I picked up 3 TDK 2x BD-R from Circuit City for $4.99 each which was a bargain. It is listed on their website and you have to be lucky to find them in stock in your area. To me the price is worth it to have almost 2.5 hours of video on one disk instead of 20 min on a disk so I don't have to keep loading and unloading disks.

It is only a matter of time and Blue Ray burners will be under $100.00. Lets just be impressed that the format war is over and that we kknow what direction to take.

Chad

"The new DVDA manual states very clearly that the Playstation 3 will NOT support AVCHD / BluRay interactivity, and refers you to loading each stream file manually if you want to see the video."

For some time now I have suggested that Vegas is a bit of a let-down and a bit of an embarrassment with the avchd. People expect Vegas to be at the head of the class with this stuff and instead we're sitting in the back rows.

You don't need an expensive burner if you don't wish.

I do my editing in Vegas and export to Ulead Movie Factory 6 plus. MF6 will burn a avchd disk with all the menus and other extras (that works COMPLETELY in the PS3) and if you set up the export properly it won't even bother to re-code. MF6 is well less than $100, fast, easy, and worth the price.

blink, John, and others.....

I understand all of that. I make AVCVD disks all the time with Ulead MF6, Video Studio 11.5, the new Cyberlink PowerDirector 7 Ultra (beautiful motion menus), Nero, Pinnacle Ultimate version 12, and other programs, and also own not one but two BluRay burners. I've burned tons of BluRay disks as well, although I am here to tell you that 5 buck TDK blanks from Circuit City only come from their "outlet" stores and are not available at normal retail based on several attempts I have made to buy them. I've also authored nearly 500 HD DVD disks.....

The point of all of this is merely that a buyer of a $3500 Sony FX-1 camcorder 4 years ago like me should not have to be here in 2008 wondering why Sony is still back-pedaling on AVCHD, let alone HDV/mpeg2 red laser publishing. Not everybody can afford 350 dollar burners and 15 dollar blanks, and there is NO OTHER SONY METHOD TO DISTRIBUTE HD inexpensively.

Yes, this is a rant. And I did indeed publish it in two places (sorry John_Cline).....but how should a consumer react??? With another smile and "thank you" to Sony for yet another round of hubris and crappy attitude? Well, maybe DVD Architect 6 will offer AVCHD for PS3 a year from now..... Yes, the prices will come down, but not because of Sony but despite them.....


Larry

"The point of all of this is merely that a buyer of a $3500 Sony FX-1 camcorder 4 years ago like me should not have to be here in 2008 wondering why Sony is still back-pedaling on AVCHD,"

Does the FX-1 do AVCHD? I didn't know that.

"My Sony FX-1 $3500 camcorder and Vegas suite are the very last Sony products I will EVER purchase."

Don't take what SCS do out on the rest of Sony. You'd be lucky to find any Sony people who've heard of Vegas. Sony install Adobe's NLE on Sony laptops and generally recommends Avid.

"No problem if you don't mind buying a $350 burner and $15 blank disks to send home movies to the family and friends. Exactly the way Sony wants you to.........."

Don't quite follow that part. You can buy burners and media from vendors other than Sony. Sony do make a quite cheap red laser burner that'll transfer AVCHD files to regular DVDs. No menus but hardly necessary for family and friends stuff.

Bob.

"Once again, Sony pokes a finger directly in the eye of its customers and supporters. My Sony FX-1 $3500 camcorder and Vegas suite are the very last Sony products I will EVER purchase."

Have you written that now for four or five times?
:)

Frankly spoken and again: there is a difference between 001 AVCHD-DVDs and 002-BDMV-DVDs. The PS3 reads 001 AVCHD-DVDs only (with menus), but the DVDA writtes only 002 BDMV DVD. That is a difference, and unfortunately a fact at the moment.

001 AVCHD-DVDs can be created by Uleads Moviefactory 6+ with HD pack, by Nero, by Pinnacle Studio 11.... and mayby other tools. But NOT by the DVDA, but also not by Encore CS3.

A possible reason for the fact, theit neither Encore CS3 nor DVDA5 supports 001 AVCHD DVD, could be, that AVCHD DVDs are not really professional solutions, but something similar to SVCDs or mini-DVDs, as we had them at the beginning of the DVD. Not, that AVCHD-DVDs are bad solutions - but purchase a Samsung 1400, and you will be able to play AVC based BDMV-DVDs.

