Re: Producing Home Video in HD


"Smarty" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:Vcj1j.9479$B21.1078@xxxxxxxxxxx
Denny,

Your assessment is essentially correct, and may recommend deferring any purchases a bit longer. You may want to consider the following, however:

Current HD camcorders available for well below $1000 deliver vastly superior video quality to those who view them with HDTV monitors / receivers. The delivery method can be as simple as a normal DVD-R burned with a typical ($30) DVD-R burner, providing approx. 46 minutes of content when used with HDV (mpeg2) encoding, or essentially twice as much if encoded with mpeg4/AVCHD compression, a somewhat less mature format with a bit more artifacts. In both cases, the recipient needs an HD playback device, either an HD DVD player (now available for under $200 with 10 HD DVD movie disks included) or a BluRay player (about $400 with 5 BluRay movies included). The players are, as you are already aware, engaged in a format war, and neither player will play the other format (although dual format players including an imminent Samsung dual format player) will mitigate this problem (at a cost of nearly $1000!).

Editing HD and authoring these disks requires relatively modest computer and software tools, and I particularly favor a terrific $89 program which does the entire job despite owning much more expensive programs like Final Cut Pro HD and Vegas Studio 8, both of which are vastly more complex for the serious professional user.

You could consider replacing the camcorder first with HDV, making standard def downsampled disks for the time being, and then migrating to HD format as your recipients begin to commit to the newer players.

The format war was introduced a big element of uncertainty for many if not most buyers, so the transition may not take place for years. There are, however, enough price cuts to make the current opponents attractive immediately if you are willing to face 'orphaned' formats and products a few years from now.

An alternative approach for computer-savvy recipients is to deliver the encoded file to them on a data disk and let them play the content with freeware on a PC or Mac. The recipient may need to download some additional player software and/or codecs to allow for HD playback, but this is a low cost and low risk distribution method until the format war is resolved.

Hope this helps,


Smarty

Tiger Direct has a Toshiba A3 HD player for $169.99 as an on-line Black Friday special. I just picked one up specifically for this purpose, i.e. to play standard-def DVDs with HDV-encoded high-def.



"Denny" <nudest@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:a358c62a-1c9e-4dff-94a0-866c98b5f7b8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello, for the past 5 years I have been producing a home video and
sending copies to family and friends around Christmas time. It's about
60 minutes and consists of skits, stories and various light-hearted
shenanigans. I switched from VHS to DVD-R 3 years ago, and most
everyone on my mailing list now has a DVD player.

My camera is a standard def Panasonic PV DV953 that I'm quite happy
with. I use a PC for editing and once I've burned the finished video
onto a DVD, I use a Pioneer DVD recorder to make copies to send out.

My questions relate to moving up to high def. HD video cams are now
available as is the editing software to support HD. However, how would
I get in onto an HD medium and deliver it?

I understand that there are 2 proprietary HD DVD formats - Blu Ray and
HD DVD (the VHS and Beta showdown all over again). Looks like you have
to pick one of the above and go with it?

Are there recordable Blu Ray/HD DVD discs available? What about the
machines to record onto one or the other?

Then, just as some of my recipients still clung on to their VCRs, they
would have to own an HD TV as well as a player that reads Blu Ray or
HD DVD.

Have I sized up the situation properly? I'm thinking I'll stick to std
def for quite a while yet before making any committment.

Thank you in advance for your help,
Denny



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