MiniDV to Blu-Ray video on DVD

[bowmah]

I have heard that you can make Blu-Ray quality video and burn that to DVD. Is this true. If so, what is the best way to do this given I have an .AVI file downloaded from MiniDV? Can anyone walk me through the process?

[guns1inger]

It is called AVCHD format, and is playable by some Bluray players and the PS3. Not all Bluray players like the format.

In your case you have standard definition material (MiniDV) and will gain nothing by trying to convert it to HD, and nothing you do to it will make it "Bluray quality" (whatever that really means). That said, AVCHD does support standard definition material, and because H264 is more efficient than mpeg-2, it is possible to fit more on a DVD blank using this method.

The most flexible tool for creating this type of disc is Multi-AVCHD. It should be able to convert your files and author a structure ready for burning. Use Imgburn to burn the results.

Note : This disc will not play in standard DVD players. Multi-AVCHD can author standard DVD structures as well using the high quality HCEnc encoder, but you will be working with mpeg-2 and restricted to 2 hours or less of decent quality material.

Bottom line though is that your source is not HD, and is not worth blowing up to HD. Keep it SD.

[edDV]

I have heard that you can make Blu-Ray quality video and burn that to DVD. Is this true. If so, what is the best way to do this given I have an .AVI file downloaded from MiniDV? Can anyone walk me through the process?

You can do it but the quality will not be better. That really depends on how you plan to display it.

Default is to convert 720x480i DV 25Mb/s to 720x480i DVD MPeg2 at ~8-9 Mb/s. The player (DVD or Blu-Ray) will upscale to selected output resolution in hardware.

It is possible with some Blu-Ray players to accept and play 720x480i MPeg2 at higher than the DVD limit of 9.8 Mb/s. This needs testing on your player.

Software upscale is generally not recommended unless one intends to include DV clips into an HD edit project.

[edDV]

That said, AVCHD does support standard definition material, and because H264 is more efficient than mpeg-2, it is possible to fit more on a DVD blank using this method.

The downside of using h.264 for DV source is the need for deinterlace to 29.97p or bob 59.94p. Deinterlace has motion artifacts. Bobbing to 60p ~doubles bit rate eliminating any additional compression efficiency of h.264. Bobbing also has artifacts such as flicker on low motion or still scenes.

h.264 is still a work in process for interlace source material. The format will accommodate interlace in theory but the bit rate advantage vs. MPeg2 is small for similar quality.

[bowmah]

ok, thanks for all the info. Let me see if I follow.

1. I should leave SD miniDV avi as SD. Got it.
2. For HD footage, how does one create a Blu-Ray quality video and dump that onto DVD?
3. What is the best way to dump as many MiniDV tapes onto a DVD for backups? Premiere Pro CS5 has H.264 - NTSC DV High Quality (720x480 29.97 fps; target bitrate = 3; maximum bitrate = 6). Is this a good preset?

[edDV]

1. DV-AVI @25 Mb/s is your best archive but it won't play directly from a DVD or Blu-Ray player, so you may want to make a DVD for playback.

2. (left for others to reply)

3. You can only get about 20 minutes of DV-AVI on a DVDR-5 or ~38 minutes on a DVDR-9 (double layer). Better to backup the archive files to a hard disk. This is much cheaper and less time consuming. Then you will have two copies, the tapes and the backup disk. Over time you will duplicate the hard disk to a fresh archive hard disk.

Personally I archive the good DV and Hi8 stuff to two hard drives (staggered age) plus a DVD copy for playing.

The less important material is archived as 480i MPeg2.

[poisondeathray]

2. With an HD source, you can edit in your editor (I assume you are using PP CS5 since you mentioned it in (3) ) , and author it in encore. In fact, you can dynamically link them if you have one of the suites or master collection (i.e instead of rendering something out, then importing and authoring in encore at a 2nd step)

Alternatively , a free way to do this , you could import assets into multiavchd, which allows for simple menus, xmb style menus.

As guns said above: Whatever "blu ray quality" means.... I will assume you just mean HD. Because a professionally shot on expensive cinematograpy grade camera, lit, staged, graded, processed, edited piece will look significantly better than a shaky home video from a HD camcorder

[bowmah]

So what would be the best way to put 1 hours worth of MiniDV (DV-AVI) to a DVD? What format and bitrate settings should be outputted from the video editing software?

When I say Blu-Ray quality, I meant for HD content, there just be a way to save HD footages to a DVD that can contain as much info as possible. No need to store hours and hours but say a 10 minute video was produced from HD content, what would be the best way to burn this on to a DVD so that it will look great on an HDTV? I was guessing the blu-ray route. Any more thoughts?

[edDV]

1. DVD MPeg2 with 16bit 48KHz PCM stereo audio

720x480i, 29.97 fps, bottom field first, 8000 Kb/s, CBR

2. DVD MPeg2 with 224 KB/s AC-3 or MP2 stereo audio

720x480i, 29.97 fps, bottom field first, 9500 Kb/s, CBR

[edDV]

Blu-Ray as described above is one way. Or you can use a media player like the Western Digital WDTV
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=30

or the Seagate
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=theater+-hd-media-player-pr&vg...001a48090aRCRD

or just play it off a computer.