HVX and PS3- Delivery in HD?

I just did a 23 minute 720/24p export from Final Cut Pro. Drop it into the 90 minute h.264 HD DVD preset with Dolby2

It encoded in about five hours, and I burned it to a DVD5 red laser dye.

It was drop down gorgeous on a Toshiba HD A1.

Today I'm going to try a higher data rate and see what happens. Should be a 10 hour encode though.
 
Until my Apple TV gets here, the PS3 has served amazingly well for displaying my content to clients and family alike via a USB memory stick.
 
SPZ said:
Whats making me excited here is the fact that one doesn't need Blu-ray disks to distribute HD Content to PS3 owners/viewers, which are the vast majority of HD content receivers ( less than computer users, tough) in high quality H264, and in either 1080p or 720p. The PS3 could be a good display unit for small festivals, don't you think?

Independent filmmakers would encode their videos in HD h264 with high quality specifications and deliver it to a festival with a PS3, which would then copy the movie file to the PS3 internal HDD for viewing. One could even burn a feature length Movie to a data Blu-ray, and then copy the file to the internal drive of the PS3- which is Hot swapable! This means no HDD limitation, and it uses on the shelf 2.5 inches drives...

Or we could just send a HDD, and the festival could have an usb enclosure, which would then be readable by the PS3... Many possibilities here!


I'm very happy with my purchase! :)
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You can do this with about any laptop with a DVI out... that means a G4 laptop, etc. Just have to worry about sound delivery.
 
Tried to encode a 1080 H264 file, but the PS3 said "Unsupported format". Anyone have settings for encoding 1080 material?


Kholi said:
You can do this with about any laptop with a DVI out... that means a G4 laptop, etc. Just have to worry about sound delivery.
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Yes, but, for example, my laptop (g4 powerbook) struggles with both 1080 and some 720p encoded H264. The PS3 has also the option of component out HD projection, as well as HDMI, and that's very flexible. A laptop needs adaptors, and I'm not so sure of the output quality. The PS3 is indeed a multimedia player. It is an option to consider for delivery- If Sony does an Apple, which made available Sundance shorts on the Apple store, and makes available independent films on their store, this could be a distribution channel for independent content!
 
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Dvd

Dvd

Quick question,
I shot a short on mini dv, put it in a mini dv timeline and then i dropped some 1080i50 shots into this time line. What is the best compression option for dvd output? DV pal?
thanks guys
 
Good luck playing any Mac created content on that 360, ive seen that as well, and ill be getting one specifically for the HD DVD player since right now all HD DVDs are 1080i instead of 1080p when using it via component on my TV.

to SPZ:

to export for PS3 in quicktime pro. I select the MPEG-4 option, then in the settings for that, choose MP4 for File Format. H.264 video Format. Data rate, use your desired rate, i usually go around 9000kbits but ive gone up to 24000kbits to see difference, and theres a slight difference, most of the time its not too great, id test with short clips if i were you.

Image size, 1080 or whatever.. Video Options, Main. and however many passes you want. Audio you can choose, and the streaming turned off. should work fine after that.
 
Kholi said:
You can do this with about any laptop with a DVI out... that means a G4 laptop, etc. Just have to worry about sound delivery.
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we did show stuff with a laptop, but I rather have beer spilled over my $ 500 PS3 than my $ 1800 laptop.
 
i play 720p wmv's thru my xbox360 with no problem. i am using a mac for this. i save the file to a little usb bus powered drive then plug the drive into the front of the xbox. it pops up under media and plays like a champ....
 
>Good luck playing any Mac created content on that 360

If you use Vegas, I wrote a tutorial on how to export to a kind of h.264 that works on all: AppleTV, XBox360 and PS3. The kind of files the x264 encoder produces works with all, although Quicktime/AppleTV will have a bit of hard time decoding it fast enough for some reason.
http://eugenia.blogsome.com/2007/08/11/
 
Presently i create hd dvds burned on regular dvd and play them with the hd player for the xbox360. Would encoding to x264 allow for a higher bit rate better image? I found that the xbox360 cannot handle hd dvd with a bit rate higher then 25000....The image is good but still i wish it could be better.
 
The xbox and PS3 can't decode h.264 files with more than 10Mbps. That's enough for h.264 though, as it does not require as much bitrate as mpeg2 requires.

How do you burn HD-DVDs on regular DVDs btw? Do you use commercial tools or free ones? If they are free, which ones are they and how exactly do you do it?
 
Is the 10mbps limit when reading from media on a dvd or also for reading a file on the hard drive? I dont know of any non commercial ones.....I use a technique i found on this forum to burn them.....i'll try to find the thread and post the link.
Big thanks for the tutorial btw. I'll try it and compare the end results with hddv, see wich one gives best results. I just wish theyre was a way to keep the same quality as the original footage.If using h.264 is as good as hddvd it could be useful for longer footage. You can only put about 20 minutes worth of hd dvd encoded footage on a regular dvd.
I see a difference between reading the original footage from the hvx and the hd dvd. With non moving close up shots its pretty awesome but with wider and or moving shots it degrades a lot.

-Pierre
 
The limit is for both AFAIK. It is not a hard limit (it depends on the encoder too), you will just be running out of cpu under normal circumstances.
 
