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Benefits of professional encoding with DV material?
I’m working on my first DVD project that will actually have large circulation. Until now I’ve done stuff that was less than 2000 copies and went to company employees or a niche market.
The project is a 24 minute documentary and the client has big plans for it so she wants top notch DVDs. I would like to author it myself because I have pretty specific plans for the menus, but I’m wondering what I should do about encoding. I bought the Cinemacraft software encoder because it was recommended as being better than the encoding I could do with Encore. However, it’s like looking at After Effects for the first time. I have a lot of learning to do before I know how to get all the potential out of that program.
My video is DV, albiet great looking DV, but still just DV. Would I benefit from sending it to a professional encoding house to have the MPEG made or would I just be throwing money away?
Here’s the workflow I had in mind, tell me if this makes sense…
Finish the video, export into AVI. Send that to an encoder, and then get an MPEG2 back. Author in Encore with that and make a DLT master which will then be replicated?
What do you think?
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5 Replies
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It really depends- at 24 minutes you can simply invest in a good software encoder and do it yourself. The services out there excel at optimizing longform projects to look their best. With a good software encoder you should be able to create a finished DVD that looks within 10% of the quality of your DV version. Not sure what encoder that would be on the PC but it’s worth investigating. Remember good encoder preserves what’s in the original signal- so no matter how much you spend the DVD will never look any better than the DV does.
Noah
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Thanks for the advice. Do you know anything about Cinemacraft? It was recommended by someone on this board as a good software encoder.
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Sure I’ve heard it’s solid- but also you’ll find tons more info and reviews with a bit of Google searching.
Noah
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Your workflow looks good. ON a 24 minute doc, you could probably use your built in Mainconcept MPEG encoder (assuming you are using Premiere and or Encore) and set it at HQ with a decent bitrate and that should do you just fine.
Cinemmacraft SP is excellent, but why spend the money when you probably have a decent encoder built into you NLE and authoring apps?
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