How Do I burn a WMV-HD to play in my XBOX 360 HD-DVD Add On?

[Mickey79]

Ave,

I have a WMV-HD (WVC1) file on my Computer that I played using my XBOX 360 over the network stream and it played fine. Then I burnt it on a SINGLE LAYER DVD (as the file size was small) using Nero Burning ROM, choosing the Data DVD option "DVD_ROM (UDF)".

This disc is working absolutely fine in my XBOX 360 tray - it plays instantly in excellent quality.

But when I plop it in my HD-DVD Add On - it gives me "Unplayable Disc" and says something about putting it in the XBOX 360 Drive. Why?

Why won't the HD-DVD Add On play a Single Layer Blank Disc (Verbatim) burnt as DVD_ROM (UDF) using Nero, having a single WMV-HD (VC1/5.1) Video on it??

How do you burn/author a WMV-HD so it can play in the HD-DVD Add On? Am I missing something?

Thanks!

[guns1inger]

You can author a DVD SL or DVD DL using the HD DVD format. There are several posts on how to do it and what software is required. You may have problems if your WMV is DRM protected.

Why bother if it plays fine in your 360 anyway ?

[jman98]

Ave??? What the heck does that mean?

It seems that you burned a data disc, which your HD DVD player won't know anything about. You need to burn in HD DVD format. Whether Nero can author a disc that your drive will play, I have no idea. I can tell you that Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus with the HD DVD add on can create HD DVD format discs that my Toshiba HD DVD player will play.

I know that the Xbox can stream WMV files, which is probably why your disc worked OK on it, but that doesn't mean that it's HD DVD compatible.

[Mickey79]

@jman98: "Ave" is an ancient roman (greek) salutation - just like 'Hi'.

Anyhow, I had not clue that an HD-DVD player would have problems recognizing a data disc with WMV-HD on it. In another forum, I think people are missing this point. Anyhow - thanks for this information - no wonder!

Let me look into HD-DVD Authoring. I'm hoping I can just take my WMV-HD (VC1) and author it into HD-DVD Compatible format and burn it to disc.

@guns1inger: no remarkable reason - I just don't like playing any non-gaming disc in my XBOX 360 drive - and since I do have an HD-DVD Add On, and very few HD-DVD's, I'd rather put that drive to work! No reason!

[jntaylor63]

Mickey,

The HD-DVD add-on will only work with movie disks; not data ones.

Its dumb and I don't like it either. I wanted to burn DVD-R's with muci and videos and play off that drive. Its quieter and needs and would take the load off the other drive. (Another advantage that the PS3 has. It can read everything off its one drive.)

Maybe MS will update with a season release, but I would not hold your breath. HD-DVD is dead and MS will either move on with a Blu-Ray drive or nothing at all.

[Mickey79]

Mickey,

The HD-DVD add-on will only work with movie disks; not data ones.

Its dumb and I don't like it either. I wanted to burn DVD-R's with muci and videos and play off that drive. Its quieter and needs and would take the load off the other drive. (Another advantage that the PS3 has. It can read everything off its one drive.)

Maybe MS will update with a season release, but I would not hold your breath. HD-DVD is dead and MS will either move on with a Blu-Ray drive or nothing at all.

With the death of HD-DVD, at this point it's pretty clear MS will be heading for Blu-ray. I was reading about a rumored annoucement that they'll be releasing a Blu-ray Add-On (Much like the HD-DVD Add-On) for the XBOX 360 as early as May. An XBOX 360 with a built-in Blu-ray drive isn't ruled out either in the future.

I doubt there will be any further release, upgrades or enhancements for the HD-DVD Add-On.

Anyhow, in my conquests I discovered that your HD Video has to be 'Authored' as an HD-DVD (which can be burnt to a regular standard DVD disc) to be played in the HD-DVD Add-On (Or player). As of right now, the only sane & inexpensive way of achieving this is by encoding your MKV or WMV-HD to an MPEG-2 file and using Ulead MF6+ to author it as an HD-DVD, and burning it as an HD-DVD using the latest IMGBurn (Which recognizes & burns HD-DVD's).

I'm not satisfied. MPEG-2 is inferior to some of the newer codecs like h.264/VC-1. I'm looking for a solution to authoring HD-DVD's using these new codecs directly, without re-encoding to MPEG-2. The only solution for this, right now, is using extremely expensive and complication applications like Sonic Scenarist or DoStudio MX.

So for now, the only other solution that comes to my mind is encoding my MKV's to high quality WMV-HD's (VC-1) using TMPGEnc Xpress (I have a custom profile for doing this), and transfering the video file to an external Hard Drive (HFS+ File System), and connecting to the XBOX 360 (USB) and playing the videos off that. XBOX 360 has no problems playing high quality WMV-HD's (VC-1) off an external Hard Drive. You get to play full 1080p HD Content, 5.1 Surround Sound and you're not restricted by a traget media size (DVD5/DVD9) so you can keep pretty high (15mbps - 20mbps) bitrates.
Next best thing to owning a Blu-ray/HD-DVD Combo IMO.

