Burning HDV Home Movies to Blu-ray disks

tnw2933 wrote on 4/26/2007, 3:05 PM
I was very disappointed to see that not only did Sony not release a new vesion of DVD Architect at NAB, but there is not even any mention of when this might occur. Having waited a long time for Sony to enable authoring of BD-RE and BD-R disks in DVD Architect, I finally gave up on them and explored other options.

Herin I report my results of using the Lacie d2 Blu-ray burner and Roxio's DVDit Pro HD to burn my HDV edited home productions to a blu-ray disk that would play back in my Sony BDP-S1 blu-ray player. I received the Lacie burner, one 25 GB Sony BD-RE and five 50 GB Panasonic BD-RE disks yesterday. Here is a summary of my initial results.

The HDV production that I chose was one shot using footage from the Sony FX1 and Sony HC3 HDV camcorders. The footage was orignally edited in Vegas 7.0d and rendered to a .m2t file and to tape for archival purposes a couple of months ago. To begin with, I opened Sony Vegas and placed the rendered .m2t file in Vegas 7.0d. I then selected the Bluprint template in Vegas and rendered the project to an elementary video stream file (.m2v). This step is necessary because DVDit Pro HD will not allow the direct importation of a .m2t file into that program. I took this .m2v file and its corresponding multichannel .ac3 file into DVDit Pro HD. The .m2v file was brought into DVDit Pro HD without any further transcoding but the .ac3 file was transcoded. The value of the Bluprint template in Vegas is that it produces .m2v files that can be imported by DVDit Pro HD without transcoding and DVDit Pro HD is very particular about what constitutes a Blu-ray legal mpeg2 file. I don't know why DVDit Pro HD transcoded the .ac3 file.

I then easily created chapter points in DVDit Pro HD as well as a main menu and a Scene Selection menu. DVDit Pro HD comes with a nice selection of images, buttons, menu templates, etc. and the workflow is quite intuitive if you have used any other authoring program such as DVD Architect. I hardly scratched the surface of all of the possibilities in authoring with DVDit Pro HD because I was eager to get to the burning stage, and even more eager to see what the disk looked like when played back on my Sony BDP-S1 and viewed via my Sony VPL-VW100 projector on a 96 in. diagonal screen.

All went well until I hit the burn stage. When I set up the burn parameters, inserted a 25 GB blank Sony BD-RE single layer disk in the Lacie drive, and clicked on "burn" I almost immediately got an unsettling error message: "unexpected device sense code: 0%-27240". After numerous retries, I was stumped.

I should note that I had previously checked out the Lacie Blu-ray drive by using Nero's Ultimate 7 Extended Edition to burn about 5 GB of backup data to a 50 GB Panasonic blu-ray dual layer disk followed by a verification of the data -- all of which worked perfectly. In desperation, I took the 50 GB Panasonic dual layer disk that I had previously written to with Nero, and to my surprise when this disk was inserted in the Lacie blu-ray drive, DVDit Pro HD began almost immediately burning the project. However, suddenly another program popped up on the screen and before I could shut that program down, I got the same burn error message. The Lacie blu-ray burner had come bundled with PowerDVD for watching blu-ray disks on the computer, and I had installed that program although it turned out to be useless since my video card is not compatible with Blu-ray playback. So, I just uninstalled PowerDVD, rebooted, went into DVDit Pro HD and sucessfully burned the Panasonic 50 GB dual layer disk. However, I could never get the blank Sony 25 GB disk to burn from within DVDit Pro HD.

I then had DVDit Pro HD produce a blu-ray disk image of the project on my raid array and I used this for subsequent burns. I placed the Sony 25 GB single layer BD-RE in the Lacie, opened Nero and directed it to burn a Blu-ray disk image. The burn went well with no problems. Now I had 25 GB and 50 GB single and dual layer blu-ray disks of my project to try in my Sony BDP-S1.

The 25 GB BD-RE played perfectly from start to finish in the Sony BDP-S1 and the image looked great. In fact, I could see no differences between the edited project and the original HDV footage. There were no motion artifacts or anomalies of any type. Still images were vibrant, razor sharp, and with excellent color saturation. Menus were beautiful and all the links worked as desired. I was a happy camper!

