HD Home Movies - how to watch them

[maxipax]

Hi,
Am thinking of upgrading my camcorder to the new Pano SD9. One question if anybody can help please. I currently take home movies on a Mini DV Tape then edit them on my computer to make a home DVD, which I then pass around various family members to watch on there standard home DVD players. If I now film, record and make High Def home videos how can on what on can other family members watch them. Do you nedd a Blu Ray or High Def DVD Player, or can you watch the on a standard DVD player. A daft question but I am new to this...
Many thanks for any advice...
Regards

[redsox_mark]

To share with people who will play on ordinary Standard Def DVD players, you need to create an ordinary, Standard Def DVD. You can do this easily from your computer, as you do today. But of course this won't be high def.

You can burn high def onto an ordinary DVD, but only a Blu-Ray player, PS3, XBOX, or HD-DVD player (or PC) will play them, depends on how you create the disc. You can also create Blu-Ray discs. Again, your friends/family will need the right kit to play them.

[peekay1000]

Hi there
|Can you tell me how you go about producing your DVD from DV tape. I am currently going through the same process of converting everything onto my pc so i can burn dvd's etc but am stumbling over which approach formats are best. My files are currently in their uncompressed avi format (pretty big files) and i was wondering what you did with yours from here. IE convert them to which format etc
thanks

[rhubarbe]

You need a network media player:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/streamers-network-media-players/

One of these, with a HDD inside, or connected via SMB over CAT5 to a NAS and to your TV via HDMI, you just play the raw .MTS files one after the other, or wait for the Glorious Day, when you can join 'em together, or even edit them.

I have a Popcornhour (PCH) and it plays them just fine.

Of course, mark's comments on DVD are perfectly valid, also.

[uno]

Can you not just connect camcorder to a dvd recorder ? As i thought you could on my Canon HV20 with a firewire cable

[senu]

Originally Posted by peekay1000

Hi there
|Can you tell me how you go about producing your DVD from DV tape. I am currently going through the same process of converting everything onto my pc so i can burn dvd's etc but am stumbling over which approach formats are best. My files are currently in their uncompressed avi format (pretty big files) and i was wondering what you did with yours from here. IE convert them to which format etc
thanks

As stated in reply to your post they are not "uncompressed"
DV AVI is 1/5 the size of "Uncompressed" but they are bigger than Most other video like mpeg2
Unless you need to edit them for conversion to DVD you shouldnt hneed to capture them from tape anyway
Most Editing software have a workflow from capture to DVD creation

You could do worse than try Ulead Movie Factory for DVD creation .You can use mpeg2 as input but should need to

[Waveform]

Originally Posted by maxipax

Hi,
Am thinking of upgrading my camcorder to the new Pano SD9. One question if anybody can help please. I currently take home movies on a Mini DV Tape then edit them on my computer to make a home DVD, which I then pass around various family members to watch on there standard home DVD players. If I now film, record and make High Def home videos how can on what on can other family members watch them. Do you nedd a Blu Ray or High Def DVD Player, or can you watch the on a standard DVD player. A daft question but I am new to this...
Many thanks for any advice...
Regards

As ppl have stated unless the target audience has a hi-def player such as a PS3 (the most likely player if the sales figures are to be believed) or exotic kit such as a PCH then the humble DVD (and therefore SD video) is the most likely medium for passing on to family and friends.

I can see you thinking "so why do I need a hi-def camcorder??".

I think the answer is future-proofing - was for me anyway. The players will catch up and when they do SD video is going to look pretty poor in comparison so if you are buying a new camcorder then you may as well get HD as the cost differences aren't that great.

Be aware though that the situation with editing the avchd files the SD9 will produce is far from optimal at the moment. If you are a fan of Adobe Premiere then you have a rough time ahead.

Things are getting better and there are good options in Pinnacle Studio 11.5, Ulead VS11 and Nero 7&8 which can edit the avchd natively and create SD DVD plus many other formats. Personally I find Studio not very intuitive when it comes to menu creation whereas Nero does this well (but is not as accomplished at editing).

You can transcode the avchd using the Panasonic HDWriter to mpeg2 for editing in most programs but the quality suffers a fair bit.

Its all worth it in the end though - hi-def camcorder on a hi-def screen (either by BRay disk or direct through HDMI) is truly wondrous to behold.

