Burning a HD or a Blue Ray DVD

[Videographer]

I just bought a Sony HDR-FX7 camcorder. This camera records HD videos (1080i), but since I previosly used SD camcorder now I'm pretty confused. I have a PC with a standard DVD burner. I have 3 programs installed on my PC: Sony Vegas, CorelPro Video X4 and Pinnacle. Each capable of burning HD DVDs. I have a standalone DVD player and a Blue Ray Player connected to my HD TV. What is the difference between burning a HD DVD and a Blue Ray DVD. Do I need a HD DVD burner to burn the movies recorded with my FX7 and the above mentioned softwares?. Can I play this HD DVD on my Blue Ray?, or do I have to buy a Blue Ray DVD burner in order to transfer my HD movies recorded with my FX7 and watch them on my Blue Ray player?. Please advise and clarify on the equipment that I need.
Thank you so much to all of you.

[MOVIEGEEK]

What's your question?

Do you want to burn HD video on a DVD? If so they use MultiAVCHD.

[yoda313]

You can do avchd which is playable on a ps3 or most bluray players. It is high def on a standard dvdr. multiavchd and avchcoder are such programs that can produce this type of disc - as well as ripbot264.

You could consider a bluray burner. There are much more affordable than in the past. However blank disc prices are still higher than blank dvds but not obscenely higher.

Please note as with anything there are compromises to be made. You won't necessarily be able to have your original bitrate and resolution on an avchd because of space limitations. However it can look quite good. But using a bluray burner and bluray discs you'll be able to keep your original quality.

[Videographer]

As you say Blue Ray burners are not so expensive but the Blue Ray DVDs are. If I burn a HD DVD where can I play it?. Can I use any of the equipments that I mentioned?. I have read that you can burn a HD DVD on a standard DVD player but I guess there is a time limit. I know there are HD DVD burners but If I buy one I suppose that the final HD DVD won't be playable on any of the equipments that I own. Please I'm a newbie and the lingo is somehow unfamiliar to me.
Thank you.

[aedipuss]

blank blu-ray 25GB discs cost about the same a dvdr-dl and you get 3 times the storage space.

[Nelson37]

These three items - DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD are all separate formats, different burners, different disks, different players. There is no such thing as a Blu-Ray DVD.

HD-DVD is dead and buried, forget it. HD, or hi-definition, is a loose term but it means at least higher resolution than standard DVD. You CAN put HD Video on a standard DVD disk, which will play in Most Blu-Ray players, but not all. This is where AVCHD comes in, it is the closest thing to a standardized non-standard format for what you want to do. The avchd disk will NOT play in a standard DVD player, but you can burn it on a normal DVD burner and play it on a pc, or the Blu-Ray player if supported.

One thing not mentioned, in reference to your time limit comment, is that DVD disks hold far less data than a Blu-Ray, so the length of the movie is limited. For home movies, this should not be a real problem.

One other thought is that if you have a video card with HDMI-out you could connect this to the TV and play the movies in their original format with no conversion at all. The conversion of HD video usually takes a fairly long time. Check that, on your PC, a VERY long time and the HD-video may not play very well.

[_Al_]

-You have HD camcorder so drop any solution that has "DVD" in it. Think of it.

-You can burn BD , get some BD burner, I do not recommend this one though. (why would someone nowadays burn something, keep BD specs only and have to have back up stored somewhere else anyway, BD is not your back up)

-You can buy one of those http://www.iboum.com/net-media-players.php (not Roku) instead of burner and play your edited HD video from thumbdrive, hardisk, across LAN, wi-fi, share it from other storage, back it up.

I'd go with this last solution. Why not to have your video stored at least in two places and play it back right away with that media player.

[jman98]

Please stop saying HD DVD if you want help. This is not the correct term. You have a Sony camcorder. Sony NEVER supported the HD DVD format. You are trying to refer to what is correctly called AVCHD. Where exactly are you "finding" HD DVD burners? I haven't seen one available for years. Even when they were available it was almost impossible to get media for them.

[TreeTops]

jman98 is correct. However, you can burn AVCHD to a DVD and play it on some blue ray players with excellent results. But the DVD's are limited in how much AVCHD they can hold. Good for short clips however.

[dragonkeeper]

What you are probably looking for is to burn an AVCHD disk i.e. (HD video on a DVD disk ) with only 4.37 (single layer) and 8.7GB (dual layer) you kinda of limited on the amount of vidoe you can put on a single disk (without either using low quality settings or re-encoding the video you shot). AVCHD disk can be played on your computer with supporting software (i.e. winDVD, PowerDVD etc) or most Blu-ray players made with in the last 3 or so years. If you using quality media for you burns a single layer BD disk cost 4 times more than a single layer DVD disk but the BD disk has 5 times the storage capaacity.

[_Al_]

AVCHD disc is not supported everywhere, so why to push it that direction, OP is from US,

How does player handle that DVD, CRF encoded, with difficult scenes where bitrate could go very high in some places? What to do with those discs later, other player might not accept it ?

[fritzi93]

You could consider a bluray burner. There are much more affordable than in the past. However blank disc prices are still higher than blank dvds but not obscenely higher.

Really, that's your best option. I think you'll end up there anyway, why put it off? Good luck.