How to author HD files as DVDs

[imel6]

Is there a program or method that will allow me to do this? I want to author my HD files into DVDs. I don't want to reencode just have the ability to add menus, chapters etc.. DVDLab says it will ignore compliance but never works. I am going to store the files on hard disks. Thanks

[mverta]

Well, I don't know what software you have access to, but I can tell you that we resize material in high-end compositing programs like After Effects or Shake.

We also add the 3:2 Pull-down here to convert 24 frame-per-second footage into 29.97 fps for video.

In our process, the 24fps to 29.97fps conversion has to happen AFTER the resizing, or the field order can get reversed and screw your output.

SO: What we do is bring in 24fps HD video (1920x1080) and we "pad" the image (like enlarging the canvas in Photoshop) to 1920x1440. This makes the image area a ratio of 4:3. Then we size that down to 720x540. While this resolution IS 4:3, it uses a square pixel aspect ratio, and NTSC video needs a NON-square pixel aspect ratio. To obtain this, we further reduce the size NON-PROPORTIONALLY to 720x486. This will make the image appear "sqashed" on your computer monitor, but don't worry, it'll stretch back out on a television.

Now for some reason, even though the true NTSC video spec is 720x486, DVD's use images that are only 720x480. So AFTER (Very Important) We have created the 720x486 version, we crop off 3 pixels at the top and bottom. If you tried to do this in the previous step, that is set your size to 720x480 instead of 486, you'd be incorrectly squashing your video, and you'd distort the image.

With our newly-created, 24fps, 720x480 "master", we then add 3:2 Pull-down, to bring the frame rate to 29.97 (30). This step I understand can be done in some encoding programs, we just do it ourselves, because we've never seen an encoder that does it properly; it always looks jerky.

Hope this helps,

Mike
[

[imel6]

Hi, thanks for the response
However, I don't want to transcode the video at all - I want to maintain 1920x1080i but author it as a DVD. Is there are piece of software that will enable me to trick a DVD authoring package or one that will ignore the resolution and let me author (and mux) as is. THanks

[mverta]

Why would you want to do this? HD DVD technology doesn't exist yet... no player can support the bandwidth, and you'd only get a few minutes on a dvd before burning up the disk space anyway.

If you just want to store HD files on a DVD, you can just burn them on with any burner, as a storage medium. But there's no way to play back HD files off a DVD.

Mike

[imel6]

I don't want to play HD content from a 'dvd' (with a DVD player). I want to be able to access my HD material from a hard drive but with DVD formatting (e.g. menus, chapters etc..) Thanks

[benza]

With DVDpatcher you can change the mpeg2header in 720x564/480 but I don't know if the program support HD material...

[Kika]

@mverta

There's absolutly no need to convert the Framerate from 23.976 to 29.97. All you get is a waste in Bitrate, if you are doing that.
TMPGEnc is able to do a propper Encoding with 23.976 fps, on all other Encoders you can use pulldown.exe to set the Flag correctly.

@imel6
No normal DVD-Player is able to play back HDTV-Videos even if you patch the headers.
And no current Authoring-Program is able to work with such Videos. You have just two options:

1. Transcode the Video to DVD-Format (it will look very nice).

2. Store the Videos as Files on DVD.

[imel6]

Thanks Kika, as I stated earlier -
I am not looking to play these from a hardware DVD player. I want to store them on my hard disk and play from there.
DVDLab claims support thought it looks like it doesn't work.

[auenf]

you *should* be able to just demux the .ts or whatever (non-standard mpg im guessing) using projectx, then use those in dvdlab, or even just mux them back together using tmpgenc into a proper mpeg2 program stream.

Enf...