I am needing to find some info on the DVD Standard, and specifications of it.

Like what valid resolutions are, audio formats. The differances in PAL and NTSC standards etc..

DVD Demystified doesn't really help much...


Thanks

Check out Doom 9 - covers a lot of areas in depth.

The website or the book? If the dvdfaq on the website is too packed or not detailed enough, you may want to borrow the book at your local library.

Hmm, there should be a lot of good information on dvd navigation here http://dvd.sourceforge.net/ also this site also contains a ton of information probably more than you need http://www.mpucoder.com/ unfortunately you may have to pay $5 for the info and become a member. These sites probably contain way more information than you need to know though. So I will just answer your specific questions. Valid dvd resolutions are 720x576, 720x480, 352x576, 352x480, 352x288, 352x240. The supported audio formats are ac3, mpeg2, lpcm, and dts. I think ac3 is supported up to 640kbps but this may be just for cinema. Typical bitrates for ac3 are 448kbps, 384kbps, 192kbps, and 96kbps. The two higher bitrates 5.1 channel while 192 is stereo and 96kbps is a headphone track. Mpeg2 audio is supported up to 384kbps I believe. And DTS usually comes in two flavors 768kbps or 1536kbps. The major difference between PAL and NTSC is that PAL is usually 720x576 and 25fps on most dvds. NTSC is 720x480 and is 29.976fps. Hopefully this answers some of your questions .

Well, I was referring to the website.

I actually didn't know there was a book. It seems like there would be lots of usefull information, I see that the third edition was released a few months ago.

About the resolutions, the website says 704x576 and 704x480 are valid resolutions....

I've never seen any dvds with the 704x* resolutions, I am wanting to know for compatibility concerns. Is this really a valid resolution?
Many people I have asked said "almost all authoring programs will accept it".
Ok, they might accept it but was it in the original standard, will it work in all dvd players like 720x* would?

I'll have to take a look at the book, thanks for the input. =)

Yes, 704x is likely to work even if it isn't exactly standard compliant. Most dvd players and authoring programs shouldn't make a big fuss about it .

DVDs use MPEG-2 Main profile Main level for video encoding (defined in ISO/IEC 13818-2 spec.), but such parameters as aspect ratio, resolution and frame rate should comply with SDTV standard (ITU-R BT.601 recommendation) to be properly played back on all hardware DVD players. For this reason it is not recommended to use resolutions other than 720x480 for NTSC and 720x576 for PAL, even if DVD authoring software allows this.

DVD-Lab calls 704x Broadcast D1 as that is the resolution SD Digital TV is broadcast in (at least it is in Australia). I just bought a Digital TV capture card. My current plan is to fill a DVD9 image with episodes of certain shows and then use Nero Recode to make it a DVD5 (then I'll see what the quality is like). I haven't tested yet whether or not my DVD player will play this not-quite-spec compliant DVD.

No one says 704 is not standard. The problem is that most MPEG-2 encoders do not correctly set pixel aspect ratio in encoded streams, but many decoders do not interpret it correctly either, thus compensate each other.

(704 pixels per line corresponds to 4:3 display aspect ratio, 720 is a little wider)