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1. Re: High definition output without Blu-ray
Adolfo Rozenfeld Apr 15, 2009 9:50 AM (in response to imagex ideas)Imagex: A DVD-Video disc is a very specific standard that defines what a DVD disc should be in order to be compatible with DVD players.
AVCHD is not part of the specification in any way. In fact, the DVD spec was brought together in the mid-90s, and being also a hardware standard, it's not going to change (unless, of course, it's no longer DVD but something else, like Blu-Ray).
A DVD-video disc is strictly SD (Standard Defintion) video, encoded with MPEG-2 compression at certain bit tates (AVHCD uses the H.264 codec with HD frame sizes).
So far, the bad news.
The good news: A properly made SD MPEG-2 can look very, very good on a large TV.
Depending on your experise with DVD authoring, you could encode the MPEG-2 file yourself (I would not recommend it... because we're discussing this in the first place!) or you could export a Quicktime or AVI file with the best posssible compression (or better yet, lossless) and let the DVD authoring app handle it.
I would export a Quicktime or AVI lossless file and give that to Adobe Encore CS4. Make sure you set Encore to SD-DVD NTSC and just use your Quicktime or AVI file in a timeline in Encore. It will take care of encoding it to MPEG-2 and all. Just make sure it handles/encodes your file as 16:9, keeping the original aspect. Fortunately, DVD-Video totally supports widescreen/anamporhic video, even if it's SD.
Let me know if you need more help.
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2. Re: High definition output without Blu-ray
TimeRemapper Apr 15, 2009 9:58 AM (in response to imagex ideas)In addition to what Adolfo has said, if you have the monitor and the output options via a display card to an HD monitor, why don't you compress your 1080p file to H.264 (the compression used for BD), and send the preview out to your monitor? It would be WYSIWYG, except instead of playing off of the disc, it'd be playing off your your drives.
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3. Re: High definition output without Blu-ray
Sébastien Périer Apr 15, 2009 5:46 PM (in response to imagex ideas)You can burn an AVCHD project on a DVD disc.
Basically an AVCHD project is just a simplified BluRay project, you can't do it strait out from encore, but there is a trick.
It has become an easy trick, and i've tested it myself before i got my BR burner, and it works.
The basic steps are:
1) Launch Encore and Create a BluRay disk Project.
2) When your project is done, export it as a BluRay Folder Structure.
3) Patch your Folder Structure with AVCHD Patcher: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=15285018&postcount=1662
4) Burn your image disk on a DVD-R
Of course be sure that your project do fit into the 8gb of a standard DVD-R.
It's a little bit underground, but fear not, nothing illegal here. It just change of a flag in the File Structure.
Enjoy
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4. Re: High definition output without Blu-ray
Adolfo Rozenfeld Apr 15, 2009 7:44 PM (in response to Sébastien Périer)Yes, Sébastien, but a BR-D structure recorded into a DVD-R disc requires a Blu-Ray player
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5. Re: High definition output without Blu-ray
imagex ideas Apr 15, 2009 8:15 PM (in response to Sébastien Périer)Thanks Sebastian. That was the kind of work-around I was hoping to get. I'll give it a try tomorrow and report back if there is anything in your instructions needing clarification.
To Steve, your idea is a good one. I've been using it to view progress on my project as it develops, but my high-def monitor is only 16-inch and I wanted to see the end result on a large screen before wrapping it up.
To Adolfo, I realize AVCHD is not a DVD standard, but it is authored by Panasonic and my Panasonic SC-BT100 system will play AVCHD disks as well as Blu-ray. Also, I had tried the SD anamorphic path before writing my post this morning. It worked and was certainly better than conversion to NTSC SD 4:3, but some things I could see in my small monitor attached to my computer were absent from this version.
Of course, the correct solution is to get a BD burner, but I still do almost all work at NTSC SD, so being able to wait for costs to come down is a good thing.
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6. Re: High definition output without Blu-ray
Adolfo Rozenfeld Apr 15, 2009 8:22 PM (in response to imagex ideas)Oh, if you have a Blu-Ray capable player, then Sébastien's solution should work. I thought you didn't have a BR-D burner AND player
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7. Re: High definition output without Blu-ray
imagex ideas Apr 16, 2009 8:25 PM (in response to Sébastien Périer)Sebastien - Your steps were easy to follow, but unfortunately produced a disk that was not recognized by my Panasonic SC-BT100 BD player. Since the folders and files looked right before burning the disk, I suspect my old Roxio dick creator program was at fault. Do you have a recommendation for a program to burn the image disk to a DVD-R?
As a minor hiccup, the avsforum instructions on using AVCHD-Patcher were several releases behind the most recent version of the utility and a bit ambiguous.
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8. Re: High definition output without Blu-ray
Sébastien Périer Apr 17, 2009 2:24 AM (in response to imagex ideas)On PC i burn all my disk image with imgburn, a free burning program that is top notch at burning things.
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9. Re: High definition output without Blu-ray
imagex ideas Apr 17, 2009 4:20 PM (in response to Sébastien Périer)Sebastien - With Imgburn all worked fine and I got the 1080i view on my big screen I wanted. A couple heads-up for any who try Sebastien's recepie:
----- AVCHD patcher comes compressed as a rar file. WinZip v12 will uncompress it.
----- the AVCHD patcher v1.08 coverts the index.bdmv and MovieObject.bdmv files from 0200 to 0100 without the need for a hex editor
----- both the /BDMV folder and the /CERTIFICATE folder should go in the root directory of the DVD, at least that's what worked for me.
----- be sure to set the file system for the DVD at UDF 2.50
Again, thanks Sebastien
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10. Re: High definition output without Blu-ray
Sébastien Périer Apr 17, 2009 5:42 PM (in response to imagex ideas)Nice to see it worked !
Thanks for the update about AVCHD Patcher, this is really usefull.
Have a nice day,
Sébastien





