DVD burn out … I need a better work flow

[Ken Ramsauer]

Thank you for the most important information. I am going over it currently and will restart my project. I believe I have the camera setup to 720P 30 as that was what I was trying to preserve to bring down to the SD level later and I do keep the video in 16:9 as shot with no cropping or enlarging of the frame.

I am not sure if the default ARRI clip sequence settings is a accurate description of what my simple camera capture is based on what Premiere thinks. I will try to use the first CODEC (Quicktime ProRes 422) you recommended to see what happens but so far I do not find it in the sequence settings choices. My sequence choices are (maybe I need to install Premiere CC for more options?):

Arri
AVC-Intra
AVCHD
Canon XF MPEG2
Digital SLR
DV-NTSC
DVCPROHD
HDV (HDV 720P30)
RED R3D
and XDCAM EX, HD and HD422

I noticed that when exporting from Premiere as a MPEG2-DVD format with the Preset at “Match Source” it would take the SOURCE: Sequence 1920×1080 (1.0), 29.97 fps, Progressive and OUTPUT: a .m2v NTSC, 720×480, 29.97, Quality 4, Progressive VBR (Max 7 but I would raise that and usually I check the Max Render Quality) but it seems that it is becoming too many transitions already and I haven’t even sent it to Encoder or Encore.

I did read on COW that exporting to a PNG, HD 1080p 29.97 would appear to be an ok close to lossless but I don’t know if I am wasting my time with Chapter Markers now as Encore seems to be “create a precise” Chapter marker friendly.

I didn’t install Encoder with this newer iMac and I realize now that your recommendation is to do that as part of the Premiere, Encoder, Encore work flow. Lately I had been going Premiere to Encore via the link option in Premiere and there I set the rendering, created the menus, did all of the linking and then burned the DL DVD master.

You mention you don’t use Encoder and I use to have Final Cut Pro but when the went to FCP X I just laughed and moved to Premiere. What were they thinking? I guess its better now and if you advise using DVD Studio Pro I can try to get it even though I do not know if it is still available?

Thank you for your support. Do you recommend using Premiere CC (latest version that does not dynamic link to Encore) and Encoder CC to output a file that could then be put into Encore CS6? My Premiere will not Dynamic Link to Encoder but it does see Encore CS6.

I will see if I can get the sequence you recommended and update as things good or bad happen.

[Ken Ramsauer]

Your correct on the amount of people it takes to do it correctly. I used to be a stills photographer and special actor for the movie studio here. I worked lighting in theater and I am still a full time photographer who dabbles in dance and graduation videos for DVD only. In my area, no one wants to pay for USB drives, BluRay is a stranger to most and how do you really market online video and keep it from being not too difficult and overly shared. I wish I could afford copyright protection. I just got off of the phone with a of all things … grand mother who said she would get the dvd and copy it for family … wow the new generation of grandmothers is getting more tech savvy … what can I say … I am a grandfather as well. One day someone is going to get my DVD and ask … “what do I do with this? and how does it work?” lol… I guess thats when its time to throw in the towel. Still haven’t got this workflow down. Working on it right now.

[Ken Ramsauer]

I am trying to make a export test to a .png for sending to Encoder but 8 minutes says it will take 3 hrs 20 min … Really? Something is amiss. I only have 8gb RAM, 4.0 i7 with 2Tb fusion drive. The Activity Monitor says that 47% of the CPU is idle. This is a newly reformatted system with Adobe only on it. RAM use seems to be about 50% too. My problem is I can’t tell what is now on iCloud or on the physical hard drive. It seems even my desktop is cloud based. I hate this new tech. I probably didn’t understand when I set it up unless someone knows something that I don’t. I may have to revert to my older iMac 2013 i7.

[Tod Hopkins]

A standard DVD Video can contain only standard definition video, but the specification includes a few variations because it was the first digital standard when NTSC was still analog. The original assumption was the DVD players would only OUTPUT NTSC, but the specification allows for some variants in the digital elements. The player is required to do the conversion from digital file, to analog output.

So the question is what digital formats will a DVD player recognize, and properly convert, for output. In fact, there are two different answers. 1) what formats is it required to recognize and output according to the spec, and 2) What formats have manufacturers chosen to recognize and output voluntarily.

