WDTV Media player - Convert DV to ?

craftech wrote on 6/5/2010, 5:44 AM
I have this media player and I use it along with my digital projector for presentations of HD content. However when I shoot DV it cannot handle the file format.

I want the highest quality (the same as the original DV footage), but I am not sure which format (that the player can handle) to convert it to.

Here are the file formats the player can handle:

Video -- WMV9, AVI (MPEG1/2/4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), MOV (MPEG4, H.264), MT2S, TP, TS, MOV/MP4 (MPEG4, h.264), DVR-MS, VOB (unprotected or unencrypted)

The player has composite video output and HDMI output on it along with toslink and analog L & R audio outputs. It is fed via USB input from an external source such as a thumb drive or an external hard drive.

What would you recommend I convert or render DV to? Which one of the supported formats would have little or no loss? Or the least loss anyway?

Thanks,

John

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 6/5/2010, 9:10 AM
I was disappointed too that I couldn't preview my DV, although I like the unit otherwise.
MPEG-2 and MP4/AVC work well on this player. Rendering either at a high enough bitrate should virtually eliminate observed differences in playback.

MPEG-2 (.mpg) at 6-8Mbs (CBR or 2-pass VBR) Mainconcept
MP4/AVC at 4-6Mbs (CQ 20-19) Handbrake


craftech wrote on 6/5/2010, 12:51 PM
Thanks for the response MV.

Mpeg2 doesn't look as good as DV even at 8 MB/s to my eyes.

Haven't tried MP4/AVC at all. How does it compare to Mpeg 2?

Does Handbrake work well?
Haven't tried that either.

Thanks,

John
musicvid10 wrote on 6/5/2010, 1:23 PM
Haven't tried MP4/AVC at all. How does it compare to Mpeg 2?
Better at lower bitrate than MPEG-2. Of course that is just an opinion. There is the sharpness issue which seems to plague all DV->AVC transcoding methods to some extent.
Handbrake encodes faster and I prefer the output to Mainconcept at the same bitrate. Of course that is just another opinion, so don't jump on me.
Laurence wrote on 6/5/2010, 4:25 PM
The latest DivX Pro convertor converts to a .mkv container and is really fast and looks really good. That's what I would use.
musicvid10 wrote on 6/5/2010, 4:55 PM
Yes, I've played around with MKV (not with divx codecs though) and I can see the potential.

However, one of my considerations is deliverability, so if I am going to produce a DVD that is what ends up on the hard drive next to my WDTV Live. Likewise, if it is going on the internet or portable, it ends up mp4/m4v.

That's not to say MKV won't be considered a more deliverable container down the road, however. It's potential to retain menu and chapter information and extract the media in its native format is something that will begin to emerge over the next few years.
craftech wrote on 6/5/2010, 5:00 PM
MKV is what I mostly play in the WDTV Media Player. I use MakeMKV, but the originals are all HD that it is converting. It looks great.

How does Divx Pro converter handle the scaling issues when converting 720 x 480 DV to MKV?

Thanks,

John
musicvid10 wrote on 6/5/2010, 5:10 PM
MKV doesn't really convert anything. It's just a newfangled wrapper for whatever codec you want to put in it.
craftech wrote on 6/5/2010, 5:24 PM
OK then I can use Divx Pro to get an MKV file equal to the original DV at the same resolution. In terms of when I use Make MKV it never asks which codec, just converts Blu-Ray files and the like to MKV, but it won't convert an avi file or any sd file AFAIK.

John
craftech wrote on 6/6/2010, 7:13 AM
[i]I rendered some DV from Vegas using the MainConcept HDV-1080-60i template and it played fine on the WD TV Media Player. I changed Width to 720 and Height to 480 and the Level from High 1440 to High on the Custom Tab and saved as a template. I accepted the default bit rate but you could pick one that suits you. This method creates a single file.
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I tried this and the results were absolutely awful. Light, grainy, and lacking in detail. With a file size of 15GB one would think it would have looked really good, but using those settings in Vegas 8c at default left me with terrible looking video. Much worse than using the VX2000 and playing back through S-Video. Much worse.

But thanks for the suggestion. It was worth a try.

John
John_Cline wrote on 6/6/2010, 9:44 AM
Just use the Sony AVC encoder and choose the appropriate PAL or NTSC template, crank up the bitrate to around 8,000,000 and render away. Looks and sounds great on the WDTV.
craftech wrote on 6/6/2010, 7:33 PM
Thanks John,

I'll try that as well.

John
craftech wrote on 6/14/2010, 3:33 PM
Just use the Sony AVC encoder and choose the appropriate PAL or NTSC template, crank up the bitrate to around 8,000,000 and render away. Looks and sounds great on the WDTV.
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John,

I want to try this, but there is no template for a 4:3, 720 x 480 video unless one of the existing ones is modified. Which one would you try?

Thanks,

John
John_Cline wrote on 6/14/2010, 3:58 PM
Use the "Memory Stick SD NTSC - 6256 Kbps" template.
craftech wrote on 6/14/2010, 4:52 PM
Use the "Memory Stick SD NTSC - 6256 Kbps" template.
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Thanks John,

I figured I would try one in the meantime and coincidentally that was the one I picked. It's half way done. Thank you for the recommendation. Always appreciated.

Regards,

John
craftech wrote on 6/14/2010, 7:06 PM
Don't know how much video you had but 15 GB sounds like a lot for an MPEG-2 render. Did you 'change(d) Width to 720 and Height to 480 and the Level from High 1440 to High on the Custom Tab"?
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A little over an hour. I made those exact changes you had suggested. Are you sure you didn't change something else from the default as well?

John
craftech wrote on 6/14/2010, 7:11 PM
Use the "Memory Stick SD NTSC - 6256 Kbps" template.
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Rendering suddenly stopped with an unknown error at exactly 4.0GB. Same NTFS drive I rendered the 15GB file to with John Denis method.

Tried playing the 4 GB file in VLC just to see what it looked like and VLC said that it didn't recognize the format?
Neither did WMP.
Strange.

John
Former user wrote on 6/14/2010, 7:14 PM
Not familiar with using that templte, but it might be assuming that your memory stick is fat32 which has a 4gig file size limit.

Dave T2
craftech wrote on 6/14/2010, 7:17 PM
Not familiar with using that templte, but it might be assuming that your memory stick is fat32 which has a 4gig file size limit.

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Thanks Dave. As I said, I rendered it to an NTFS hard drive. It's just called a memory stick template by Vegas. Unless for some reason it actually does have a 4GB limit.

John
Former user wrote on 6/14/2010, 7:30 PM
That's what I meant. I don't know but maybe the template is limiting the file size.

Dave T2
craftech wrote on 6/14/2010, 7:45 PM
That's what I meant. I don't know but maybe the template is limiting the file size.
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Maybe it is. Not sure.
Thanks,
John