Buring DVD in High Def

I have a Canon AVCHD camcorder. Can I burn my movies in High Def on my Mac?

Yes, you can - iMovie supports HD (and it'll be excellent quality, but not blu-ray quality) and you can get up to 2 hours on one DVD. You might want to open iMovie, click on Help and type in HD quality - it will give you lots of information on HD quality, file size, etc.
Another option would be to consider purchasing Toast (including their HD plugin); they claim you can burn blu-ray quality onto regular DVDs (that would be where you'd get about 30 minutes of video onto a regular DVD). Check it here:
http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/
(click on compare and the popup will show that you can author HD content to DVD)
Check the iMovie compatibility list for your camcorder here:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3290
If you have a problem importing into iMovie, I'd suggest posting a question in the iMovie forum; there are some very knowledgeable people over there.

Similar Messages

When is it time to invest in a high-def editing setup?

I own a ten year old digital editing appliance that I'm considering replacing with Final Cut Pro. I want to start work on some niche documentaries that I plan to sell online. I made one documentary at home about six years ago that I still sell online.
I've never bought a HD TV because I don't watch broadcast television. I find conventional DVDs on high-def screens very grainy in image quality ... downright unwatchable ... so to this day I still watch all my DVDs (homemade and store-bought) on a big tube television set.
Personally, I don't want a high-def TV for watching old movies and 70's TV shows on DVD. I'm perfectly happy with my tube TV, my 2001-era editor, and my twelve year old standard-definition Sony PD150 cancorder which I just had serviced and cleaned.
Heck, 20% of my viewing pleasure still comes from videocassettes, which I can get at the Goodwill for 25 cents a piece.
But ... now... I have some ideas for some new niche video products. Only problem is ... I haven't followed the conversation about high-def at all. I'm wholly and utterly ignorant. Pretty much all I know is that BluRay won the format war … and I know I can look up 720p, 1080p, 1080i should that information become important.
That's the extent of my knowledge. I honestly have no idea whether my Sony PD-150, my old editor, and single-layer DVDs would be just fine ... or whether they would result in a bunch of refund requests when I start selling these new DVDs I want to make.
God help me. I just don't keep up with what other people are doing.
And googling "do-I-need-to-dump-my-90's-era-digital-camcorder-and-standard-definition-editing- appliance-in-favor-of-ten-thousand-dollars-worth-of-new-high-def-cam-and-editing -gear-if-I'm-going-to-make-another-sellable-DVD" didn't really yield much.
Can anyone help me here?
1) Is anyone in the lower-mid-range video business … like a budget wedding guy or a niche how-to video … still using standard-def stuff to churn out acceptable product in high volume?
I've sold hundreds of copies of my DVD online and two weeks ago I got my first ever refund request … the guy berated me for selling a DVD in standard definition when (he said) the "commercial standard" now is high-def. No one else has ever complained. So now I'm left wondering if this guy is the first of a new generation of customers who would not tolerate a standard-def product … or if he's just a dork who needed to complain about something.
2) How does manufacturing a high number of copies of a high-def video work? My 50-minute standard-def movie fit wonderfully on an inexpensive 4.7GB DVD. Running off copies was cheap and painless. I understand that high-def discs are some 25GB. Are you guys with your new Mac and Final Cut Pro working with HD buying these expensive discs for large volume runs? Are even decent bread-and-butter wedding shoots or corporate training films these days getting burned to BluRays?
3) Does it make sense to trade in a perfectly good 90's high-end standard definition digital cam for a new HD cam when I'm still going to burn it to a conventional DVD?
4) Is my gear still perfectly acceptable for budget projects? I really don't want to pay for Final Cut Pro and a HD burner ... I would only get one if my old editor is flat-out obsolete, which it certainly isn't for editing home movies.
Note: "Budget" does not mean poorhouse. I'm talking about "working" niche videos … competent (non-broadcast) megachurch sermon DVDs … homemade documentaries … non-Rolls-Royce weddings … small business promo videos ...
… the stuff that working joe videos are made of.
What constitutes "reasonable and acceptable" these days, when just about everybody has a high-def TV set they're watching these things on?

