VideoStudio 9
The HDV solution suitable for everyone
Enjoy all the features of VideoStudio 9 as well as edit native 1080i High Definition video and enjoy lossless conversion to the editing software. This complete solution includes device control and capture*, and output to DVD, SVCD or VCD."

And, a free Mpeg4 add-in:
"Ulead MPEG-4 Plug-in for VideoStudio 9
Movie Making for Apple®iPod®and SONY®PSP
The MPEG-4 plug-in for VideoStudio 9 lets you create video files suitable for any device - Apple® iPod®, Sony® PSP PDA, mobile phone or even DVD-quality for playback on compatible DVD players. Choose from widescreen and standard picture sizes. "

EDIT: Thanks, rip - the DL from download.com worked fine. Also, it looks like I didn't dig far enough in the Ulead site. Those free add-ins are for VideoStudio 9. But StudioVideo 10, the current version, apparently already has them. Download.com has the trial version of StudioVideo10; I'm going to try it as well.

I'm looking to burn my HDTV OTA recordings into HD DVD's using DVD-5 -R's, as outlined in this forum. I use HDTVtoMpeg2 to edit out commercials & convert to mpeg2's in native resolution. It sounds like with VideoStudio9 & the free add-ins, I could directly edit the .ts captures, and then convert them into a burnable DVD files structure, fitting more content in using mpeg4. The A1's & XA1's read mpeg4, right?

Get it from download.com I didn't have any issues with it being corrupt.

I seriously doubt that the file was converted. The authoring part took less than a few minutes. The demo clip is just over 2 minutes. That would mean that the conversion from vc1 to mpeg2 occurred in about 2 minutes. The conversion from vc1 to mpeg at 1080p should take 4x to 8x realtime. The reason why the file is bigger, is that the audio was transcoded from wma to lpcm.

EDIT: BUZZ, I was wrong... It looks like Ulead MF5 is converting everything to MPEG-2. Now, I don't believe that It can actually pass untouched VC1 or H.264 to an HD-DVD. It wants to convert everything to MPEG-2



I'm working on h.264 too... I still need to capture a clip from the apple HD web site that has the right rate. Most of the clips are 1280x720p but at 29.97Hz which is not supported on HDdvd.

[quote=DaveinTucson]Hmmm. In looking through the Ulead site, has anyone tried authoring an HD DVD witt their Video Studio 9 software? It looks like it's more designed for folks who want to edit their home camcorder movies and turn them into DVD's. But, there's a free HDV add-in for registered owners:
"
I believe DVD Movie Factory 5 is the only available software that can actually create a HD DVD iso file at this time. Video Studio 10 is waiting on the burning pack not yet released.

I just tried a quick test of Worldsport, one of the Voom channels on E*. It's 1280x1080i. MF5 did not have to convert the video. Too bad this process wasn't available before Dish made the move to HDLite for Voom. There were some beautiful shows back then. Now, they are all soft and hazy. They do work, though.

Didn't the dvd versions of MF also have this problem? I bought it early on but dumped it because it wouldn't let you use 'non-compliant' files.

Yes, it seems that Ulead MF will take 1280x1080i and not re-convert the video. I just burned Halloween from the Voom Monsters channel at the same resolution, and it didn't do any re-conversion. Yet recordings at 1440x1080 *do* need conversion. Strange.

Has anyone converted a 720P recording in MF yet? How does it look?


Marc.

It's not my experience that it converts HDV at1440x1080, but many films that report 1920x1080i and normal bit rates need conversion.

That's what I'm trying to do. I have this season's "24" episodes recorded on my HTPC in their native 720p broadcast format. I'd love to burn them off in HD DVD format to play on my XA1. It's pretty disapointing that MF5 will only output in 1440x1080 or 1920x1080 in mpeg2 - it indicates the DVD folder will be 9.6GB. That's for the 1 hour show with commercials removed& converted to mpeg2 using HDTVtoMpeg2, with a resulting file size of 2.73GB. I realize it's asking alot to burn HD DVD content off to DVD-R (4.5GB) vs. dual layer (9GB) disks, but at $.25 per disk compared to $2.00, while not push the envelope? If MF5 supported outputting to the original 720p format and, even better, outputting in .264 mpeg4, it should fit.

I've yet to have the patience to let a 720p show reencode. Of more interest to me is your having edited the file with HDTVtoMPEG2 and getting MF5 to load it. I find that unless I edit only the start and end of the file (i.e. without editing commercials from the middle), H2M edited files won't even load into MF5. It just sits there forever.

Hopefully, 720p support will be added soon. I have several shows I'd like store in native HD DVD 720p.