Or use other tools to generate 001 AVCHD DVDs.

Or use a Blu Ray writter - the PS3 is able to playback BD-R/BD-RE without an issue.

To how many other Sony forums are you going to post your rant?

Honestly, I can totally understand his "rant". DVDA 5 is one year in the making. In that time Sony has taken their existing JPEGs, the ones used for backgrounds etc, and re sized them to HD resolution. They have added an UDF 2.50 driver (probably OEM) and they have given DVDA the ability to write an XML file. In addition to that they have added some AVC and MPEG2 analysis tool to determine whether a video stream is Blu-Ray ready or not.

All in all, if I was asked to perform these tasks, I'd spec it to two man-months max. Developed and tested.

There is definitely not a lot of development resources going into the DVDA product at SCS. That would be a worry to me...

It is a difference if you understand a complain, or if the complain is copied in differents threads or forums. I definitively understand the complain. I do not understand why that is discussed four or five times.

I believe that the development resources for a brand new tool like a BD-ready DVDA goes far beyond two man-month - but I do not know that really. How long does it take to re-write such a tool like the DVDA in C++ in most parts new? But for the beta testing part alone, I would estimate that this is somewhere arround 30-40 man days alone.

lots of pissing & moaning for a FREE UPGRADE that wasn't planned when you bought the 4.5 software last year.

This is one of the reasons why I went to Sony software. Adobe was starting to charge for updates, & there were no bug fixes 'till the next update, that you had to pay for. I'm not sure about the CS products though, as I left Premiere at 1.5, after being there since 4.0

I was told that I could Author a BD to .iso, then burn that .iso to a normal DVD and it would play. Naturally, the .iso would have to be small enough to fit onto the DVD(DVD 5 or DVD9)

I am yet to try this as I don't shoot HD but if this is true... it may help you out in your quest for a Cheaper Alternative.

The AVCHD disc format is really nice and the primary one that I am currently using. It just makes sense. I do mostly short promos and 30 cents per disc vs around $15 makes the choice of which format to use for my HD videos pretty much a no brainer.

Having said that, I have no doubt that true Bluray on BD-R disc is obviously what I (and everyone else) will be using quite soon. Remember the old SVCD format? I remember making SVCDs on regular CD-R media because of how expensive DVD-R media used to be. I haven't made an SVCD in years now, and most current DVD players no longer even play the format.

I have no doubt that this same history will replay itself with AVCHD discs on regular DVD-R media vs Bluray on BD-R. In the long run, the price will come down and we will all go to the Bluray on BD-R format, but for the short run, the AVCHD format makes for a less expensive transition.

Sorry about posting twice, but I felt this was a topic which belonged in both the Vegas and the DVD Architect forums. Had there been a single forum for those of us who purchased the Vegas Suite, a single posting would have been enough, but the forums are not organized in this manner.

My rant may seem inappropriate given that the Version 5 upgrade was free. You might therefore argue that Sony does not owe me or anybody any more features than we originally purchased, and I would have to agree.

Where I don't agree is that Sony has taken the firmware update path to continuously redefining what features will or will not work in my PlayStation 3, and, for that matter, which BluRay, AVCHD, and other material will or will not work. I, for one, am entirely unhappy with the obsolete HDCP, HDMI, and previously purchased hardware and software versions which have been abandoned and discontinued with no warning or control by the owner and user of Sony gear. Never in the history of consumer protection has a manufacturer been able to disable / obsolete a product overnight in its continuing pursuit of copy protection at the very costly expense of consumers.

As regards this specific upgrade to DVDA, I am still waiting for a simple method to distribute HD content to friends and relatives. I saw and used BluRay playback equipment in Japan, in Akihabara, in early 2001, and could buy it then for below $1000. Seven and a half years later, Sony is still dicking with the format, the HDCP, the HDMI, the formats which will or will not play on their various players, and so on. The attitude and strategy of buying the Hollywood Studios (Columbia Pictures), controlling both the content and the means of distribution, is brilliant, and Sony is to be commended for now truly dominating the home entertainment world, but a small, mom and pop wedding photographer, home video amateur photographer, HD enthusiast, and the public in general is just getting screwed in many ways.