When I made the move from SD it was painful. It was just before the digital broadcast change over and when I hooked up my new Samsung 37" HD TV to my cable box I almost hurled.
since then, almost all of the broadcasters have caught up with HD transmission and almost all broadcast stuff in 1080i or 720p look amazing.
Standard Def DVDs are another story. Well done commercial SD DVDs can look quite nice when playing back through my new Samsung Blu-ray player. The folks who compress down to SD for the big studios are indeed rocket scientists and they're doing things that most of us simply can't afford to do.
Plus, the scaling technology in players and TVs has come a long way as well. So Don't throw out your standard DVDs just yet.
Should you consider a Hi Def camera? I'd say Yes, The time has come. If all you were doing was posting 480P online I'd say use your camera til it croaks. but the optical delivery is a factor for you.
Authoring your own BD for mass duplication? That's a little more complicated still. There are licensing issues involved in Blu-ray authoring which are complex. It's one of the reasons that we probably won't see Blu-ray hardware in Macs for a while. I don't think you can duplicate as easily as you can with DVD. You can burn your own one at a time if that's a possibility for you.
Shooting HD and delivering SD DVDs? It can be done. But compressing so that you end up with a satisfactory product is sort of a black art. You'll see lot's of discussions online about how many people are disappointed with HD to DVD, some claiming that their SD to DVD projects actually look better.
My latest technique for getting respectable DVDs is to first downrez in Mpeg Streamclip to an anamorphic SD file still in the Prores codec. Then I use Bitvice to do the mpeg2 file.
The bottom Line.
If you can afford it, get a new camera, BD burner and learn how to author BD. The authoring software is not fully baked yet for mac users but you should definitely head in that direction ASAP. You can even incorporate SD footage in an HD timeline and the SD footage is much more palatable than SD DVD.
On the up-side, you might be happy to know that you missed the worst of it. Be thankful that you were able to put it off so long. There are many other people out there who rode the bleeding edge and suffered a great deal of economic and emotional trauma.
good Luck!
g

Apple tv video quality vs hd tv and high def dvd's

ok...i know it supports 1080i, but does the video quality of video in itunes really look good compared against say a blu-ray disc, or hdtv signals? i'm sure it will get better (with a hardware or software upgrade?) if its not close to high def quality but want to know what i'm in store for if i buy appletv now...thanks. PS: i currently have directv HD and a ps3 for blu-ray, and my tv's are all HD...

Based on my own testing, the distinctions between an HD-DVD movie (which are true 1080) and an Apple TV video converted as its own maximum settings (which is 720) is actually quite noticeable if you have a 1080 TV set, but at the same I don't consider it a show-stopper. I watch a lot of HD broadcast content that's only 720p, and it's still very good.
An HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVD will normally be in 1920 x 1080 resolution (1080p or 1080i, generally depending on your equipment). The Apple TV's maximum resolution is 1280 x 720 (basically 720p). Therefore, even an original HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVD converted to Apple TV will need to be scaled down to 720p for display on the Apple TV.
Further, Elgato EyeTV actually scales these down somewhat lower, so HDTV recorded content could be even worse-off, depending on the original source. The standard Apple TV export settings use a 960 x 540 frame in order to keep the bit-rate and frame rate within tolerances (since a 720p signal is approximately 60fps, and the bitrates will generally exceed 5-6 mbps, which pushes the limits of the Apple TV).
Even more interestingly, Elgato's new turbo.264 dongle will only encode in "Apple TV" format at a maximum resolution of 800 x 600 (and if you do the math you will realize that this will be considerably less for a 16:9 aspect ratio video).
The result is that videos converted from an EyeTV Hybrid are technically much worse off on the Apple TV than viewing the original source material. Whether this is significant enough to be noticeable will depend on your output medium, but on my 62" DLP, the difference is quite apparent (although still far superior to an SDTV signal).
You can get 1280 x 720 content to play back at 60fps at 5mbps bit-rates on the Apple TV by using ffmpeg-based encoders and manually selecting higher settings, although it's been hit-and-miss in my own testing, and of course it creates gargantuan files. Elgato and others have obviously tried to stay with the more conservative settings to ensure that they can guarantee the broadcast possible range of support.
In fact, although most of the standard encoder settings max out at 2.5-3.0 mbps, I've successfully pushed up to 6 mbps through the Apple TV, although such content has to be synced rather than streamed, since even an 802.11n network has a hard time keeping up (it worked, but there were some drop-outs and glitches in the process). Of course, 6mbps content is going to fill up the Apple TV hard drive pretty quickly as well (you'd only be able to fit around 11 hours on the internal 40GB hard drive).
The other thing to keep in mind with DVD movies is that they come from film, which is a 24fps source (based on the physical nature of film). As a result, the distinctions between a 720p and 1080i signal are less prevalant when dealing with film content, since you won't get the full 60fps HDTV capabilities anyway. Interlacing can still create some nasty side-effects, but it's far less of an issue when you're dealing with less than half of the normal frames.
In my own experiences, I have an Apple TV that is connected to a 1080p upscaling DLP TV (native 1080i input, internalized de-interlacing), and a second Apple TV that is connected to a 720p LCD TV. With the first Apple TV, I can notice the difference between 720p and 1080i output settings only when viewing photos, since the remainder of the standard content doesn't exceed 720p anyway. Further, because my TV de-interlaces a 1080i signal to 1080p, I don't get the flicker that is normally associated with a 1080i signal.
On the second Apple TV, I leave the setting to 720p, since that's the native resolution of the second TV, and I get noticeable interlacing-based flickering on the 1080i, particularly with photo slideshows (mostly in the transitions).