Eugenia Loli-Queru said:
How do you burn HD-DVDs on regular DVDs btw? Do you use commercial tools or free ones? If they are free, which ones are they and how exactly do you do it?
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Using the 10.4 mbps encoder for h.264 I encode DVCProHD footage in Compressor and audio to Dolby 2.

I launch DVD SP 4.2 on a Mac, select the HD option, and import the assets. Do a menu, etc.

Then I drop a blank red laser dye DVD5 into a SuperDrive and burn.

Plays on Toshiba A1 HD DVD set tops.
 
Eugenia Loli-Queru said:
The xbox and PS3 can't decode h.264 files with more than 10Mbps. That's enough for h.264 though, as it does not require as much bitrate as mpeg2 requires.

How do you burn HD-DVDs on regular DVDs btw? Do you use commercial tools or free ones? If they are free, which ones are they and how exactly do you do it?
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I'm sorry, but this is just annoying. I've said I've encoded an H264 file at 18mbps, and it plays beautifully on the PS3. Either I have a special prototpipe PS3 or you have never tried this on the machine with the latest firmware (1.82 and above).

Don't post misinformation.
 
Maybe it works on the new PS3 firmware. But it doesn't on the xbox and in my comment above I mentioned both:

"Added H.264 video support: Up to 10 Mbps peak, Baseline, Main, and High profiles with 2 channel AAC LC." http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/news/2007/0408-im.htm

Additionally, this is not a clear cut thing, it depends A LOT on the kind of encoder you use, so please do not accuse me of spreading misinformation. I have seen the PS3 choke on 1080p with 10 MBps when using a commercial encoder. So it is very important to know what encoder and encoder options you are using. For example, if you are encoding with ffmpeg/x264 at very high-bitrate and wtih the CABAC options ON, you are going to give a pretty hard time to any machine at 18 Mbps. Additionally, at level 4.1 and with lots of encoding optimizations, more than 12 mbps will approximately yield the same quality compared to your 18mbps, so there is no reason to push up the MBps so much. You will be running your PS3 hot for no good reason -- while the xbox will just choke from the get go.
 
Eugenia Loli-Queru said:
Maybe it works on the new PS3 firmware. But it doesn't on the xbox and in my comment above I mentioned both:

"Added H.264 video support: Up to 10 Mbps peak, Baseline, Main, and High profiles with 2 channel AAC LC." http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/news/2007/0408-im.htm

Additionally, this is not a clear cut thing, it depends A LOT on the kind of encoder you use, so please do not accuse me of spreading misinformation. I have seen the PS3 choke on 1080p with 10 MBps when using a commercial encoder. So it is very important to know what encoder and encoder options you are using. For example, if you are encoding with ffmpeg/x264 at very high-bitrate and wtih the CABAC options ON, you are going to give a pretty hard time to any machine at 18 Mbps. Additionally, at level 4.1 and with lots of encoding optimizations, more than 12 mbps will approximately yield the same quality compared to your 18mbps, so there is no reason to push up the MBps so much. You will be running your PS3 hot for no good reason -- while the xbox will just choke from the get go.
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No hard time whatsoever. No choking. Playing beautifully. The only chocking was on my G5, that required 9 hours encoding of a 30 minutes file. Using standard Quicktime conversion, not even compressor. Exported from Final Cut Pro 5.1.2

Used the Apple tv preset export vs the 1080 25p encoding at 18mbps. A World of Difference. 12mbps vs 18mbps noticeable difference in overal picture (not as noticeable from Apple TV default to 18mbps 1080-obviously)

I accused you simply because you passed wrong information about the constant Mbps H264 file the PS3 can display.
That's missinformation. Somethimes I get my facts wrong too, and I appologise. I don't try to "work around" my response.

You were wrong. And many people would assume that to be the truth.
 
Look, I explained it above and that's not a "work around": files that are encoded with the x264 encoder require WAY MORE cpu than Apple's encoder. Apple's encoder is one of the worst in the industry regarding h.264 quality and as you have seen, it takes forever to encode. It is easier to decode simply because it uses no CABAC and it has no advanced optimizations to speak about. All Apple's 1080p trailers decode beautifully on a P4 3 Ghz for example, but if you try to decode the same video but encoded with x264 instead, you will get about ONE FRAME PER FIVE SECONDS. And remember, the lower the MBps, the easier the decoding process because the CPU will have to deal with fewer data.

I am a Windows and Linux user mostly, and so I am using x264 via ffmpeg or mencoder. You are obviously using a Mac and Apple's encoder. We have different experiences. And don't forget, I talked about both the xbox and the PS3, not just the PS3. Obviously, the PS3 can work faster than the Xbox, but if you want *compatibility* between the two systems (e.g. if you want to share your file with your friends who have an xbox instead), you MUST stay below 10mbps for xbox's sake.

And besides, you are using 25fps, while in my tests I always use 30 fps. That's 1/6 less data you know, and so it helps your decoding process and experience. You are obviously shooting PAL, while I am shooting NTSC that has more frames.

As for AppleTV's preset, AppleTV can only do 720/24p, not 1080/30p. So the difference will be obvious in quality no matter how many Mbps you boost to it.

Let me know, and I could encode a small 1080/30p 18 MBps file via the x264 encoder and I could upload it for you to test it out if you like.
 
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