I then placed the Panasonic 50 GB BD-RE disk in the Sony blu-ray player. The first 15 minutes of the 24 minute project played perfectly and then every 3-9 seconds (but not with regular periodicity), the image on the screen would freeze for a fraction of a second and the audio would drop out for a fraction of a second. This continued until the end of the project. Clearly the video stream was not continuous from the Sony player. In as much as Sony only enabled BD-RE playback about a month ago with the release of the 1.55 firmware update for the BDP-S1, my belief is that the player is not yet fully enabled for smooth playback of dual layered 50 GB authored disk. I even re-burned the Panasonic 50 GB dual layer disk using Nero and verified the burn and it still showed the same freezing and audio dropouts.

Time to get some sleep. It has been a dream of mine for over a year to prepare my own blu-ray projects. Frankly, I am not surprised at the problems I had, but rather that it worked at all!

Tom

P.S. I began rendering a second .m2t project in Vegas 7.0d to the Bluprint template. I am using a computer equipped with the E6700 Core 2 Duo 2.67 GHz processor, 4X150 GB Western Digital Raptor 10K drives in a Raid array, and 2 GB of RAM. The machne has performed flawlessly for the 2 months I have had it.l However, this project, which consists of a single 33 minute .m2t file that I had previously rendered to tape and to a file with Vegas 7.0d has now totally crashed my machine twice. Both times the render ran for about 20-30 minutes and then Veas 7.0d went "poof", the screen went black, and the computer simply spontaneously rebooted. If anyone has any ideas what may be causing this, I'd like to hear them. I havenot encountered any previous render problems in Vegas 7, in Edius Pro 4.12, or in SpeedEdit when using all three NLE's (not at the same time of course!) on this machine.

Comments

blink3times wrote on 4/26/2007, 7:48 PM
This has been an ongoing problem with the players since day1 and has really put a damper on blu ray burning.... I'm a little surprised to see that it STILL has not been worked out.

I have run into the machine kill problem before with the blueprint template. It seems to happen when I try to render as M2T or MPG. But I played with the settings and it does not seem to happen when I render as M2V/MPA. What this means I have no idea, but obviously a M2V/MPA is no good for your needs.
johnmeyer wrote on 4/26/2007, 9:04 PM
A few comments and a partial answer.

1. Congratulations. It is good to hear that after a year, we're finally beginning the steps towards authoring HD discs. Your post was very useful.

2. It sure would be good if you could avoid that m2v render. I assume that this took a long time (even on your screamer) and that some degradation must happen (although you said it looked as good as the original m2t). I'd sure like to see that workflow improved.

3. As for the crashes, I don't think this is directly relevant, but perhaps it will suggest something to look at. I got the nastiest crashes I have ever had in the 3.5 years I have owned this computer when I tried to capture from tapes that had previous recorded DV material. When the bitstream transitioned from DV to HDV, I went beyond the BSOD and right to some BIOS messages. While you are rendering and not capturing, do you have any sort of mixed media on the timeline, and the does the crash relate to where in the project you are at? Does it happen at the same point in the project?
tnw2933 wrote on 4/27/2007, 8:46 AM
Johnmeyer,

1. Thanks. I had hoped that my experiences burning edited HDV material to blu-ray would be of some use. I certainly don't believe I am the only one interested in doing this.

2. The render of the .mt2 file to .m2v using the Bluprint template in Vegas is not excessively long. My 24 minute project consisting of just one .m2t clip took about 45 minutes to render to .m2v and last night I rendered a 36 minute project consisting of just one .m2t clip to .m2v with the Bluprint template and it took 1 hr 5 minutes. Most of my projects are on the order of 30-45 minutes and so these render times are acceptable to me. I would much rather have Vegas doing the transcoding to .m2v than have DVDit Pro HD doing the transcoding, although I have no reason yet to suspect the transcoding in DVDitPro HD. It's just that I trust Vegas' transcoding more since i am more familiar with it.

3. I think I discovered what was causing the crashes. I shut down Media Manager, auto backup, and made one or two other changes in Vegas' preferences, and the project rendered the .m2t to .m2v with the Bluprint template with no problems. Outside of Vegas I have never had this computer crash and it really surprised me when it did!

I do hope thhe issues around playing 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray BD-RE disks in the Sony BDP-S1 are addressed by Sony. It would be a shame not to be able to make use of the larger capacity of these disks for longer projects than will fit on the 25 GB Blu-ray disks.

Tom
tnw2933 wrote on 4/27/2007, 8:49 AM
blink3times,

I believe in time Sony will through firmware upgrades improve the playback of 50 GB BD-RE disks on the BDP-S1. In the five months that I have had the BDP-S1 Sony has issued three firmware upgrades. Only the last of these even enabled BDMV projects to be played on the BDP-S1.