What size should i save my pictures to make a good high def. DVD?

Ok, I am using Elements 10 with Premere 10 to create a DVD high definition movie of our trip to Rome to display on our hi def tv. What I want to know is what size should I save my pictures after fixing them. The JPEGS are usually saved to around 2 mb while the NEF's are saved around 6-11 mb's. I am afraid that the 2 mb files will not retain enough data to show well on the high def TV and maybe the 11 mb pictures may be overkill resulting in long rendering times and larger movie sizes. Anyone have any information on this. Both the Elements 10 and Premere 10 manuals don't address this. The only thing I could find was that they support up to 4086 x 4086 size pictures. Thanks in advance

Hi,
I am not an expert on this subject but since nobody has replied yet, I thought I would give you my current thoughts on the subject so then someone can either confirm it or shoot me down in flames.
If we are talking about a HD TV, they have a screen resolution of about 1920 x 1080 or 1360 x 768 so if your images are greater than that, something has to do some down sizing.
I think that a normal DVD can has a limitation on size of 720 x 480 (NTSC) or 720 x 576 (PAL). To get a greater resolution than that you need to talk about Blu-ray.
The important thing to think about is the aspect ratio. The widescreen TVs are 16:9 and your photos are probably 4:3. If you want a full screen picture without black margins each side then I suggest that you do some cropping first.
I tend to crop to 16:9 aspect ratio (using crop tool) and then resize the image to 1920 x 1080 (using image resize). I use a larger size if I know I want to use pan & zoom effects. I use that size, even though some pixels will be lost, just in case I switch to Blu-ray in the future and it might save a bit of work then.
Hope that helps (and is correct)
Brian

Want to make first high-def DVD

I would like to start burning high-def DVDs. After searching this forum, it seems that (a) iDVD is not yet set up to burn full high-def video to DVD and (b) Toast 10 might be the best option.
How do I determine if my Mac Pro has the appropriate hardware to burn to a blu-ray DVD? Will Toast 10 burn to a blu-ray DVD that will work in a blu-ray player? If the duration of the video is sufficiently short, can it be burned to a standard DVD and, if so, will it play back in full high-def on a blu-ray player?

If you want to make a homemade DVD look professional, you need:
1. Cameras with better color
2. Tripod
3. Excellent lighting
4. Professional encoder for mpeg2; with software, set it to multipass and maximum quality. It may take many times real time to encode
5. Proper shooting techniques, so that you're not always moving or panning, which would tax the encoder
6. Color correction, to make it as vivid as desired
7. Proper optics, i.e. something with a short depth of field to add complexity to the image
8. Proper directing
9. A format of film or video which is not highly compressed (like HDV or AVCHD) and introduces artifacts
10. A proper soundtrack and sound editor, which will make it "look" better
11. Dual layer discs allow you to increase your bitrate
So, a homemade DVD and a professional one have very little in common. The fact that they are both SD has little to do with anything.
Jeremy

