Laurence - HD delivery suggestions?

vicmilt wrote on 10/21/2007, 2:23 PM
Hi Laurence -

I'd send you an email about this, but I think there are probably a bunch of folks here who would also like your opinion on this ever-evolving field.

My specs:

I've got a 1hr 15min feature shot in SD and HDV (PD170 and Z1).
I've been delivering on NTSC Widescreen and quite frankly the stuff looks fabulous. Indeed, except for aspect differences, you really can't tell which is SD and which is HDV.

I'm getting approached now for private screenings and am schlepping my tiny DVD player and an oldish projector (1024x768).
It all looks amazingly excellent. I also have a Samsung 50" plasma which I think is 720. This I use for home screenings, etc.

But I hear the siren call that you are singing, and it sounds great.

So what do you suggest for both situations?
What deck(s) should I buy for playback(s)?
Will the HiDef work in my projector?
And what workflow would you suggest to make it all happen?

I bow to your incredible expertise and experience in this segment of production. (Oh why do we now have to know EVERYTHING?? Wasn't producing, writing, shooting, directing, editing and mixing ENOUGH?) - oh Victor - quit whining! This is what separates the "men from the boys - women from the girls".

Througout history it's always been the artists that understand their medium that have succeeded the best. Nothing has changed, except...

now I can ask for help from an international audience of proven experts - thanks Vegas forum and a special tip of the hat to Laurence.

v

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 10/21/2007, 8:51 PM
I'm not Laurence, but will offer this:
Your projector is 720 pcapable. 1080 projectors are also available, but are expensive to rent or buy.
Computer can be used for playback, or you can burn to HD DVD or BD. You can burn a menu-less, play only straight from the Vegas TOOLS menu, and rent/borrow/buy a BD or HD DVD player from many places. We're using a BD rental in NYC at the NAB PostProduction show this week. They're easy to find.
The resolution difference between SD and HDV will be *immediately* noticable as soon as you display in HD vs SD.
Laurence wrote on 10/21/2007, 9:52 PM
You know, one of the new cheaper versions of the PS3, without PS2 backward compatibility, are probably your best bet for HD playback right now. They're about $399, use a Bluetooth remote (bought separately) that has no line of sight issues, and should give you rock solid performance from disc, memory card, or internal or external hard drive.

If Sony left off the game player aspect of these machines, we would all be clamoring for them because they are such incredible media playback devices. Don't let the fact that they play video games scare you away. They are by far the best HD video playback devices made right now.

By the way, me, an expert! LOL! You made my day even if I don't really agree with you :-)
corug7 wrote on 10/21/2007, 10:15 PM
Vic,

If you have a reasonably high powered laptop, you might try a 720p Windows Media transcode, either WMV9 or VC1. Play out of the laptop to your projector. I can hook you up with some parameters if you'd like.

Corey
Laurence wrote on 10/21/2007, 10:26 PM
I agree with Spot that the difference between SD and HD will jump out at you, even if you think that what you are getting with SD widescreen looks really good right now. I'm sure that it is, but the HD playback is going to be very noticably better.

The difference between 720 and 1080 playback from a projector is going to be subtle enough that I wouldn't even worry about it. I would save your money and just use 720p. Remember that all Bluray and HD DVD players will downrez from 1080i to 720p very well. I wouldn't worry about mastering at 720p. A 1080i master is still the best way to go (given that the project was shot at 1080i).

Laurence wrote on 10/21/2007, 10:32 PM
If you go the laptop route, you will get a very good picture, but you will lose some the nice smooth temporal motion of the 1080i footage. If you have a Bluray or HD DVD player playing back 1080i downrezzed by the player to 720p, you will be seeing an image that still has the smooth temporal motion of 60 rather than 30 fps. Also, the potential for a laptop to freeze or glitch a little over the course of an hour long movie scares the heck out of me.
CClub wrote on 10/22/2007, 8:14 AM
I'm also very interested in this HD delivery information. I was planning on using a laptop for about a 1.5 hour HD documentary (rendered to 720p from 24p footage, viewed via a 720p projector), but I have the same fears about the laptop hiccuping during playback. So if I purchased a PS3 or XBox 360, burned the project straight to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, that would be recommended over a laptop/desktop even if using 24p footage?
Jeff9329 wrote on 10/22/2007, 9:17 AM
V:

I have tried what you are asking and had a hard time. I setup an open house looping HD video. My problems were:

1. My laptop, a HP with a 17" screen running at 1680X1050, has no way to output HD except a stream over the firewire port. The new laptops, HP at least, have HDMI connections and HD-DVD players.

2. My projector was able to output high resolution images, but not output HD video. I ended up getting a cheap Mitsu 720P projector. The expensive ones have a firewire connection, the cheaper ones have HDMI.

3. Although it's a PITA, a standalone player is cheapest and most reliable.

If you are mixing the SD and HDV, I would just make a final in SD to save money and headaches. If it were all HDV, of course you would go HD.
vicmilt wrote on 10/22/2007, 1:14 PM
Thanks all... now - a couple of follow-ups.

Will the "obvious difference" of SD vs HDV in my show make the show look better or worse? Right now, at SD output throughout, it looks pretty damn good. That is, will the SD look about the same and the HDV look incredible? Or will the HDV look incredible but the SD look like poop?

AND...
about burning BluRay directly from Vegas to standard DVD for PS3 playback... will I be able to fit 1hr 15minutes? If not, what is required to burn BluRay disc? Special recorder? Which? How much?
or can you use double density DVD discs?

v.
apit34356 wrote on 10/22/2007, 2:27 PM
Laurence ideal about the PS3 will be the best $$ portable option, but the new high-end players are good for presentation. Of course, you know this, but material edited for SD does not always look "great" at 1080 vs 720. But 1080 material really needs to be edited, cc, etc for 1080 for the "WOW" effect. With 1080 offering so much material for the viewer, researchers have noticed that the average viewer observes about 1/2-2/3 of the viewable image, so special editing of material is required to focus viewer on desired content and move that content thru the 1080 space, just like film but at higher rates and limited color space.
Laurence wrote on 10/22/2007, 2:48 PM
The beauty of the PS3 is that it can also play HD off of it's internal hard drive or any USB2 storage device. You can get up to an hour on an AVCHD disc burned onto a dual layer DVD-R, but I'm always afraid to burn any disc to capacity. For hour plus projects, you can just playback off of a hard disc in either AVCHD or mpeg2 format. You seem to need an hour and fifteen minutes so this is a real issue.

One of the new no PS2 game compatible PS3s will cost you a couple of hundred dollars less than a Bluray burner, and you don't have to worry about $20 a disc media either. You can just play your longer projects off the hard drive. If you do end up buying a Bluray burner, the same PS3 player will work with that too. Then there's the beauty of the bluetooth remote where you can operate the PS3 from anywhere nearby without worrying about lines of sight to the player. There is also the security of playing your movie off a hard drive which is a lot less likely to give you problems than an optical disc.
Jeff9329 wrote on 10/23/2007, 8:22 AM
Im starting to think the PS3 will be a good Christmas gift for the ~kids~.
Laurence wrote on 10/23/2007, 9:30 AM
That's how I did it. If you ask my seven year old son, the PS3 is all his ;-)