I think I may have identified the cause of my crash during the render with the Bluprint template. See my reply below to Johnmeyer.

Tom
LSHorwitz wrote on 4/28/2007, 1:35 PM
Having owned an Fx-1 since its' inception, an HC3, and Vegas suites upgraded for several years, I am totally appaled and disgusted with the utter lack of support for distributing HDV content on BluRay. The method and equipment described above is expensive, unreliable from player to player, very late in coming, and ***NOT*** even offered by Sony as an authoring solution, but rather by Sonic as a %500 to $600 additional software purchase.

I have been authoring superb HD-DVD disks for 18 months, starting first with Apple software, and, for the last 8 months, with very low cost software from Ulead, burning standard red laser 4.7 and 9 GB disks with 23 and 46 minutes of HDV content. These play superbly in the Toshiba HD DVD players, do NOT require either special expensive burners of very exspensive blank disks, produce ultra sharp playback entirely indistinguishable from the raw HDV from the camcorder playback, and menus, slide shows (of still phots) and animated menu effects for the total investment of $69 for the software, $30 for the burner, and 22 cents apiece for blank disks.

Sony has a huge stake in seeing adoption of HDV (and for that matter AVCHD) by making affordable and easy to use tools for consumers. People like myself have been using HDV for literally ***2 years*** with no solution in sight, and even Vegas has yet to support AVCHD.......


They have entirely, absolutely, and completely missed this market in my view.

Larry

JJKizak wrote on 4/28/2007, 1:47 PM
I believe the DRM stuff set them back many years in developement and it is still the main problem.
JJK
vicmilt wrote on 4/28/2007, 3:03 PM
LSHorwitz -
what incredible news!!

I want to do it immediately - let me be certain about what you wrote and/or please correct:

1- normal DVD burner
2 - normal DVD discs
3 - Ulead software does the trick (exact name, please??)
4 - playback in Toshiba HD DVD player

Is it really that simple?
How would you say it looks in comparison to Widescreen DV compressed from M2t files? (My current delivery method)

You are truly the Ponce DeLeon of the Vegas site!

v
ps - what are you using to compress? exact methods please...
and what are you using to author? does it support chapters and menus?
blink3times wrote on 4/28/2007, 3:39 PM
ps - what are you using to compress? exact methods please...


Burning fully compatible, fully authored hybrid hd dvd's (hd dvd's on normal dvd media with a normal burner) in nothing new... been around for a while now.

Yes you can FULLY author with menus just as a normal dvd. You must however play them back on a toshiba hi def player. If you use a pc then your burner will be able to write the HD DVD but it will not be able to read it back. The files are written as UDF2.5 (your burner can write this, but not read it)

It looks every bit what you would see if you connected the cam to the tv.

Ulead software will do it as well as Nero or Pinnacle studio

you can get just about 43 minutes on a double layer disk.
blink3times wrote on 4/28/2007, 3:46 PM
They have entirely, absolutely, and completely missed this market in my view.


Yup.

Sony had their chance to bury toshiba in the burning/authoring world...the equipment and supplies have been out for quite some time now... and they completely blew it. Toshiba burners will be out in August (or sooner) and if they work as well as hybrid hd dvd's, then Sony's lost this end of the war.
LSHorwitz wrote on 4/28/2007, 6:47 PM
vicmilt,

Start with:

http://www.ulead.com/dmf/runme.htm

This software sells for $79 MSRP and is often discounted to $50-$60. As I said previously, it creates menues, chaptered, fully compatible HD DVDs either 23 minutes or 46 minutes long on standard DVD-R blanks which play flawlessly on the Toshiba players. The HDV content is ***NOT*** transcoded, and goes on the disk just as it comes from an HDV camera as 25 MBit/sec MPEG2 long GOP format with a file size virtually the same as the original .m2t capture. The process of creating a disk goes very fast as a result unless you optionally chose to use complex, lengthy, animated menus, which take a while to render. The display on a 1920 by 1080 monitor is indistinguishable from the component signal playback.

As stated above, other vendors have also released similar software, and Ulead has another product which does a much more detailed editing and titling job as well called Video Studio 10 Plus at $99. I own both but generally use the simpler product.