It would have been thoughtful of Sony to allow AVCHD disks to be made for easy distribution of home content with DVDA since this does not in any way cut into their entertainment market. I am not naive enough to think that the Milwaukee SCS folks move independently of Tokyo; rather I am personally convinced that very deliberate decisons are made corporately which decide how these products evolve.

As I have said before, most of us have very inexpensive and effective ways of authoring AVCHD disks, so my complaint is entirely about consumer respect and support. Had Sony stated 4 years ago when I bought their FX-1 for $3500 that the distribution for HD content was not going to be offered by Sony except for very high priced burners and media SEVERAL YEARS LATER, I would have never, ever purchased their camera. Had they told me that my first as well as my second HDTV would no longer work with recent release BluRay disks and players at full resolution, I would have never bought them. Shame on me for being an early adopter, and shame on them for continuing to obsolete their stuff over and over again. Will they ever finalize a player and spec???? The burners and media will obviously need to change as well. And what about totally unplayable family movies a year or two from now.....? Talk about $15 coasters.......

Enuff said and my rant is done. Thanks for your comments and feedback.

Larry

Sony . . . the company that dreamed up the Memory Stick. That says it all.

I believe that the development resources for a brand new tool like a BD-ready DVDA goes far beyond two man-month

There is not much new at all about DVDA as far as I can see, but I have only played with it for a few minutes. The menu design is the same as in 4.5 and probably uses some internal format. Once the menus are designed, you either output them to a DVD in DVD format or you output them to a Blu-Ray disk in the BDMV format (this is where the XML stuff comes in). This is not, as far as I have seen, anything near a "major" update unless DVDA was designed horribly from the get go, which is unlikely.

So, these are the tasks (not including research):
1/ Make sure there is no resolution dependencies
2/ Add UDF 2.5 driver - one man week with the appropriate tool
3/ Develop an XML output driver, 1 man-week
4/ Add test for AVC compiancy (drivers in Vegas) and MPEG-2 compliancy - 1 man-week
5/ Test

I don't see that there is too much else added to the product, but as I said, I have only played with it for a few minutes.

lots of pissing & moaning for a FREE UPGRADE that wasn't planned when you bought the 4.5 software last year.

Not at all. Lots of pissing an moaning about the fact that what should have been in the product one year ago, and is now shipped at least 6-12 months after it should have been shipping, is strangely light in the features department.

What's New in Version 5.0
Burning to Blu-ray Disc

What part of that gives the impression you can burn hd to a standard dvd, ,
people bitch vegas is too consumer play toy crap, but when it doesn't play in the sand box people bitch again. Kind of a no win deal

Can't help but agree with you. Not that I'm in any hurry to start burning expensive coasters in HD however the basic functionality is pretty sad compared to other offerings out there. I'm pretty certain you can now build in DVDA anything in SD that you can build in any other authoring app but unless you're a programmer (and even then) you'd have a hard time building scripts or complex interactive DVDs without a flowcharting tool like DVD Studio Pro offers.

Bob.

Bob,

I been using Encore CS3 to create Blu-ray discs for quite a while. It has a flowcharting tool and I simply can't imagine generating a DVD or Blu-ray disc without it. I was looking forward to DVDA v5 just to see what it brought to the table, but I'm sticking with Encore just because of the flowcharting tool (and the fact that it uses the Sonic engine to generate the disc structure.)

John

". . . the company that dreamed up the Memory Stick. That says it all."

Here We Go Again.......

Sony Corporation owns a LOT of technology companies. Sony Music, Sony Entertainment, Sony Electronics, Sony Media - they are all separate companies owned by Sony Corp. As long as they meet their profit goals, Sony Corp doesn't micro-manage how they do business.

General Electric doesn't micro-manage NBC, Disney doesn't micro-manage ABC, why in the world would you think that Sony Corp would micro-manage its' hundreds of owned companies worldwide?

Encore CS3 for me too. I've changed something and reAuthored but I've never burned a coaster with it.
I've only Authored a few (very few) discs in DVDA and I didn't like it.

My choices are:
1. Encore
2. DVD Studio Pro
3. iDVD

I downloaded the free upgrade but I don't even think of DVDA when I think of Authoring DVD's.