Digital Media players for use within clubs / the IAC

[col lamb]

For quite a while now I have been extolling the virtues of solid state media players as the way forward.

At Preston we have had for a few months a Western Digital WD TV Live Hub media player which is just a small box with a 1Tb hard drive, HDMI, component, composite, + L&R phono stereo outputs. Inputs are standard network and USB memory sticks.

All the club's movies plus a fair number of members movies are now permanently stored on this media player and backed up to one of my spare hard drives at home.

When I have produced a DVD programme to send to other clubs I have produced the disc within Encore and also made an image file and also a Photoshop image of the disc case insert. Both of these files are also stored on the media player for easy production of a DVD in the future.

We recently hosted the IAC NW Mersey 10 competition and on the night we showed 18 movies, each of which I captured to hard drive and placed it on the media player and used that during the show. It was certainly far easier than swapping discs and tapes.

The problem is with the capture from disc and maintaning the quality. There are programmes out there to capture but some have to re-encode and there is a potential quality issue if care is not taken. Generally DVD capture of a single movie is no issue as long as the VOB file is not split but it is with Blu-ray that is at risk of losing quality, you need to know what you are doing with this format.

So if any Region or the IAC as a whole is planning to go the solid state route then the best method is to have the movie submitted in solid state format to start with, this can be easily undertaken in the vast majority of editing programmes by producing a multiplexed MPEG2 file with non PCM audio or an MP4 video file with AAC audio. Just specify the encoding as: - DVD quality MPEG2 c7mbps CBR and c20mbps MP4 for HD both these settings are a fair compromise and should be OK for the less technically comfortable editor.

The disc encoding software such as Encore has the ability of adding ROM files, what I mean by this is best explained by what I did for my entries for BIAFF. My movies were in solid state format MPEG2 at DVD quality so once I had produced the DVD project and before burning the disc I went to the section Add ROM contect and selected the MPEG2 file of the movie which Encore included in the burned disc and so the movie is now on the burned disc in the root of the disc. The file of the movie can then be copied to a hard drive and there it is for use as required in exactly the same quality as originally produced.

My site on Vimeo shows tutorials on encoding to SD and HD



At Preston we have an AV amplifier (a home cinema type) so we simply connect a HDMI cable between the media player and the amp so both video and audio are processed by the amp.

I have used my own media player at clubs in the North West to show my own movies and in that case I connect to their projector via HDMI and to their standard amplifier via stereo phono.

Movies are placed on to the media player by connecting it to a router and copying the movie files to it.

To enter and show a movie in one of Preston's competitions all we have to do is to re-format a memory stick and place an MP4 or MPEG2 file of the movies onto it and then inset the stick into the WD TV Hub and show the movie directly off the memory stick.

Hope this helps, please ask if you require more information