Is there any point in recording HD on to a DVD? Blu-ray on normal DVD ?

[cyrile]

Hi
I am new to this forum but not new to home video. I have been making home movies for many years on various mediums (I have had my 3 score years and 10 !) but in a quandary as to what to do. I have been looking to upgrade to a Hi Def camera (Panasonic X920) but this then leads me on to other questions.
1. Is there any point in recording HD on to a DVD?
2. If I record onto a Bluray can this be played on a normal DVD player? I know it works the other way round.
3. My computer has a DVD recorder, can I get a Bluray recorder similar to an external DVD for my computer?

[budwzr]

Hi
I am new to this forum but not new to home video. I have been making home movies for many years on various mediums (I have had my 3 score years and 10 !) but in a quandary as to what to do. I have been looking to upgrade to a Hi Def camera (Panasonic X920) but this then leads me on to other questions.

1. Is there any point in recording HD on to a DVD?

It might look better.

2. If I record onto a Bluray can this be played on a normal DVD player? I know it works the other way round.

No, but BD players are under $100.

3. My computer has a DVD recorder, can I get a Bluray recorder similar to an external DVD for my computer?

You mean to hold data? Like video files? I think so, but most people use an HD-PVR.

If you're going "HD", you can still use SD, but you won't be able to fill the screen unless you stretch it, and that makes it fuzzy. But what you can do is resample it to HD resolution. However, the amount of detail remains SD.

[Cornucopia]

Most people who record HD onto DVD fall into 2 categories:
1. Those who create their own HD titles which happen to be short, so they don't require the capacity of a BD. They can author and burn onto a DVD in AVCHD format, which is compatible with many/most/some BD players and newer DVDplayer software (though *NO* regular DVD settop players). Keeps the quality high, but the titles have to be ~<60min.
2. Those who are copying existing BD HD titles but want to downsize to more economical backup media. Of course, quality is lost here, both during the re-conversion and in the lowering of bitrate (since the original was likely to be full length feature =>135min).

Yes, there are external BD recorders available (USB2.0, etc). I myself recommend you stay with internal, with it's inherent higher bandwidth capability, but if that's the way you want to work, it should be possible to do externally. Just be careful with your overhead & bandwidth utilization.

Scott

[jman98]

3. My computer has a DVD recorder, can I get a Bluray recorder similar to an external DVD for my computer?

You mean it has a "DVD burner". The word "recorder" means something very different and you fooled budwzr because he answered you as if you said it correctly. But Cornucopia understands what you really wanted to say.

If you use an external BD burner then you should probably not do anything on the PC that might also use the USB bus while the disc is burning.

[MindController]

Similarly, I used to convert HD itunes movie trailers to DVD compliant files and the picture quality was always a lot better than using the regular DVD trailer.

[Cornucopia]

Yes, the nomenclature should be kept clear:
Reader = computer peripheral device that can read data off the media
Burner = computer peripheral device that can burn data onto the media, as well as read from
Player = settop/standalone device that has application program able to take the data from its own integrated reader and play it out
Recorder = settop/standalone device that has application program able to receive incoming data and simultaneously in realtime reorder the data and pass it along to its own integrated burner, as well as act like a player

There are, of course, computer player and recorder software (or soft + hardware combos) that are the computer-based equivalent of standalones.


Scott

[yoda313]

Making dvds from bluray is practical for watching them on a tv that you don't have a bluray player hooked up to. Also I don't know of any car bluray players yet - stock ones I mean. I do believe there are portable bluray players now but I don't think they are dirt cheap like dvd players right now.

Basically converting to dvd would let you play the same bluray on any dvd player, albeit at sd resolution.

And budwzr is right - a bluray won't play in a dvd player and yes you can get a bluray player brand new for under a 100.00 - and it can be a "smart" player with the streaming apps too. You should be able to get a wifi built in model for under a 100.00 if you look carefully - or there abouts. Wifi builtin will be a little more expensive than a lan only model.

Edit - and I mean making a dvd in the full conversion sense - to an actual video_ts folder with mpeg2 video for full compliance - and you can 5.1 audio of course - but the sd audio maxed at 448kpbs for ac3 and the max for dts sd audio - 1568 I think it is) but of course you would probably want to stick to ac3 to max out the video bitrate on a dvd conversion.

[cyrile]

Thank you all for your replies and I stand corrected for not using the correct terminology. I am learning quickly?
The first project that I have to do is a wedding for a young couple that do not have BD at the moment but will probably have in the future. I myself do have BD, Smart TV etc, so for myself I will in future use BD. Perhaps for them it would probably be an idea to do both so that they have the choice.
One thing that Cornucopia mentioned was AVCHD. Is this a sort of half way house?

[budwzr]

AVCHD is "Consumer BluRay". X264 is the open source version. Apple has the same thing, but I think that's the Main Concept H.264.

It's not really confusing. Everyone mostly uses the term "AVC/AAC" or H.264. The actual name is used when clarification is desired.