Well, the HDTVtoMPEG2 edited files load fine in MF5 fine for me. I'm trying my first recode of 720p. I was hoping MF5 would not reencode to 1080 as I checked "Do not reformat compliant mpeg files". But, after 1 hour MF% is only at 6%, so I guess it is converting the file to 1080. I"ll check & see what the files look like when it's done. AVicodec should tell me what the rez is.

It also won't take files that are 1920x1088. That extra 8 lines forces the program to re-encode. A real bummer

I've had no problems at all if the file is 1920x1080 though, regardless of how or what it was recorded with, after running it through Womble MPEG-VCR.


Looks like we need to find a replacement for Ulead MF 5


Marc.

When you say the H2M files load fine, do you mean they load as quickly (just a few seconds) as other files, or do they take a long while? Maybe I'm not waiting long enough. I give up after several minutes. Which version of H2M are you using?

What is your source for recording? I have an R5000-HD on a modded Dish 211. Some 1920x1080 files load fine and others want to re-encode. I'm running them through Womble, too. Some files are accepted by MF5 at the load file stage, and fly through the auto chapter setup, then want to reencode the final stage.

Joe, most of my files were recorded from Dish Network /Expressvu and DirecTV using 169time.com firewire modded recievers. Some were done from OTA HD recordings on a PC-based HDTV tuner card.

Marc.

I played around with it this morning, loading some AVi's, non-H2M mpegs, 720p & 1080i H2M mpegs, and everything loads quickly (under 10 seconds) on my XP Pro AMD Athlon 64, 1GB RAM system.

All my OTA recordings were captured by my Fusion3 Gold NTSC card in my HTPC in orignal 720p or 1080i broadcast resolutions in Fusion's native .tp format. The .tp files were then loaded into HDTVtoMPEG2, version 1.11.83, scanned & removed any commercials, and then converted to mpeg2 by H2M.

Everything works fine; my only issue with MF5 is the output in HD DVD being restricted to 1440x1080 or 1920x1080 mpeg2 only. While current HD DVD titles are all in 1080p, 720p is a valid HD DVD format as well - why waste hours converting 720p to 1080i? It might fill the screen more, but no upconversion is goign to have any better resolution than the original content. And it's my understanding H.264 Mpeg4 is a supported HD DVD format - it would ne nice to be able to squeeze more content onto a DVD dish using Mpeg4. But then, maybe that's just too much to ask of a $50 software packge??

I think we need people who have played with UleadMF5 a lot here to share with the best settings they have discovered to speed up the process. On some video clips it is just painfully slow, but on others it seems to fly thru. So far I haven't had much luck with MF5's chapter edit/add feature, it always got stuck for some reason. is there anyway to accomplish this outside of Ulead MF5? and including the Menu seems to boggle the process down as well. Also as some members here mentioned before, multiple video clips on the same dics don't seem to play properly on HD-A1/XA1. is that your experience?

Anyway, if you have multiple video clips, what is the most efficient and guaratteed-to-work way you have discovered so far for the authoring process in Ulead MF5? thanks much for sharing your tips.

Dave, are you saying you're using HDTV2MPEG2 to convert to mpeg2? I thought that part of this app was nonfunctional.

Sure, it's been there for several versions. I used to just use HDTVtoMPEG2 to strip out commercials and then leave it in .ts format becuase the files size was smaller. But mpeg2 is more useful for buring to DVD.

In HDTVtoMEG2, load a file into it. In the middle of the screen, just above the destination folder, it reads: Output File Name: Type
Just to the right of "Type" is a menu bar with which you can chose Mpeg2; Transport Stream, or HiDTV. Chose Mpeg2 and it will convert the recording file to mpeg2, in orginal format & resolution. Well, actually with 720p recordings I get mpeg2 files in 720p. With 1080i recordings, MF5 says they are 1088 - those 'extra' 8 lines that forces MF5 to want to re-encode them, as discussed in this thread.

On discs I've authored using menus, the process does slow significantly. I think the big reason may be the need to render several seconds of menu video to a lower resolution for each chapter. Also, when I did menus, I had some problems with the resulting discs not playing the first part of the video. It would skip roughly 3 minutes at the start. I believe this is simply a bug in MF5.

I create auto chapter markers, and this process always goes quickly on my sytems, so far anyway. This process goes fast even if MF5 thinks later that the video needs to be rendered (though it reports as 1920x1080i). I don't know of any program that will add chapters (in HD, anyway) outside MF5.

I haven't tried multiple clips on one disc yet. This is a very useful feature, if it works. I'll have to test it.

I'd like to give you settings that speed up the process, but outside the obvious one of checking the box that says don't reencode compatible video, I don't know of any. Some of my videos convert easily and some don't. I can't pick up on a pattern here. (Except in the case of the HD Getaways series, none of which will convert quickly or play well.)

