Captured HD Video - want to put on DVD in HD quality

[Coroner]

Hi all,

I am definitely new to this so I think I am in the right forum area. I have some experience with capturing DV-Video from tapes and then authoring DVD's. A few years back when I did this I was so disappointed with the quality I pretty much gave upon on it. Now however my wife is pregnant and wants video.

I have decided to purchase a Sony HDR-SR12 120GB High Definition Handycam. Basically a HD Handycam that records to Memory stick or to the onboard solid state memory.

I expect capturing from this device to my PC will be pretty straight forward.

My question is what do I need at that point to get HD quality DVD's ? Once I have captured the video, done whatever editing (if any) I want to do, what do I now need ?

I expect I will need a Blu Ray burner for my PC and of course a Blu Ray player for the home in order to be able to watch the resultant DVD.

How about software ? My real concern is with quality. For me it doesn't make much sense to record and capture in HD if I am not going to be able to create DVD's that are not also of HD quality when played back. I dont mind spending some money if that is necessary (up to a point of course) Ease of use would be nice, but again I am more concerend with the quality of the DVD. I dont mind having to learn how to use something if it is going to produce great results.

Will I need any special video card to do this ? My PC is mostly built for gaming and as such I have a BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB GDDR3. Kind of dated I know, but hoping SWMBO will soon let me get a GTX 280. I am not really concerned with speed so if all a new card if going to provide is faster capturing/encoding/etc then I don't care. Will my current card work for my purposes ?

Thanks all and looking forward to any advice I can get.

Coroner

[Schmendrick]

If you do a search on this website you will find the following thread where this topic already has been adressed:
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic350515.html?highlight=hdrsr12

Then ArcSoft's Totalmedia Extreme should be a solution for your plans:
http://www.arcsoft.com/public/software_title.asp?ProductID=16

I just have found a short clip from an other user of a Sony HDR-SR12 and with TsRemux you can remux a produced MTS-clip from this camera to a Blu-ray-structure. This then can be burnt on a DVD using the UDF 2.5-format with e.g. Nero. Many standalone bluray player like Panasonic, Sony, Philps but not Sharp are able to play these AVCHD-DVD-discs at full resolution. On the other hand you can only have one clip on the DVD and no menus can be produced with this method.

Schmendrick

[Coroner]

Thanks for the reply. Can I expect the resultant DVD to be of HD quality when played back on a Blu Ray player when using the methods/applications mentioned above ?

Thanks again,

Coroner

[Schmendrick]

Yes the resultant DVD is of HD quality but can only be played with a AVCHD-compatible bluray player, with the Sony PS3 playstation or using a sufficient fast computer (dual core > 2 GHz) with an installed AVC/H.264-decoder. The reason for this is that the original material (video and audio streams) is only remuxed but not reencoded.

Schmendrick

[Coroner]

Thanks Schmendrick ! I presume that if I wanted to it would be fairly easy to re-encode from the AVCHD format to the format of a standard 540p DVD (not sure what that is called) in case I ever had the desire to distribute the DVD out to family that I know will not have an AVCHD compliant Blu Ray player ?

Thanks again for all of the great information,

Coroner

[Schmendrick]

To produce a standard NTSC-DVD playable on regular DVD-players you would have to determine the time delay between the video and audio track if any is there with e.g. Mediainfo, then demux both streams, feed the AVC/H.264-stream using Avisynth to resize it to 720x480 NTSC-resolution and change the frame rate to 29.976 frames per second and reencode the video stream eg. with the freeware HC-encoder. FInally with IFOedit you can mux the DVD-structure and burn it to a DVD.

Or use a commercial programme like Nero-Vision or ArcSoft TotalMediaExtreme.

Schmendrick

[Coroner]

I like this option.

"Or use a commercial programme like Nero-Vision or ArcSoft TotalMediaExtreme. "

Thanks,

Coroner