Sony's PS3 download plans?

[-tkf-]

You're looking at 4-5GB per movie without any of the crap. It's nicer to have them on tap rather than have to reach for DVDs, and of course you're not limited to 250 GB - you can always slap in more storage. It's the principle of the thing.

On a side note, how would DVD movies be if recoded via h264? Should be smaller with the modern codec, but how would quality be affected? And playback on other devices?

Is DNLA something that existing NAT storages can handle, or a protocol that'd need specific hardware?

H.264 should be playable on every OS, there seems to be plenty support. In principle you could half the bitrate and size without loosing anything "big" in quality.

DNLA looks to be a part of other of Sony stuff so there is hope i guess.

4-5 GB or 7 GB really doesn´t matter, the 4-5 GB should hopefully be a minor part of any DVD collection since it´s really starving on Bits then. And of course i am not limited to 250GB, and surely i will transfer my 700 DVD´s to 3.5TB storage so that i don´t have to pick them up ;-). Yes it´s nicer to have them on "tap" but i would rather have other stuff on Tap, each to his own

 

[patsu]

And from what I have found thus far, it looks like DNLA may need hardware. As I haven't found any software for it (not even from Sony).

There are DLNA compliant hardware devices (e.g., storage).

I was told Windows Media PC is also DLNA compliant (but they brand it under a different name.... like Windows Media Connect ?).

The DLNA demo I spoke about was running on a PSP.

 

[Rolf N]

I have re-encoded dvd clips as h.264 (cause i use a Mac and to use iMovie you might as well). The quality is superb, no noticable difference to the dvd. The downside is space used can go up quite a bit if you use a bitrate higher the 2000kbps. And the quality difference isn't noticably better (with the higher bitrate).

You can't expect it to be better than the source material, no matter the bit-rate, and as you are starting from a DVD encode, with all the irreversible losses that already incurs, your observations are to be expected.

If you really want to evaluate the codec's bang-per-storage capabilities, you'd have to start from high(er)-quality source material. IOW the quality of transcodes isn't representative for what primary encodes, as done by the studios themselves, could achieve with the format.

 

[Diamond.G]

You can't expect it to be better than the source material, no matter the bit-rate, and as you are starting from a DVD encode, with all the irreversible losses that already incurs, your observations are to be expected.

If you really want to evaluate the codec's bang-per-storage capabilities, you'd have to start from high(er)-quality source material. IOW the quality of transcodes isn't representative for what primary encodes, as done by the studios themselves, could achieve with the format.

True. I would love to take some uncompressed HDV footage and see what the differences are, but I need a HDV cam first. Anyone wanna pitch in?

On a side note, has anyone written a transcoder for the PS3? It would be cool to see how fast one could convert movies from one format to another.

 

[-tkf-]

True. I would love to take some uncompressed HDV footage and see what the differences are, but I need a HDV cam first. Anyone wanna pitch in?

On a side note, has anyone written a transcoder for the PS3? It would be cool to see how fast one could convert movies from one format to another.

HDV is a very hard compressed format, MPEG2 @ 25 Mbit for 1440x1080 50i/60i, compared to the "real sources" that are used for DVD´s and HiDef Media.

 

[Diamond.G]

HDV is a very hard compressed format, MPEG2 @ 25 Mbit for 1440x1080 50i/60i, compared to the "real sources" that are used for DVD´s and HiDef Media.

Hmm, was reading about it on a Mac forum. Those nuts are chomping at the bits for the 8 core mac pro for HDV editing. And even then some of them are looking to get 2 systems to distribute the load. The PS3 should be able to cut through HDV like a hot knife through butter. We would just need a terabyte of storage though. But since the PS3 lacks FW400/800 it seems like Sony may ignore the video editing crowd.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That crowd out to be covered by a Cell workstation. That was the intention anyway. Problem with that theory is what OS and tools would they use? Does anyone use Linux as a professional workstation OS? I'd have thought the applications just aren't there for it.

 

[-tkf-]

Hmm, was reading about it on a Mac forum. Those nuts are chomping at the bits for the 8 core mac pro for HDV editing. And even then some of them are looking to get 2 systems to distribute the load. The PS3 should be able to cut through HDV like a hot knife through butter. We would just need a terabyte of storage though. But since the PS3 lacks FW400/800 it seems like Sony may ignore the video editing crowd.

It´s tough codec to edit in real time but more than doable, the tricks are:

A)
You capture and batch it in DV and do everything in DV.
You then "online it" / rebatch it in HDV and if needed you might do some Color grading.

B)
You batch everything in HDV and transcode it to a much better format, Avid has something called DNx it´s a 125mbit codec that is "optimized" for HD way easier for the CPU a bit harder on the I/O but nothing a modern Computer shouldn´t be able to handle.

 

[ninzel]

In case anyone needs this,it's a guide for converting videos and other things for use on the PS3 to get the best possible quality.I've found it very helpful.
http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3media&thread.id=23246

 

[mrcorbo]

surely i will transfer my 700 DVD´s to 3.5TB storage so that i don´t have to pick them up ;-).

That's not the only reason people do this. Having all your DVDs present in a media server allows a proper front-end to index them. You can browse your collection by genre, actor, director, release date. etc. If you have a very large movie collection, this is invaluable.

 

[joker454]

Was at PS3 Devcon so looks like I fell behind on this thread! Two things I wanted to reply to after a quick glance at the posts in this thread:

PS3's actually quite limited then, what with this and file sizes under 4 GB.