[jman98]

Mickey79 - I'm working from memory here, but wasn't there another thread where I think you and I participated about converting MKV files to HD DVD? I suggested that it might be possible to convert the MKV containers to AVI and then encode that. I did some work this past weekend about that and had no success. I found a few posts on another forum about where a few guys were able to do it and then encode the AVI with HCenc, but apparently the encoded file failed to work with Ulead a lot of the time and it seemed to be an awful lot of work even when it was successful.

Using Scenarist would seem to be the way to go, assuming the files work without re-encoding.

I've been looking into the possibility of just using a media streamer to play MKV files. I don't have a lot of them, so it's not a real high priority. The Popcorn Hour (http://www.popcornhour.com) and iStar (http://www.istarhd.com) devices seem to be equivalent and have some ability to play MKV files, but reviews state that audo other than AC3 may be problematic for MKV playback.

[Mickey79]

jman98: yes, we were discussing this issue in another thread. We were discussing the Encoding part of it.
The endeavors & solutions you've stated in this post are pretty much what I have gone through (and failed with) already, and have come to understand during my research. At the end of the day, just as I stated in my previous post - there doesn't seem to be a workable solution (unless you're willing to re-encode to MPEG-2) to author an HD-DVD, besides expensive solutions like Scenarist (Which to my knowledge has the worst GUI & the most expletive learning curve) or NetBlender's DoStudio MX.

So my choice for now would be using the External Hard Drive to play full 1080p HD VC-1 files, at least until a better, easier solution is available.

Mickey79 - I'm working from memory here, but wasn't there another thread where I think you and I participated about converting MKV files to HD DVD? I suggested that it might be possible to convert the MKV containers to AVI and then encode that. I did some work this past weekend about that and had no success. I found a few posts on another forum about where a few guys were able to do it and then encode the AVI with HCenc, but apparently the encoded file failed to work with Ulead a lot of the time and it seemed to be an awful lot of work even when it was successful.

Using Scenarist would seem to be the way to go, assuming the files work without re-encoding.

I've been looking into the possibility of just using a media streamer to play MKV files. I don't have a lot of them, so it's not a real high priority. The Popcorn Hour (http://www.popcornhour.com) and iStar (http://www.istarhd.com) devices seem to be equivalent and have some ability to play MKV files, but reviews state that audo other than AC3 may be problematic for MKV playback.

[UHD4096P]

I'm also frustrated by the lack of VC-1 authoring software for mini-HDDVDs.. this shouldn't be hard and everything I've tried (CyberLink Power Producer 4, Ulead Movie Factory 6 Plus, Nero 8 Ultra all want to convert my VC-1 encodes (back) to MPEG2. This just doesn't seem to be hard - the HD DVD file structure is nearly identical to a standard DVD except you have EVOs in place of VOBs.. so you really just need a way to create the EVOs. Seems pretty easy to go the other way (EVOMux)!! I contacted Pegasys, Inc to see if they were thinking about including support in a new release of TMPGEnc DVD Author but now that HDDVD is officially dead, I doubt any commercial entity will pick up the ball here.

Could you share your custom 720p/1080p profile for producing VC-1 and DD5.1 .wmv files using TMPGEnc 4.0?

[Mickey79]

I'm also frustrated by the lack of VC-1 authoring software for mini-HDDVDs.. this shouldn't be hard and everything I've tried (CyberLink Power Producer 4, Ulead Movie Factory 6 Plus, Nero 8 Ultra all want to convert my VC-1 encodes (back) to MPEG2. This just doesn't seem to be hard - the HD DVD file structure is nearly identical to a standard DVD except you have EVOs in place of VOBs.. so you really just need a way to create the EVOs. Seems pretty easy to go the other way (EVOMux)!! I contacted Pegasys, Inc to see if they were thinking about including support in a new release of TMPGEnc DVD Author but now that HDDVD is officially dead, I doubt any commercial entity will pick up the ball here.

That's an exact replica of my own thoughts & feelings. Couldn't have said it better! Very, very frustrating. It really shouldn't have been this hard. And you're right - Every single product I've tried seems to re-encode to the inferior MPEG-2 Codec. The only 2 applications that I know of, which can handle VC-1 and produce VC-1 HD-DVD seem to be the immaculately expensive (and over-rated, IMO) Sonic Scenarist & NetBlender's DoStudio MX.

Did Pegasys ever get back to you? I hope they do add it, even if for homebrew(er's), who seem to be picking up and still continuing HD-DVD Format.

Could you share your custom 720p/1080p profile for producing VC-1 and DD5.1 .wmv files using TMPGEnc 4.0?

Sure .. grab them here:
http://chrislynch.rahulsjohari.com/VC1_720p1080p_Templates.zip