Changing gears into HD is a wonderful escape from the bondage of the broadcast industry rules and regulations. The full RGB color spectrum is available, so long as you stay digital, like flat screen tv, YouTube, iPad, phones, etc.

Probably the most widely "universal" format for viewing everywhere is 720p30, about 10Mbps. That's a middle ground for viewing, but you should always shoot in the highest mode, regardless.

There's little tricks along the way, like if you shoot 1080p, and need to stabilize, you can still fill the frame of 720p and 480p.

There you have it. It's extremely exciting and rewarding. Your 10 years are not wasted at all. Same general rules apply to HD/SD editing.

[jman98]

Making dvds from bluray is practical for watching them on a tv that you don't have a bluray player hooked up to.

I must disagree. I don't think it's practical at all unless someone does this maybe once or twice. Doing it more starts to get into something like the old converting between NTSC<->PAL issue because someone is too cheap to just buy a converting player. If someone is going to be converting all the time from BD to DVD then they need to stop being cheap and just buy a BD player.

One of the things that just amazes me is how so many people place ZERO value at all on their spare time. My spare time is valuable and worth something to me, so if I spend, say, $100 to buy a player of some type and I no longer have to do conversions, then that is a win for me. But if someone is one of those people who are just cheap and place no value on their spare time then I guess they can spend hours every week doing conversions to DVD.

[_Al_]

It is wedding so they need properly authored DVD - SD resolution (no AVCHD DVD etc.).

You can give them thumbdrive with HD footage, you encode it in mpeg2, decent bitrate to make sure it is compatible across all HW players and TV's. And you tell them they should back it up.

You do not have BD burner, so you either get it and make BD or you don't.

[Kerry56]

Making dvds from bluray is practical for watching them on a tv that you don't have a bluray player hooked up to.

I must disagree. I don't think it's practical at all unless someone does this maybe once or twice. Doing it more starts to get into something like the old converting between NTSC<->PAL issue because someone is too cheap to just buy a converting player. If someone is going to be converting all the time from BD to DVD then they need to stop being cheap and just buy a BD player.

One of the things that just amazes me is how so many people place ZERO value at all on their spare time. My spare time is valuable and worth something to me, so if I spend, say, $100 to buy a player of some type and I no longer have to do conversions, then that is a win for me. But if someone is one of those people who are just cheap and place no value on their spare time then I guess they can spend hours every week doing conversions to DVD.

Once you have BD Rebuilder installed, it takes less than 5 minutes of your time to set up the conversion. Let it run overnight while you sleep and when you wake up, the dvd is done. Its not time consuming in the slightest. So this is a specious argument. Ripping the blu ray to the hard drive takes more of my time and attention, but I do that for every blu ray I purchase anyway.

And dvds made from blu ray sources are really quite fine quality. I've made a fair number for my sister who doesn't have a blu ray player, and has no interest in the format.

[Cornucopia]

AVCHD format is like the little brother to BD. It is mostly more constrained, but is adaptable to more media types (BDMV movie data expects to exist on BD media, AVCHD movie data could exist on BD, DVD or even HDD/Flash/Memory media). For DVD media AVCHD is even more constrained in that the bitrate ceiling (upper limit) is lower: 18Mbps vs. the standard 24Mbps.

Note that the AVCHD 2.0 spec (which adds 1080p60/50 and stereo3D features and raises the ceiling to 28Mbps) does NOT allow for DVD media.
I'm assuming you weren't looking for that, though.

So, if you only have a DVD burner (and don't intend to upgrade), you could do one or more of these options:
1. Encode HD AVC/h.264, Author as AVCHD and burn to DVD. This will be playable on BD players that also support AVCHD, but NOT standard DVD players.
2. Encode SD MPEG2, Author as DVD-Video and burn to DVD. This will be playable on BD & DVD players, but will only be SD resolution.
3. Encode as either HD AVC/h.264 or HD something else or as SD something, and burn as multimedia data files onto DVD. This will be playable only on computer, or those BD/DVD players that understand the encoded multimedia data files (varies greatly by player).

If you must give HD, then only 1 & 3 are options.

Good luck,
Scott

[yoda313]

@jman98 - partly i'm offering a reason why you would put bluray on dvd and a means to do so. Yes its far easier to get another bluray player.

I haven't done the conversion in quite some time myself. In fact I'm going for file based only backups mostly now that I have some 2tb harddrives handy.

And Kerry56 is correct that the quality of dvds from bluray is actually quite good. Since you are starting with a good source and if you stick to just the movie only and use ac3 448kpbs you can max out the bitrate more so than a store bought dvd of the same movie. So in a sense if you wanted the BEST dvd you could get this would be the way to do it - rip and downconvert with the bluray.

But like I said I dont' really do that anymore as I'm going with uncompressed rips and just audio conversions of the dts-ma to ac3 to save a little space. I haven't started it yet but I'll be working on dubbing my dolby true hd blurays with my ps3 and hdpvr 1 to high bitrate h264 files.