High Definition versus Blu Ray

[rallymax]

Ah a couple of admin things.
a: Please change your topic to "Adobe Encore - HD DVD vs Bluray" because your topic as it is at the moment suggests a misunderstanding of what "High Definition" is and "BluRay".

b: Why isn't this in the Forum->Video->Editing section? This has nothing to do with camcorders.

c: Ignoring your HD-DVD vs BluRay conversation and getting back to your original question of Encore's DVD or BluRay or Flash output...

Encore can make
-DVDs (standard definition only) and renders the video to MPEG2 & audio to Dolby Digtal AC3 then makes the DVD layout (with VOBs etc).
-Blu-Ray (SD and HD) rendering the video as H.264 aka AVCHD aka MPEG4part10, then makes the Blu-Ray layout.
( look here for the HD & SD resolutions that Blu Ray (and HD-DVD) standards support - https://www.videohelp.com/hd#tech )

-Flash - I think this is H.264 too but not sure. it outputs .flv not DVD or Blu-Ray file structures.

So I think you're asking is the "DVD" setting the HD-DVD output. And the answer is no. And no, Adobe does not support the HD-DVD standard, only Blu-Ray. Sorry if that bugs you it is what it is.

It's bugs me that Encore doesn't support AVCHD-DVD either (a DVD with a file structure very close to Blu-Ray that plays HD video in a Blu-Ray player). (similar idea to "mini-DVD" which is a CD-R with the files of a DVD on it).
But.... I can render to Blu-Ray and then play conversion games with the resulting Blu-Ray folder. Since HD-DVD uses the same 1280x720 or 1920x1080 HiDef sizes and with the same compression (H.264) then you might be able to find a utility that rips a Blu-Ray to HD-DVD standard without re-encode.

From your other post I can see that you're frustrated with Premiere but it is the best (or equal to Vegas) video editor out there. It has been head to head with Avid for 20 years.

Encore and AME on the other hand... well that's only been around for a few years and I think that's what's killing your buzz.
Encore is ok but now 10 years after Sonic's DVD authoring became the professional benchmark Encore is young and is NO WHERE near what Sonic's Professional solution does (they make myDVD too which is kinda easy and weak).

Encoding (AME) , well Adobe dropped the ball on that one. Evident in that they had to license MainConcept's MPEG2 and MPEG4p10 encoder & decoder for the CS4 release.

If your goal is to get crazy good transfer of your camcorder's MTS files to play on a HDTV and on YouTube then.

a: only use Premiere if your are EDITING or APPLYING FILTERS. Coz if you're not you might as well drag and drop the MTS files back to back in Nero, Roxio, multiAVCHD etc because they won't re-encode the footage.

b: As for YouTube, you're at the mercy of thier presets. If you render to 1280x720/30p with 1:1 pixels you'll bypass their re-encode (as I understand it). BTW, their encoder isn't the greatest thing out there - the word on the street is that they use the [edit][s:0e15087f72]libavcodec[/s:0e15087f72] libx264 library from the [edit][s:0e15087f72]FFmpeg[/s:0e15087f72] x264 open source project.

c: the fact that you're reporting that it plays back jerky. that isn't the encode, it's your weak pc performance. It's been worse for you when encoding to 30Mps because that's harder work vs the 2mbps from youtube. At 30mbps you might be hard disk throughput bound. (do you have SATA-300 drives?)

I would trial CoreAVC because it's decoder is great and now has nVidia CUDA acceleration. The default Windows AVCHD decoder is sluggish. Although the Windows 7 one is quite good.

[rallymax]

having said all that. yes, having a way to distribute your HD camcorder footage is sort of pre-mature at the moment in the consumer world. It is in the "innovators"/"early adoptors" stage right now and is yet to cross to the "early majority" - which is what your family members are. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Technology-Adoption-Lifecycle.png ) - that is, if you believe that optical delivery is the norm. (as I do too btw).
So since the ability to distribute is weak, you could probably argue that HD camcorders are in the "innovators"/"early adoptors" stage too.

If you want to send you movies to the family and you have the processing power - author in HD, make AVCHD-DVD-R or Blu-Ray-R disks to play in your BluRay or Sony PS3. The AVCHD-DVD's can also be copied onto SDHC sticks or USB memory sticks. Some Panasonic and Sony HDTVs support direct plugging of those in. (see this tool - multiAVCHD )
After you have your HD finished material drop it in to AME and set the output as a NTSC Widescreen DVD. Burn that onto DVD-R's for playback on your family's DVD players.
That's how I send baby footage to the family. HD for home (I have bluray) and family members that have HDTV and BluRay too and SD DVD to everyone else. (except that I make the menus again in Encore using HD assets and render out from there)

[creamyhorror]

b: As for YouTube, you're at the mercy of thier presets. If you render to 1280x720/30p with 1:1 pixels you'll bypass their re-encode (as I understand it). BTW, their encoder isn't the greatest thing out there - the word on the street is that they use the [edit][s:3cccf603b5]libavcodec[/s:3cccf603b5] libx264 library from the [edit][s:3cccf603b5]FFmpeg[/s:3cccf603b5] x264 open source project.

Actually, everything I've heard indicates that Youtube re-encodes your video no matter what you do. Your best approach is to upload a video of as high a quality and bitrate as possible, so Youtube has a good source too work with. Of course, if your video is high-motion shaky footage, no amount of bitrate will make the resulting Youtube video look good, since Youtube re-encodes to 2Mbps.

I've also read that Youtube somehow destroys vertical resolution, so it's better to upload something at higher resolution (e.g. 1600x900 or even 1920x1080). That way you preserve quality significantly.