Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

"When you copy HD video from a camcorder to a DVD, do you have to playback on a HD-DVD player or will it play back on a standard DVD player?"

It really depends on the format you choose for your DVD whether the DVD you burn will play in a standard DVD player, or whether you need an HD-DVD player in order to watch your DVD creation. If you have an HD-DVD player, the method I describe for burning HD-DVDs on standard DVD media will result in DVDs that only play in HD-DVD drives. Your other option is to output your HD content as a standard definition video during the authoring process. Here's how this works:

• Import your HD video into your favorite video authoring program.
• Make any edits to the video, adding effects, transitions, titles, and anything else you want to include in the movie.
• Save the movie as a standard definition 720x480 file, either in MPEG-2 format or in the case of something like Windows Vista's Movie Maker, you'd need to save the file as a WMV.
• You then use the file you just saved in your DVD project

Keep in mind this method does not result in high definition video on DVD. You are saving your HD video as standard definition video and authoring a DVD that will play on any set top DVD player.