The Ulead software also can make BluRay disks, but only one of the several BD formats is supported which lacks menus, lacks chapters, and can only be burned to a true blue laser disk with a true BluRay burner...... I consider this alternative option to be a big waste of money with the sole benefit being you can make long disks. Having seen most of the home movies which people make, I think I would prefer the 23 minute variety personally..... (-;

Larry
LSHorwitz wrote on 4/28/2007, 6:55 PM
blink3times,

I can play my HD-DVDs on a PC if packet writing disk software is installed like InCD from Nero as an example. This allows UDF 2.5 disks to be opened and read / written. Freeware programs like VLC can play the .EVO files with no cost whatsoever, and Cycberlink and Intervideo both offer PC HD-DVD player software as well.

Also, a Mac natively opens and reads the newer UDF 2.5 format, and their DVD player will mount and read HD DVDs but only if you have installed their authoring tool, DVD Studio Pro, another product which just blows the socks off of DVD Architect from Sony.

Sony has been caught up in its' own nickers for years now and I totally agree that their DRM and marketing attitude have put them way, way behind. You would think that somebody in that company would remember the word "Betamax" and start to use a little intelligence.....


Larry

Steve Mann wrote on 4/29/2007, 1:04 AM
I am in no hurry to buy any HD player.

The Blu-Ray spec has changed two times since the first BD players hit the market. Early adopters who bought a first-generation Blu-ray player may not realize that a lot of the features they are being shown on promotional videos in the store don't yet exist in any shipping Blu-ray players. If their player is compatible to BD-Video Version 1,0 it may not play video compatibele with BD-Video Version 1.1 or the BD-Live 2.0 profile that replaced 1.1 after a few of those players shipped.

HD-DVD isn't without its stumbles. The recently announced LG BH100 fully supports Blu-ray discs, but it lacks support for HD-DVD's iHD. This means that you can't access an HD-DVD's interactive menus, you can only see the movie straight through. As a result, the DVD Forum has sued LG for falsely using the HD-DVD logo and for falsely saying that their hybrid player plays HD-DVDs when in fact it doesn't play them the way they were intended to be played. So the LG Hybrid player is not shipping yet.

References: Gizmodo.com and CampaignHD.com

This is fun.....

Steve Mann
blink3times wrote on 4/29/2007, 4:05 AM
"I can play my HD-DVDs on a PC if packet writing disk software is installed like InCD from Nero as an example. This allows UDF 2.5 disks to be opened and read / written. Freeware programs like VLC can play the .EVO files with no cost whatsoever, and Cycberlink and Intervideo both offer PC HD-DVD player software as well."

That's good to know... thanks for the info.
====================================================

"The recently announced LG BH100 fully supports Blu-ray discs, but it lacks support for HD-DVD's iHD. This means that you can't access an HD-DVD's interactive menus, you can only see the movie straight through."


That's about the only stumble Toshiba has had and it's more an issue with the law.
Don't get me wrong... I'm not really a supporter of either one of these formats. What I care about is which one can give me the best bang for the buck, and so far that has been toshiba.... right from day one. And now, the hd dvd burner will be out soon (August they said). I KNOW that there is already cheap, reliable software out there that will allow me to FULLY author a hd dvd. I have been eyeballing those blu ray burners for a while now, and so far I have not bitten the bullet because of all the horror stories I have heard on blu ray burning.... and they're not getting any better either. I think I'll wait another 4 months for hd dvd.
JJKizak wrote on 4/29/2007, 5:54 AM
Gee, I wonder how Best Buy can sell the LG ($1200.00) with a full page add in today's paper if there is a problem with playing HD-DVD stuff without telling the customer?

JJK
LSHorwitz wrote on 4/29/2007, 5:55 AM
Steve,

While it's true that neither format for hi def DVD playback is 100% finished, and that the dual format player has its' problems also, I think that the Toshiba players are really excellent, and are available at $300, which is well below the BluRay pricing, and not a huge expense for those who wish to publish, distribute, or watch their HDV content. I think the contrast of the approach I suggested using HD DVD to the original poster's BluRay solution in terms of expense, compatability, and ease of publishing is like day and night.

Larry
Xander wrote on 4/29/2007, 8:35 AM
I am in no rush to adopt either format. They both seem to have issues. As SCS releases quality software, I am not surprised they are delaying support until most of these issues get resolved - they would have to release patches every other month otherwise. For now, I render WMV-HD files and stream these from the PC to XBOX360. Others use the PS3. For now, that is satisfactory.
blink3times wrote on 4/29/2007, 8:47 AM
"Gee, I wonder how Best Buy can sell the LG ($1200.00) with a full page add in today's paper if there is a problem with playing HD-DVD stuff without telling the customer?"

