Sharing HD videos without Bluray or HD DVD equipment

VanHee

Newbie Joined: Aug 28, 2006 20:51 Messages: 22 Offline

Solved by

Oct 17, 2006 18:39

I recently created some high definition videos (1920 X 1080i) with my Canon HV10 and PowerDirector. The question I want to explore here is: 'how do you share them with friends and family?' If you publish them as DVDs they will be down-converted to standard-definition. I would like to hear any methods that will preserve them as HD videos.

The only thing I've done so far is to record the HD MPEG-2 files on a DVD disc. The main problem I ran into is that my DVD drive isn't fast enough to play them. They play intermittently. What did work was to copy the MPEG-2 file(s) from my DVD-ROM to my hard-drive which is fast enough to play them as HD video.

I think my DVD drive is 40X, but I'm not sure. A 14 minute video takes 2.11 gigabytes of space. Does anyone know how fast of a DVD drive would be needed to play the MPEG-2 videos from the DVD drive?

correction: My DVD drive is 16X

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Oct 18. 2006 12:28

Daisuke

Contributor Joined: Oct 03, 2006 06:25 Messages: 354 Offline

Oct 17, 2006 23:03

To play High Definition video files need high hardware to support it.
Probably it's not DVD-ROM problem.
You may need faster CPU and GPU.
I attach a Hgih Definition video files, you may use these files to check your
PC can play it very smoothly.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx
http://www.highdefforum.com/showthread.php?t=6537
I used my PC with P4 3GHz, 512 MB, and ATI X300 GPU to play wmvHD videos and no problem to play it.

This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at Oct 18. 2006 03:15

VanHee

Newbie Joined: Aug 28, 2006 20:51 Messages: 22 Offline

Oct 18, 2006 09:10

The 2.11 gb file runs smoothly from my hard-drive. So I think my CPU and video card are up to the task.

I did notice the clips you linked have a lower size per minute than mine. The 1080p clips on your first link run about 60 mb per minute. My MPEG video runs about 150 mb per minute. Apparently they're using a different CODEC and/or different compression ratio to create the files.

Are they giving up quality or is it just more efficient compression?

VanHee

Newbie Joined: Aug 28, 2006 20:51 Messages: 22 Offline

Oct 19, 2006 10:22

Some additional info:
According to this webpage -
http://www.geek.com/htbc/buy/cdromby.htm
DVD-ROM drives can deliver 9 megabytes per minute per X. So a 16X read capability translates to 144 megabytes per minute. Thats why it can't deliver my 150 megabyte per minute video file. Also, I think you can expect times (such as panning the camera) when the bit-rate will exceed the average.

I tried using WMV codec but it didn't seem to make smaller files. The high quality mode would create a file of 2.7 gb and take 8 hrs to produce my 14 minute HD video. The medium quality mode would create a 2.1 gb file and take 4 hours to produce. I didn't actually complete the production process because it didn't appear to be an advantage. The mpeg-2 codec created a 2.1 gb file and took about 1 hour.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Oct 19. 2006 10:53