Burning High Def DVDs

I've been reading quite a few posts on this topic, but it seems I'm always missing something:
First, I have bought Snow Leopard but have not installed it yet. I'll be using iMovie 09.
I'm considering buying the Canon Vixia HG21 which needs IM 09 for transferring and editing High Def signal. Up until that point, I'm clear on what to do.
It's what happens then where it's nebulous.
I understand that I'll need Toast to create Blu Ray disks, but what happens to the menus and fancy intros with music we get with iDVD? Is there any way to get them?
If I create short movies (15-20 min max) that can fit on "regular" DVDs, I assume I can still get the High Def signal, but how/where can they be played? I don't have a Play Station. I know I'm looking at investing money to get a High Def TV and something that can read the DVDs (Blu Ray or not) I'll be creating, but I'm unsure on what to get and rather ask questions now than discover too late I made the wrong choice.
Thanks for any insights.

Bought Roxio Toast 10 Pro...

3 questions: Time Warp, High Def, and DVDs

3 questions:
1. If I am wanting to slow down or speed up a shot how do I go about doing that in FCE?
2. If I shoot in High Def, how do I make a video copy for people without High Def? Is there a way?
3. In the past I have had some trouble with some DVDs being read in certain DVD players. Is there a specific type of DVD that is better all around?

1. Modify>Speed
2. Export to QuickTime Conversion and change it to a different format.
3. This can be caused by many different things. The most likely cause is the type of media used. You should try this question on a forum for DVD creation, like iDVD or DVD Studio Pro. It's really nothing to do with anything that can be fixed in FCE.

Standard Def on High Def TV

Hello all
I work in standard def with the Sony DCR-SR80 (MPEG-2 format 16:9). I then convert in MPEG Streamclip. I use to export to DV format but more recently I'm exporting to "Apple DV/DVCPRO - NTSC" 720 x 480 (unscaled). My FCE Easy Set up is Format: DV/Panasonic DVCPRO Rate: 29.97 Use: DV-NTSC 32 khz Anamorphic. This is all nice because there really isn't any rendering going on. I film a lot of high school football so there is fast moving objects on the video.
My problem is that I create these projects and then burn them in iDVD and play them on my High Def Samsung TV (1080P) through my Blueray player (1080P) and the video has a jpeg look to it. I can make it better by adjusting my TV but I'm curious why it looks this way. Is it the camera? I nolonger have a tube television in the house so I can't compare. Any suggestions? whether a new camera or maybe new format and conversion settings. I tried to give as much detail as possible. I'm aware there are a lot of variables in there questions.
Thank you all in advance!!
Ween

Hi(Bonjour)!
That's normal as your base material is MPEG converted to DVCPRO. MPEG compression artifacts are transcoded to DVCPRO upon conversion with MPEG streamclip. MPEG format doesn't render rapid action like football very well.
Worst, you play a standard def DVD in a HD set. The image (and the MPEG artifact)is upscaled 6 times to fit the HD screen.
By the way you should choose a 48 khz audio preset as it's a standard in video edition.
Michel Boissonneault

High Def / BlueRay Naievity

Hi
Been puzzling me a little so hope someone can clear this up.
I've been toying with the idea of getting a mac mini as a media centre but was unsure of it's high def limitations / capabilities and didn't want to dive in if it doesn't do what I would want out of it.
If I were to use it as a media centre, how does it work to rip BlueRay DVD's onto it?
I am not aware of the SuperDrive being BlueRay compatible (could be well wrong on this assumption) as it has been around longer than BlueRay has been the format of choice. Would I need a 3rd party (ps3/BlueRay player for example) input to save BlueRay films onto the mac mini?
If the superdrive cannot currently do BlueRay, is it likely a BlueRay superdrive might come along soon?
Thanks

The SuperDrive cannot play Blu-Ray (nor HD DVD) disks, nor is there at this time any Mac OS X software to play Blu-Ray disks. The only way as of today to play a Blu-Ray disk on a Mac is to have an external Blu-Ray player and to run Windows on the Mac so that you can use a Blu-Ray capable player (Corel's WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-Ray is the only one I know of but there may be others). I'm not certain about how well the Mac mini's graphics chip will support Blu-Ray playback in Windows; someone else here may be able to comment.
When or if a Blu-Ray player will come to Macs is unknown as is the inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive from Apple.
We cannot discuss ripping of Blu-Ray disks since breaking the copy protection is illegal in the US and some other countries.
Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

Problems viewing in High Def

I have a DV7 1245dx and everytime I try to watch anything in high definition it does not play properly. The sound is ok but the picture is not. The way to describe it is the viewing moves in frames, as if I'm just looking at still photos. It doesn't matter if I'm trying to watch something online in high def or with a DVD, same result. Anyone knows what the problem could be?