The LG is actually selling now but there is either a lawsuit pending, or underway... or something like that. It does PLAY hd dvd but the interactive features are non existent, which is why the lawsuit has become an issue. The HD DVD founders have decided that is does not meet the specs and therefore does not qualify to carry the "HD DVD" name. Not really an HD DVD fumble in the mean sense of the word... simply the HD DVD camp trying to protect their name.
tnw2933 wrote on 4/30/2007, 9:26 AM
First, I want to thank everyone who responded to this thread which I began. You gave me some great ideas as you will read below.

I don't want to get into any diatribe about the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD formats. I own both the Sony BDP-1 Blu-ray player and the Toshiba HD-A2 player and have both installed in my home theater described in my initial posts. Both formats can produce a stunning high defnition picture in my system and I have no issues with supporting both formats.

I was aware of postings on various forums (including most notably the AVS Forums) where individuals reported being able to burn an HD-DVD image to a standard (not HD-DVD) disk and which played back in their Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player. I had not pursued this because of (1) the complexity of the procedures being described which often used three or four different pieces of software to accomplish the objective; (2) the fact that there were conflicitng reports about whether these HD-DVD's created on standard DVD's played backon the Toshiba HD-A2. Some people reported they did not play back even on later versions of the firmware for the Toshiba HD-A1!

However, the comments in this thread above led me to re-examine the software and procedures now available for burning HD-DVD image files to standard DVD's and to determine if any disk of that type I created would play back in my Toshiba HD-A2. My results follow.

I went to the Ulead web site and downloaded the trial version (no limitations other than 30 days of use) of Ulead's DVD Movie Factory 6 Plus software. Thiis $79 piece of software allows one to create and burn an HD-DVD image file to both hard disks and to ordinary DVD's. I found the software very easy to use and it does exaclty what it is advertised to do. I began with a .m2t file of an approximately 30 minute HDV project rendered in Vegas 7 uisng the Print To File procedure. Ulead's Movie Factory 6 would not import this .m2t file into a project so I rendered the file to a high definition .m2v file with the Sony Bluprint template. Ulead's Movie Factory 6 Plus imported this with no problems. I then brought the corresponding 5.1 channel Dolby Surround .ac3 file that I had rendered in Vegas 7 into the Ulead Project and it accepted it with no problems. I then set up Ulead's DVD Movie Factory 6 Plus to (1) create an HD-DVD image to a directory on my hard disk; (2) to burn a DVD-R disk that I inserted in the DVD drive of my computer; (3) to turn off the computer when finsihed. I actually heard the computer shut down just after going to bed last night. This morning I got up and found that everything had gone as planned. An HD-DVD image of my project had been burned to the DVD-R that I had palced in the computer and to the HD directory that I had directed on my computer. Note that the .m2v file had been transcoded by Movie Factory 6 Plus and the entire procedure described above took about 4 hours.

I placed the DVD-R in my Toshiba HD-A2 and it immediaely played the entire 30 minute project, complete with menus, etc. without the slightest problems. No one needed to be told the image was high defnition! It was razor sharp, with excellent detail, and no motion artifacts whatsoever.

There are limitations, of course, to this procedure. One is that single layer DVD's can only store 4.3 GB of data, and my project had used about 4.1 GB of the space on my DVD. I have not yet tried a dual layer DVD to see if I can get a one hour HD-DVD project on DVD, but I do know thatMovie FActory 6 Plus support's both single and dual layer disks. The menu templates, etc. of Ulead's DVD's Movie Factory 6 Plus are more limited than those in Roxio's DVDit Pro HD, but they are adequate and look quite nice. DVDit Pro HD is clearly a more advanced and capble authoring program than Movie Factory 6 Plus, but the latter offers the unique ability to burn an HD-DVD image to HD and to standard DVD's. providing a great method for preparing HD-DVD's on standard DVD's for relatively short projects.

I have also prepared a Blu-ray project in Nero's Ultimate 7 Extended Edition software. This prepares a Blu-ray BDAV type project and in spite of being told in both writing and verbally by two different Sony Technical Support people that the Sony BDP-S1 player will play both types of projects (BDMV and BDAV), I can tell you from first hand sxperience that the BDP-S1 with the very latest 1.55 firmware does NOT play a BDAV project.

My Lacie d2 Blu-ray burner will be relegated to data archiving (which it does well albeit with a 2X burn speed, slowly) until and unless Sony (1) implements both BDAV and BDMV project playback on this player; (2) Properly implements playback of BDMV projects created on 50 GB dual layer BD-RE disks (which the player does not currently do).