You actually can get around this using Red Kawa. It's free software, you run it on your pc, and it makes a directory on your pc accessible to the PS3 via it's browser. I've transfered 10gb+ files straight to the PS3's internal drive this way. You could also burn files to a blu-ray and transfer them over that way.

It´s tough codec to edit in real time but more than doable, the tricks are:

You don't really need to do any tricks anymore, a dual core intel conroe based cpu handles realtime HDV editing with no problem. I do it all the time on my 2.4GHZ Core2Duo with Vegas Video 7, and editing HDV in realtime is a breeze, very fast! You definitely want to use version 7 of that app though, its significantly better at dealing with HDV than version 6 was.

 

[-tkf-]

Was at PS3 Devcon so looks like I fell behind on this thread! Two things I wanted to reply to after a quick glance at the posts in this thread:



You actually can get around this using Red Kawa. It's free software, you run it on your pc, and it makes a directory on your pc accessible to the PS3 via it's browser. I've transfered 10gb+ files straight to the PS3's internal drive this way. You could also burn files to a blu-ray and transfer them over that way.



You don't really need to do any tricks anymore, a dual core intel conroe based cpu handles realtime HDV editing with no problem. I do it all the time on my 2.4GHZ Core2Duo with Vegas Video 7, and editing HDV in realtime is a breeze, very fast! You definitely want to use version 7 of that app though, its significantly better at dealing with HDV than version 6 was.

The tricks also maintains quality, but this is related to Professional Work so results and needs may differ.

 

[-tkf-]

That's not the only reason people do this. Having all your DVDs present in a media server allows a proper front-end to index them. You can browse your collection by genre, actor, director, release date. etc. If you have a very large movie collection, this is invaluable.

That would be cool but i think the costs in ragards to my collection would be dumb money i would rather spend on something else.. like a new PJ or... movies!

 

[joker454]

The tricks also maintains quality, but this is related to Professional Work so results and needs may differ.

Hmm, well the quality is being maintained during editing. I edit the .m2t file directly in Vegas Video and I can view the feed realtime at full res/bps. This ability is relatively new though. I remember I was considering getting a quad core cpu when I was using Vegas 6.0, but once I got 7.0 I found I didn't need to upgrade anymore. They dramatically speed their handling of native .m2t.

 

[-tkf-]

Hmm, well the quality is being maintained during editing. I edit the .m2t file directly in Vegas Video and I can view the feed realtime at full res/bps. This ability is relatively new though. I remember I was considering getting a quad core cpu when I was using Vegas 6.0, but once I got 7.0 I found I didn't need to upgrade anymore. They dramatically speed their handling of native .m2t.

This is way of topic, but do you know how Vegas handles the MPEG2 structure? If you make a cut in a mpeg2 fil the program will have to decode, reencode the file at the place your cutting it and as you know thats bad for quality. The same goes for effects, color grading etc. Depending on program of course...

 

[joker454]

This is way of topic, but do you know how Vegas handles the MPEG2 structure? If you make a cut in a mpeg2 fil the program will have to decode, reencode the file at the place your cutting it and as you know thats bad for quality. The same goes for effects, color grading etc. Depending on program of course...

Hmm, I haven't tried mpeg yet, I always just work with my .m2t home movies. But I didn't think that it actually re-encoded in place during editing. I always assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that it always left the movie you are editing intact, and instead when you edit, such as clip out a section of video, it just keeps track of jump points in the timeline. So that when you play a cliped section back, its just playing back your original movie and them it will jump around to whereever it needs to to correspond to your edit. Not sure how clearly I explained that, but see what I'm getting at? Now thats just at edit time. When you finally have to make your movie and spit out a new file, thats where I figured it just re-encoded the whole thing. But it's a one time re-encode, not like it would be re-encoding an already re-encoded edit.

Anyone know if the above is true? Right now when I make cuts in Vegas Video, I don't see any video quality change during edit, hence why I figured it just did the 'jump around' method on the original source video. The other reason was from a clue back when I used to use Vegas 6. When I would edit the .m2t to overlap one section of video into another (to have one clip fade into another), playback would always slowdown when it would get to that section in the timeline. Now, if it was truly reencoding at edits, then there should be no slowdown since it would all effectively been edited into one new clips. But the slowdown was telling me was that at the overlap section, Vegas was indeed trying to decode 2 different streams at the same time, hence the lag. Once it would get past the overlap sections, video playback would resume at normal speed.

 

[-tkf-]

Hmm, I haven't tried mpeg yet, I always just work with my .m2t home movies.

m2t is MPEG2

Quality loss is depends on what you do to your files, how many times the mpeg2 will be decoded and reencoded.

 

[joker454]

m2t is MPEG2

Quality loss is depends on what you do to your files, how many times the mpeg2 will be decoded and reencoded.

Ahhhh, ok. I'm kind of a noob when it comes to all these video formats (.ts, .ps, .mkv, m2t, etc...).

 

[Diamond.G]

Anyone know if the above is true? Right now when I make cuts in Vegas Video, I don't see any video quality change during edit, hence why I figured it just did the 'jump around' method on the original source video. The other reason was from a clue back when I used to use Vegas 6. When I would edit the .m2t to overlap one section of video into another (to have one clip fade into another), playback would always slowdown when it would get to that section in the timeline. Now, if it was truly reencoding at edits, then there should be no slowdown since it would all effectively been edited into one new clips. But the slowdown was telling me was that at the overlap section, Vegas was indeed trying to decode 2 different streams at the same time, hence the lag. Once it would get past the overlap sections, video playback would resume at normal speed.

This is OT but read this wiki entry on Editing HDV to get an idea of what is happening.