Hi,
Hold the Windows key down and press R. Into the Run box type msconfig and hit return. In the next Window click the Start Up tab and remove the ticks from all the programs that start with Windows. Apply the change and reboot the PC. If the problem has gone and everything works Ok, repeat the above process and when on the Start Up tab, put a tick back in the first program, apply the change and reboot the PC. See if everything is still Ok. Keep adding back one more start up program, apply the change and reboot until the problem re-occurs. You will then know that the last start up program you enabled is causing the problem.
Let me know how you get on.
Best wishes,
DP-K
****Click the White thumb to say thanks****
****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****
****I don't work for HP****
Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience

High def quality loss

this may sound like a really silly question, but given that although you can import and edit hdv/ avcdh, there is no way at the moment of publishing high def projects in high def (other than apple tv). With that in mind, how much quality do you lose by burning a project onto DVD?
Thanks

You do NOT lose ALL the quality. That's a myth.
You lose resolution, but not so much quality. Starting with HD is like starting with movie film. The higher quality you start with, the better any DVD will look.
The export codec you use, the compressor you use, and the bit rate you use all make a difference in DVD quality. Plus, the filtering you perform in the HD to SD down-conversion.
You can make bad DVDs and you can make good DVDs.

I need to clarify before Purchase of High Def Cam

Probably a stupid question, hope its the right thread, but hey! so here goes:
I'm new to high def and about to purchase an HD cam. As Apple and BluRay arent the best of friends at the moment (maybe a bit strong?!), i.e don't have the full array of output options as you do with SD, Im assuming I can just edit away in either AVCHD or HDV without the use of any other third party s/ware and just using my Finalcut Studio 2 I am able to produce a standard definition DVD in DVD Studio Pro?

Unless you are using a hardware assist like the AJA HDIO or one the the blackmagic devices, which will connect to an HDV camera and do the transcode on capture, capturing HDV over firewire and transcoding to ProRes 422 causes a significant lag: that is, when you stop the camera the process continues for some time. I don't even know if you can do a full one hour tape, for example. That said (which I read on this board), in my limited tests to a single, internal SATA drive (the second one, not the system drive) on my G5 Quad, at least two minutes were captured using the ProRes422 for HDV "easy setup" without any lag (two clips, starts a new clip at camera start/stop), and the display showing "real time capture" the entire two minutes.
But, while capturing HDV to a ProRes sequence, you can only do "capture now" and not capture and log. So if you need to recapture for whatever reason, you don't just get to use the log. You basically position the tape where you want it, start up "log and capture" and a screen appears, starts up your tape and begins capturing until you hit escape. There is an annotation in the window indicating how much behind things might be. Mine said "capture in real time" for my two minute test. A new clip is created on each camera start/stop, however.
So, if you are willing live without log and capture, it's a faster way to to as you note.
Oh, and AVCHD is a more consumer format with lower quality (so far) than HDV. HDV is 25mb/s; AVCHD is around 17mb/s, and with claims of true HD (1920x1080 rather than HDV's 1440x1080), there is significantly more compression. Check out camcorderinfo.com for some camera reviews of both types where compression and its artifacts are discussed.
Ed
Message was edited by: Edward A. Oates
Message was edited by: Edward A. Oates
Message was edited by: Edward A. Oates

Are apple a high def joke?