I have been a steady customer of Sony Creative Software's products since long before Sonic Foundry became Sony Creative Software. I am deeply disappointed that I have had to turn to other software vendors to find support for Blu-ray disk burning. I share the anger of others in the above posts that Sony has indeed dropped the ball on Blu-ray support -- both at the player (hardware) and the software (authoring) level.

Tom



johnmeyer wrote on 4/30/2007, 10:02 AM
That's really useful information on how you created your HD on DVD disks.

I have had really bad vibes about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray since the CES 2006 intro and the March & May 2006 initial shipments. We are now a year into this and these two products may go down in history as the most botched introductions in consumer electronics history.

However, I have predicted all along that products from the Far East would give us what we want without needing to deal with all those frightful DRM issues, and also without having to pay what I now understand may be (because of royalty issues) permanently outrageous prices for blank media.

Now, a year ago I was telling my clients that dual layer DVD media was probably a dead format because, despite my reservations, even I didn't think the HD format rollout would be so chaotic. However, if you can put a full hour of HD on a dual layer DVD blank, that is going to be sufficient for lots of folks. If I can purchase a DVD player that can also play these HD on DVD disks, and purchase it for virtually no money and use dual layer blanks that have now broken the $2/disc mark and are rapidly headed for under $1, then the pressure for a true HD player and burner sure seems to be rapidly diminishing.


LSHorwitz wrote on 4/30/2007, 10:44 AM
Tom,

I am delighted to read that your experiences in creating HD DVDs went just as smoothly as my previous post in this thread indicated. The results are indeed razor sharp, essentially foolproof, and also permit even better looking slideshows using 2 megapixel or greater digital still photos which nearly anybody can create with $100 digital cameras. HD DVDs and this method are therefore not just for HDV camcorder owners.

I have made literally hundreds of HD DVDs now, starting about 20 months ago, and Ulead's older Video Studio 10 Plus has had the same authoring capabilities well before Ulead Movie Factory 6. Moreover, Apple's DVD Studio Pro made me HD DVDs in 2005 as well, before thew Toshiba players even existed!

I reiterate these points only to illustrate what a total and complete quagmire has been created, particularly on the BluRay side for HD content producers. The impediments are entirely political and financial, and DRM is most likely the key element forcing delays.

I might mention that Cyberlink Power Producer 4 and Pinnacle's latest version also claim to do the same thing as Ulead's $69 product. I have not used either but there are other options which are also low cost.

I too am a huge Vegas fan, and have spent several hundred thousand dollars on Sony equipment in my lifetime professionally and personally, starting in the early 1960's, including several Betamax, Betacam, and other pieces of Sony technology. I think the hubris now makes me think and purchase a lot differently.....


Larry

blink3times wrote on 4/30/2007, 12:04 PM
Just one tip on double layer disks.


I do nothing but DL disks now and I have found that you must use good quality disks. Now I use verbatim and have no problems at all.

But previous to this I jumped from one cheap dl disk to the next and had nothing but skips, freezes... etc.

So if you go DL... then spend a few extra bucks and save yourself the head ache.
LSHorwitz wrote on 4/30/2007, 12:19 PM
Excellent advice. Having burned many thousands of disks on dozens of burners, I too settled on Verbatims and ***almost*** all of them have been perfect. I have yet to find a brand I like better!

Larry
Laurence wrote on 4/30/2007, 7:50 PM
Just one little point to add:

The HD-DVD spec allows you to write HD files to a regular DVD+-R disk. The BluRay spec does not allow this. This was an arbitrary decision that has nothing to do with the capablities of either format. I suppose Sony just wanted to sell their new discs and burners.

Anyway, for us regular folks, this was just a lousy decision. I do a lot of short video DVDs and a half hour of time is more than enough for most of these projects. I shouldn't have to buy a high density disc unless I need the space. Not being able to do this because of some artificial limitation just plain sucks IMHO.

Aside from this one issue, I would be in the BluRay camp, but this one issue is a big enough one to push people like me into the HD-DVD camp. Hopefully Sony will see how big a mistake this is and change the one line of code or so that they put in there specifically to prohibit us from authoring HD material to BD format DVD+-Rs.
PeterWright wrote on 4/30/2007, 11:32 PM
Very informative thread this.

One simple question I couldn't find an answer to easily - with dual layer DVDs, are special DVD players necessary, or do they play in "standard" DVD set tops?