[maxipax]

Hi,
Thank you for the advice. I am keen to get HD cos I have a new HD TV and hope to buy a Blu Ray Player soon. At the moment I use Pinnacle Express to make home dvd, very easy, basic even makes case covers, I will have to upgrade this then, are the newer ones as easy to use edit etc and which ones are good to work with the New Pano camcorder..
Regards

[chrishull3]

Originally Posted by maxipax

Hi,
Thank you for the advice. I am keen to get HD cos I have a new HD TV and hope to buy a Blu Ray Player soon. At the moment I use Pinnacle Express to make home dvd, very easy, basic even makes case covers, I will have to upgrade this then, are the newer ones as easy to use edit etc and which ones are good to work with the New Pano camcorder..
Regards

only the ps3 is certain to play hd on dvd or blue ray discs from hdv cams but newer bd players will hopefully start to have the updates.

[Waveform]

If Panasonic haven't changed the box contents too much from the SD5 you will get a copy of HDWriter (v2.5 is current I think) and a demo copy of Pinnacle Studio Plus 11 AVCHD Trial version which you can activate for ~£60.

HDWriter will do the transfer from card and backup up to dvddisk and HDD with some very simple editing capability. Is also able to transcode the avchd to two quality levels of mpeg2 (6k and 9k).
There is also a free transcoder available from Panasonic which will convert avchd to DVCPro HD which is a good option if you do not have any native avchd editors and want to do extensive editing (the only hassle is it converts the audio to two mono tracks which I find a pain when editing).

Of the current native avchd NLE I have played with Pinnacle Studio, Ulead Video Studio and Nero 7. I hear Sony Vegas can edit avchd but I'm not sure if it plays nice with Panasonic avchd files (not all avchd files are created equal).

Pinnacle Studio is probably the best current option IMHO if it is stable for you. It plays the clips smoothly in the monitor and comes with a nice range of effects and audio options. I personally find it confusing to create menus for DVD etc but that may just be me. Make sure you get the latest patches, 11.1.2 improved stability a great deal for me - previously it was virtually unusable with hard crashes midway through render.

Ulead Video Studio on the face of it seems as capable but the killer for me is the jerky play back of clips in the monitor making it very hard to edit precisely (on my Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz with 4Gb of DDR2, ATI X1950XT).

Nero 7 is somewhere in between the two with the quality of clip play back in monitor and has excellent features for disk creation but only has very basic edit, audio and effects features.

I don't have a BD burner atm so my current workflow is direct towards SD DVD . I transfer using HDWriter, transcode to high bitrate (25 Mbps) mpeg2 720x576, edit in Adobe Premiere and create disks features and menus in Encore. This is not a cheap option for software though!
There is a mainconcept plugin available for native avchd edit in CS3 but I found it didn't work that great yet and at ~£500 for the plugin alone it is very expensive.


Hope all that helps somewhat, any questions just yell!

[redsox_mark]

Originally Posted by uno

Can you not just connect camcorder to a dvd recorder ? As i thought you could on my Canon HV20 with a firewire cable

Yes, this is another way of making a standard def DVD. With the SD9 (or any other AVCHD camcorder) you can't use Firewire though; you would have to use analogue video output from the camcorder.

[alpine101]

Originally Posted by Waveform

Ulead Video Studio on the face of it seems as capable but the killer for me is the jerky play back of clips in the monitor making it very hard to edit precisely (on my Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz with 4Gb of DDR2, ATI X1950XT).

By the time I get to editing, I've already previewed the raw files and decided what to cut. VS11.5's ability to do smart rendering is its killer feature as far as I am concerned. But I am producing HD full resolution output, not downsizing to ordinary DVDs with the loss of quality that entails.

[Waveform]

Originally Posted by alpine101

By the time I get to editing, I've already previewed the raw files and decided what to cut. VS11.5's ability to do smart rendering is its killer feature as far as I am concerned. But I am producing HD full resolution output, not downsizing to ordinary DVDs with the loss of quality that entails.

I realise I wasn't clear on my post - I was referring to direct editing of the avchd when I was discussing VS, Studio and Nero. With VS I find there is an annoying delay between clicking the monitors controls and it responding - it drives me mad. I'm sure once the editing is done its fine but usually I have do a fair bit of edit (a testament to my lack of camera skill I'm sure) so its doesn't work for me. Of course ppl have different workflows so as ever YMMV

[alpine101]

Originally Posted by Waveform

I realise I wasn't clear on my post - I was referring to direct editing of the avchd when I was discussing VS, Studio and Nero. With VS I find there is an annoying delay between clicking the monitors controls and it responding - it drives me mad.

So was I. But I agree that the major shortcoming of the current version of VS is that the programmers have forgotten to change the cursor icon to the busy hourglass at several points, so you can't tell it's working away under the covers. I've got used to it and it's so much faster than the others at getting the output finished.