Im close to giving up on apple, heres why :
I have owned final cut pro for a while now and up graded my camera to hd. I bought the top of the range sony camcorder hc7 which is mac compatible and looked forward to making my first high def movies.
But my mac would not capture the footage becasue my verison of Final cut pro HD wouldnt read it. So the guys at the MAc store suggested two solutions
1 downgrade and buy final cut pro express which would read the format
2 upgrade to the new version of final cut pro sutdio which would also read the format.
The problem with solution two is that i was adivsed by the guys at the MAc store that my Powerbook G5 was not powerful enough to run the new new Final cut studio annd so they suggested by a new machine.
So i looked into buying a new machine but this is the bit I am amazed at Mac dont make any machine that can write to Bluray. If I am going to spend a large amount of money to upgrade my technology to high definition there is now way Im buying a machine without a bluray drive. I can of course buy a pc with blu ray drive no probelm. In my opinion apple are a high def joke. Any reason why I shouldnt abandon apple all together and guet myself a Viao?

Jeff I dont understand your comparison of Bluray to Dlt. Bluray is the only storage technology that can seriously be expected to fit high def movies. I dont expect to be able to cram them onto to DVD's. Since HD DVD withdrew from the market, one could hardly consider BLuray format of the week. In case you hadnt noticed high def is the new way of shooting and displaying video. I would suggest walking into any home entertainment store to discover this. Morever I bought final cut pro HD , its got HD at the end of the title of the software so its not reaally unreasonable to assume it might be able to handle HD. Well it couldnt, it wouldnt read my high def footage and I was told by the guys at the MAc store to either upgrade to a version of Final cut pro that would (which involved buying a new machine) or spend exra money to downgrade to another verison that would.
If its such a waste of time to put Blu ray drives in computers why are there many pcs with bluray drives? wake up Apple, people are buying high def products and they will want to output it somewhere. To describe Bluray as obscure sounds bizarre to me. Did you not read the news? bluray won the format war. Its so frustrating being a loyal Apple customer to be so behind the times. I feel like an idiot for going with Apple.
I dont need fancy blu ray functionality, I just want to be able to make my movies and not have to worry about fitting them on a disc that cant cope. I dont really want to switch to pc but so far I havent found any good reasons not too yet. I have a stack of tapes shot on high def needing to be edited. Right now my Mac cant cope with it, Im not willing to buy a new Mac that doesnt have a bluray drive when i can buy a new PC that does. Unless of course i
can make my film in FCP and use an external driver to burn into onto a blu ray? If so can anyone reccomend one?

High Def mini DV camcorders, how many minutes can you record?

Im looking for new camcorder,
Sony website says High Def 60 minutes of playback and recording
But guys at Best buy say 20-30 minutes so im just trying to find out whos right.
How much time does a tape last?

Hi Applenoobie
Whether using High Def tape or regular DV tape you will record for at least 60 minutes. Most DV tapes have grace by adding a few minutes of extra tape just in case. Where you'll find a difference is if you are taping in High Def or standard Def. High def seems to consume more power or standard def. Thus, you battery will not last a total 60 minutes unless you buy a biger battery than comes standard with most cameras. Perhaps that was what the guys at Best Buy were trying to convey.
DV tape whether high def or standard def is superior to camera that employ a hard drive, record directly to DVD, or mini DVD, or even flash based video cameras because each of these encode the video and compress it in different ways. In most cases you can get at the video, but to make it editable you'll need some kind of 3rd party application to convert it to the DV standard anyway. then you will have the issue of how to store hours upon hours of video. DV tape is the way to go.
See your previous post.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=814004&tstart=0
And Sue it looks like those fast fingers of your beat me again!
Carl

Why are so many movies available in high def for ipad, but not for imac?

ok. another question, why are so many itunes rentals and movies unavailable in high def for rent or buy on an imac? i have a 27 inch imac. and an ipad, and it's funny, it will let me rent a high def video on the ipad, but not on the imac. it's wierd, i don't get it, because there are movies i would rent or buy on my imac, that i'm not going to buy now because of this.

It depends on the contract w/the distribution company. Lionsgate for example has licensed their movies for resale on iTunes, not rental. Paramount allows some movies to be sold(not sure which ones and why) and others for rental, but the standard rental agreement between Apple and the movie studios is that rents will not be available for 30 days after the DVD is released.
Edit: Well, looking at the AppleTV site it looks like Lionsgate allows rentals also now, but there may be terms in the contract which say which movies can be bought/rented.
Message was edited by: Kevin Shain

Buring DVD in High Def

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