High Def Delivery

[ted]

I have a HD project that the client wants to play at an event in Mid August.
I haven't delivered in HD yet so I'm looking for smarter people then myself for suggestions.

I'm "told" that all I have to do is render the project to a VC-1 file. Then they can open that on a computer and run it on a large projection system at their function.

What settings for VC-1 and does anyone have more input for delivering and playing and projecting HD? The client can handle the costs for playing this at their event.
I do have a Blue-Ray 50 gig I can use but no Authoring software for HD and don't want to go there at this point.

THANKS!

[Bobt]

I was going to suggest Blue-Ray since you can get a player for it.
There was a guy on the VTNT list Tom who did a blue ray disk and was
quite pleased.

Bob

[ScorpioProd]

Yes, Tom posted a good workflow on it, though it's still much more complicated than it should be. Hopefully next year it will be easier.

So, since Ted would prefer a simpler way, allow me to suggest what I did a full year ago to accomplish exactly this. All with no need for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, either.

As long as the client has a high-powered laptop or computer to connect to their HD projector, you are all set.

All you need to do is create a VC-1 encoded file, period. That's it. That's all. Done. It simply plays in WMP on their computer to their projector, as any video in SD would.

Although I also acquire in 1080i, for the VC-1 product, I encode it to 720p to be able to use a lower data rate and more importantly to be sure that it can playback fine on less than the highest end computer.

You didn't mention how long your finished product is, since, of course, space on a normal DVD for HD is more limited, though not as much as you may think thanks to the excellent compression of VC-1.

Using WME to do a 2-pass VBR VC-1 encode of a one hour twenty minute project was no problem at all to fit on a normal single-layer DVD. I had WME do the deinterlace and downconversion from 1080i (in a High Quality intermediate codec) down to 720p, and it did an EXCELLENT job!

My codec was WMV 9 Advanced Profile, which is VC-1. My average data rate I set for 6.3Mb/s and my maximum data rate was 9Mb/s. Realize, the exact SAME data rate calculations for how much you can fit on a normal DVD are used here. Audio was set to the WMA 9 Pro codec with a 2-pass VBR as well, with my total stream maximum of video and audio never to exceed 10Mb/s.

This came out beautiful and looked so much sharper than SD. I put it on a winopen equiped autorunning DVD and it played back perfect in any high-end laptop.

But for your use, you don't even need it to autorun, simply create the single WMV file that can be run manually through WMP.

Now as for WHERE to do the encoding, I recommend using Windows Media Encoder. You could render your project out to SpeedHQ as 1080i and bring it in that way, or have SpeedEDIT do the 720p conversion if you prefer. WME should be able to read SpeedHQ properly, but I honestly haven't tried doing that yet, so I'm not sure.

Couldn't you just encode the VC-1 in SpeedEDIT 1.2? Sure, you could, if you want to... But realize, at the lower data rates needed for using VC-1 on a standard DVD, you're going to really want 2-pass VBR. And that is NOT something that SpeedEDIT 1.2 can do. Feel free to prove me wrong on this, but I couldn't find a way to make SpeedEDIT 1.2 do 2-pass VBR for VC-1.

[kleima]

JVC's quick solution to allow people to play back HD from a DVD before authoring solution are available or affordable is a DVD player (for only $400) that can do file playback of HDV, MPEG, WinMedia, etc. So, you could burn the HD files to a DVD data disk (30 min single layer/60 min double layer) and this machine can play them in HD. I think you could also burn them to an HD-DVD if you don't have enough space on a DVD and you could skip any authoring.
Here is the link: http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL101546

[Gary Robinson]

Ulead has an $80 software solution for hd and bluray. The hd dvd players are heading South of $300.

[vtlipera]

Eugene, I'm using MXF files on the timeline(even though it plays choppy) and tried rendering them to a WMV 9 HD file. Everything I've tried is poor. it doesn't match the excellent quality of vegas 7 render 8Mbps HD, 1080 Video,CBR video Smoothness 100. Any ideas on how to match this on SE to play on windows media player. Thanks. Bill

[ScorpioProd]

Sorry Bill, I don't know what to tell you...

Like I pointed out, since SpeedEDIT 1.2 doesn't do 2-pass VBR for VC-1, I honestly haven't tried the VC-1 encoding, all my needs tend to be long form where CBR wouldn't cut it for me.

But gee, I would think that SpeedEDIT 1.2 and Vegas 7 would do the same quality for VC-1 at a CBR... I mean, it's not like they aren't using the same codec... So they certainly SHOULD look identical...

I'm afraid Newtek would have to answer this one for you. I'll e-mail John Perkins and see if he can comment on this thread.

Until then, you might want to do what I recommended that Ted try, render out your HD to SpeedHQ and then put it into the real WME for any VC-1 encoding, with full options there.

[ted]

I haven't been hanging here much, but thanks everyone.
What I love about this forum is that one problem gets multiple solutions due to the experience of the people here. This really saves a lot of trial and error when entering new territory.
Thanks again. I'm staying tuned. Quality is really important for this project...but when isn't it? :hey:

[vtlipera]

Thanks Eugene, I'll keep trying, Bill

[Danic101]

I have been doing a ton of WMV HD delivery and also just got into HD-DVD/Blu ray fun.

[ted]

I have been doing a ton of WMV HD delivery and also just got into HD-DVD/Blu ray fun.

What is your workflow going Blu-Ray DVD? Ideally I would prefer to have my clients rent or buy a Blu-ray DVD and use that through a projection system or HD monitor.

Wouldn't the WMV method really knock down the quality?
I'm 90% done swapping computer systems through our facility and close to having time to play with this.
Great info everyone! :thumbsup:

[Danic101]

No, the WMV-VC1 Codec is one of the codecs that is the standard for HD-DVD/Bluray. 25MBS VC1 is just gorgeous.

[ixlor8]

I was in a Best Buy this week. They had customer that brought in a standard DVD. It was formated to a BlueRay file format. It playback on the BlueRay players in HD. The sales guys said the limitations was the length of recording time on the DVD.

How do you do this?