Because the movie industry needed the space, the DVD spec included 24fps progressive storage, requiring the player to be capable of converting the 24p to 29.97i by adding 3:2 pulldown, on the fly, prior to output. It also allowed for 30p because that conversion is so bloody simple. The output signal is interlaced, but the “input” file is not. Therefore the resulting image looks progressive, even on an interlaced TV.

Side note. I’m still mad that Sony did NOT include 30p in the Blu-ray spec. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The movie industry required 24p because otherwise, you would not be able to put a full feature film on a single disc. This 24fps storage is the single biggest reason that DVD movies look so much better than your interlaced video. Progressive compresses MUCH better than interlaced and 24fps requires 20% less storage for the same length.

Modern DVD players in the digital era have added many capabilities not part of the spec requirements. For instance, they have added digital progressive output so that now, you can watch that 24p movie at true 24p on your 24p capable monitor. This is not a required feature of the DVD video spec but it is almost universal now.

Don’t confuse any of this with the square/non-square pixel issue. Unrelated .

Cheers,
tod

Tod Hopkins
Hillmann & Carr Inc.
Washington, DC

[Tod Hopkins]

Let Premiere set to the clip. It appears you are shooting 1080p30 AVCHD. That makes sense. The only sequence settings which matter to your quality are the frame size and frame rate. The rest simply help with editing but don’t affect your output.

Output from Premiere to a 1080p30 master. If you are adding any titles or effects, change your output format to a better codec. That is NOT AVCHD. That is not a good master format. Since you are on Mac, I suggest outputting to Quicktime Apple ProRes 422.

Now drop this into Encoder and use Encoder’s “DVD” preset. Adjust your bitrate as high as you can keeping the file size under the DVD capacity. Make sure you are set to MPEG audio.

As I mentioned, you could SHOOT at 720p. That is not a DVD resolution. DVD resolution is 480p. This might improve your result and it would certainly reduce your overhead, but never convert anything to 720p. If you shoot at 720p, then your edit is 720p, and your master output is 720p.

As for how someone gets 3.5 hours on a single layer DVD video, I have no idea. Movie studios can’t so that. What he might be doing is putting an MPEG4 file on a DVD disc. That’s very different.

Cheers,
tod

Tod Hopkins
Hillmann & Carr Inc.
Washington, DC

[Ken Ramsauer]

Great advice as usual. I was humored (for lack of a better not really happy expression) to see my “save to desktop” .png test ended up making over 5,000 individual files. That was fun to cleanup. I did turn anything iCloud related off.

I will let Premier keep the settings as it sees fit for the timeline. I am trying to export an 8 minute clip test but under Export Settings>Quicktime>there is no codec you mention. If I use the Export Settings>Match Sequence it says it will be a .mpeg 1920×1080, 29.97, Progressive, Quality 50, Render Max Depth and I have no adjustments over this in the video settings. It sounds like what your talking about but I am not positive.

Also, you mention Premiere to Encoder but no mention of Premiere, Encoder to Encore for the final DVD burning. Maybe I am not getting it but is Encoder strictly a final file format with better encoding and then go to Encore for the final DVD burn?

I wish I could post screenshots to make this easier with your advice. I don’t want to waste your time with endless information that is not relevant. Thank you for being persistent and quick with the responses. I will now try to open Premiere CC to see if it offers me an Apple Pro Res export.

[Ken Ramsauer]

So I made a MPEG2 1920×1080 and 8min long which ended up being 1.9gb and plays with Quicktime BUT … I try to put it into Encoder and it will not work. It says “Error while decompressing the source file”. Wow … really? What next? Apparently I am having no luck going from CS6 Export to the desktop and from the desktop file to Encoder. I guess I will try something else.

[Tod Hopkins]

MPEG is not an appropriate mastering codec. Unfortunately, I don’t know CS6. I never used it. If you give me the list of Quicktime options I can suggest one.

The reason for the suggested workflow — Premiere > Encoder > Encore — is control. This is workflow in CS. Adobe is hiding it from you — automating it. Premiere is the editor. Encoder is the compression tool. Encore is the DVD authoring tool. When you output from Premiere, Premiere uses the Encoder engine to do this. When Encore compresses, it also uses the Encoder engine.

Skipping steps is convenient, but it hides the technical decision making from you. What’s important is not the particular software path, but how you control the technical parameters the software uses. The qualitative difference between using Roxio or Compressor or Squeeze or Encoder for your DVD compression is minimal. Optimizing the technical steps is the key. The biggest difference between these tools is the control they do or don’t provide.

