burn hd dvd instrux (for idiots)

[Old Jaime]

Am using VS5. Have been able to burn HD blurays. Cannot figure out how to make an HD dvd for big-screen tv playback. Any Help?

[Ken Berry]

If you are talking about HD video burned as HD on a standard DVD, that is called a hybrid or AVCHD disc. And in X5, you go to Share > Create Disc > AVCHD. Note that the maximum bitrates for such discs is currently 18 Mbps (international standard for hybrids, I believe). This is of course lower than many AVCHD camcorders of the past year or two which can film with a bitrate of up to 27 Mbps.

At any rate, the other limitation of hybrid discs is the size. Effectively, a single layer DVD can only take up to 4.3 GB of video. Using the max bitrate of 18 mbps, that means you will only be able to get around 20 minutes of video on one, plus a menu. That is fine for me since few of my videos are over 20 minutes (audience attention factor!! ).

I seldom make hybrid discs these days, apart from the fact that I have a Blu-Ray burner. And that is because I usually transfer my completed HD videos (either HDV or AVCHD) to either a USB thumbnail drive or external hard drive, which I then connect to my PlayStation 3 (or other Blu-Ray player). This then plays the video in its original format on my HDTV via HDMI...

[Old Jaime]

Ken, I carefully followed your instructions but the avchd 0disc will not play back on neither of 2 tv dvd players. Any suggestions?

[lata]

Hi

For HD video either Bluray or the Hybrid type you need a Bluray DVD Player.

Can you confirm that your 2 tv dvd players are indeed Bluray players.

Can you tell us if your computers DVD burner is a Bluray burner or a Standard DVD burner.?

[Old Jaime]

Computer's dvd burner is not Bluray.

[Ken Berry]

Just to be clear: your computer's burner does not/not have to be a Blu-Ray burner in order to be able to burn a hybrid AVCHD disc.

However, the player connected to the HDTV (hopefully via HDMI cable for best quality) must/must be a Blu-Ray capable player, and moreover one rated to play AVCHD discs. Normally such a player will have a sticker saying "AVCHD" on the top front rim somewhere, along with stickers for all the other things it can play... I should have included that in my original reply above. FWIW, the PS3 is an excellent Blu-Ray player, among its many other talents.