What I am concentrating on right now is converting several videos that fit on single and double layer discs. I'm not doing much with menus, since all these shows are single episode programs, and using menus would just slow down the process unnecessarily. (Why bother to put a menu on a disc where there is only one show?) I have lots of material that fits this category. Doing something as simple as a demo reel, however, would require multiple clips on a disc, so if I needed that, it could be a problem.

I'm going to have to go back and try again. Using the same version as you, if I strip out commercials I run into trouble. H2M doesn't regenerate the time code or the resulting MPEG, and MF5 chokes. I've been editing on different system, mainly an Intel 3.1GHZ P4, but also on an AMD64 3400+ and an AMD64 x2 4800+, and my results are pretty much the same as I described earlier.

Let me repeat one important thing about this process - it doesn't like all files equally. If I had chosen just 2 or 3 of the wrong kinds of files recorded on my systems, I might have given up on the process. Fortunately, I happened to choose a few programs first that worked well. Only after trying several others did I come across some that weren't friendly. I have had a lot more success than failure, but it's hardly a sure fire bet that all files are going to work or work quickly. When it does work well, it's very fast and painless to create an HD DVD. It will get better.

I have had very similar problems with most of the inexpensive DVD authoring programs. They were all very picky about demanding that the files be perfect -audio and video. I've been transcoding HD football games so they would fit on normal DVDs. I found Neros tools work, but don't do a good job transcoding fast motion video. Other tools would hang up unless the file is absolutely glitch free.

One thing to note is that MPEG files were not designed to be edited. It is pretty easy to screw up a file by editing it. MPEG players seem to be able to get over the occasional glitch in a file, authoring packages do not.

I found that Sony Vegas was by far the best program to transcode. I never tried Adobe Premiere, but I suppose it and other quality tools also work. My experience has been to process and/or transcode the program outside of MF5, and then use MF5 (or Nero) to create the DVD.

The same is probably true when dealing with HD-DVD.

I've found a workaround for a problem I've been having with files edited with HDTVtoMPEG2. Those files would cause MF5 to stall at the file input stage. Using H2M to create the MPEG file from the .ts file never worked for me. Womble MPEG-VCR created files that worked. However, files previously edited with H2M wouldn't work, even if I subsequently ran them through Womble. I noticed, when I tried, though, that the files seemed to stutter at the H2M edit points. What I did was to edit out the stutters in Womble. That is, I set in and out points around the H2M edit points and cut those out. That seems to have resolved the time code issues. They now load quickly into MF5 and I've created some HD DVD folders. I won't know for sure until I burn the discs tomorrow, but it looks like this works.

MPEG-VCR is a frame accurate MPEG editor that works very well. It's a pay program, but you can edit out commercials to the exact frame. H2M gives you about a 1/2 second (15 or 16 frames) of accuracy only. That's not enough for clean edits. There's usually part of a Bose commercial or some such that intrudes into the video. Womble also allows you to run multiple instances at the same time. So, I start 3 or 4 and go do something. When I come back, the MPEGs are there waiting for me.

Looks like I'll be able to salvage all the H2M edited material I have.

The H2M files burned and played flawlessly. The corrections I made in Womble worked.

I went through the process of letting MF5 convert an HD Getaways Bora Bora program, even though the video reports in H2M as 1920x1080i. The resulting HD DVD is playable, but there appears to be a frame rate incompatibility or a field dominance issue (I suspect the latter) that manifests during pans and zooms. I've seen the file play smoothly in MyHD, so I know how good the footage looks when it's played back properly. The conversion process also took about 6x normal on a P4 3.1 GHZ machine. It would be worth it if the conversion didn't butcher the video quality.

Well, again my H2M files with no further editing load fine in MF5. I trying my first complete burn a 24 Fox "24" episode in 720p, commercials stripped & converted to mpeg2 with HDTVtoMpeg2. But, after 2 hours, MF5 is only 8% done, uselessly converting the 720p to 1080i.

I may be jumping the gun here, but it looks like the HD DVD file structure will be:

Top Folder: DMF_TEMP
Sub Folders:
AppResource (empty folder)
CvtedTitle (contains the mpeg file)
Menu_Resource (empty folder)
VIOTMP (empty folder)

- Does you completed HD DVD folder burn look like that? Does it have anything in the folders I indicated were empty?

Where I'm going with this is wondering if we can skip the MF5 'burn' process completely? Just use Nero Burning ROM or similar DVD burn software, re-create the folder structure, and just 'drop' the mpeg file directly into the CvtedTitle folder directly, with no conversion? I wonder if the A1/XA1 would just go ahead and play the mpeg file?

I doubt it will work. You might want to try creating a HVDVD_TS folder and put your MPEG file in it. But you need IFO files and such.

I converted some .ts files that had commercials edited out with H2M and it worked...I used version 1.11.83....that seemed to work....