It’s possible you can make your DVD elementary files directly from Premiere and skip the intermediate master, if you can control the settings and get a good result. You can try exporting directly to DVD video elementary files using Premiere’s export preset, assuming there is one in CS6. You can even try linking your sequence directly to Encore, if CS6 can do this.

cheers,
tod

Tod Hopkins
Hillmann & Carr Inc.
Washington, DC

[Ken Ramsauer]

Thank you Tod. I am currently making the edits in Premiere then opening Encoder to fetch the timeline form Premiere. When I get that I uncheck the video and concentrate on making the audio file smaller. It averages about 1.1gb of audio and after I render it to a .mpa (mpeg audio) I put it into the Encore timeline and then go back to see how much wiggle room I have with the video rendering. Since the audio is usually less than 200mb I focus on the quality of the image. I realize that a CBR of 9 is not the way to go (based on internet readings) so I do a DVD MPEG2 720x480P 29.97 Quality 100 and VBR of (first was 4/7/9) and now I am doing a 7/8/9 for S&G’s.

After that I will take the better M2V and put it in the Encoder timeline. As it stands the video I was told would be long ended up much less than a 4.7gb on the first go around and now I have it possibly up to 6.7gb with the higher VBR test.

My bigger worry is sharpness. I am now switching to Premiere CC 2018 and I still have Encore CS6 with the lost library files added for the final output. In the past I used to use Unsharp Mask at around 100/1.5/0 or so. I know there are many ways to fine tune the setting but I recently saw the Premiere CC 2018 had a Sharpen in the Color tab (it looked ok at about 30) Is it really a mistake to use that Sharpen? I don’t know yet.

I will say that even with 8gb RAM this newer iMac is rendering fairly fast with only 56% of the CPU being used. I also ordered two 16gb RAM sticks so I will have the iMac up to 40gb of RAM and I also ordered a 500gb SSD & SATA to USB 3.0 cable to use for the scratch disk. Maybe its even faster to have two of those so one holds the original data, one is the scratch / work disk and the stock 2tb fusion drive (which I thought had a 256gb SSD and somewhere I read it was only 128gb SSD and then 2tb slow spinning drive). I didn’t realize at the time the difference between USB 3.0 and 3.1 … to quote Leonard Nemoy … “fascinating”. AND I CANT BELIEVE there is no firewire on this… only two thunder drive video outputs.

Even though I only do SD work for the moment, the render speed for the video seems to be about a 1:1 ratio or maybe less.

[Tod Hopkins]

CBR 9 is a fine way to go in theory and if you have the room. It is effectively the maximum bitrate for DVD. The problems with CBR9 are that you may not have the room and in most compressors, the VBR compressor simply works better than the CBR compressor. As a result, 5/7.5/9 sometimes looks better than 9CBR. You might guess that I use 5/7.5/9 for DVDs.

I rarely use sharpness (or unsharp) except on a “bad” shot. Frankly, it’s as a photo filter that is generally inappropriate for motion.

There are many tricks people promote that have an immediate impact but are bad practice when used routinely — sharpness, over-cranked color, crushed blacks — these should be used sparingly if at all. The immediate impact, when compared to the original, and while you are focused on that particular characteristic, will appear to improve the picture. But the overall impact on quality and aesthetics, in the long run, is not worth it. Sharpness, for instance, is literally adding noise to your image that creates the illusion that the image is sharper. It “feels” sharper. But, you’ve added noise, and noise is hard to compress. You’ve also added a subtle “harshness” to your program which, overall, may be degrading the experience.

When going from HD to SD, everyone sees “soft,” but often, it’s just SD. We are so used to HD now we’ve forgotten how bad SD is by contrast. Frankly, even HD is not good enough for me anymore because I work with 4k. Of course, if the content is good enough, I don’t really care. ????

Most of your sharpness comes from (a) focus, and (b) contrast. Most people don’t realize that contrast is the biggest factor in perceived sharpness. Try this some time. Take a hazy shot, say dancers with smoke on the stage or a fog scenic. Now just ramp up the contrast and watch the haze vanish. Looks sharper, but you didn’t change focus at all.

Cheers,
tod

Tod Hopkins
Hillmann & Carr Inc.
Washington, DC