Optimal Adobe Premiere CS3 Export to Encore settings

[Mike Velte]

Compressing HDV down to SD is going to take forever without 2 Quad core processors. Further the resulting quality is poor compared to shooting in SD.
You could have down-converted in the camera at capture in real time.

Putting 2 hours of dancing on a single sided DVD at 4200 kbps is going to produce mediocre results. Dual layer at 7000 kbps will produce much better results, but dual layer discs have compatibility issues.

Encoding 16:9 widescreen footage creates other issues…many DVD players require the user to choose the Aspect ratio on their DVD remote, resulting in customer complaints of squishing.

Other challenges you face involves HDV low light capabilities. Very poor compared to say a VX2100.

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Stal,

I do a lot of dance recitals and can offer some tips. As Mike said, you’d have been better off downconverting from the camera and simply editing in Widescreen DV. Not much to be done about that at this point. Adobe does a poor job of encoding HDV to MPEG-2 for DVD, the results may be flickery. You won’t go to 4:3, just make 16:9 DVDs.

It sounds like you are trying to do each dance segment as a separate clip? I would put it all on one timeline, and simply add chapter marks at the beginning of each dance. Much less work, and the viewer can then watch the entire program straight through rather than having to watch each segment one at a time. They can still jump to any chapter using the chapter marks you set, whether from a menu or just using the “Next” button on the remote.

In other words, don’t encode 28 different MPEG-2 clips and try and assemble them into a DVD if that was your intention. Create a single, 2-hr. clip with 28 chapter marks in it.

At 2 hours, you can encode using CBR 4500 encode settings. Encore should convert audio to AC-3 Dolby automatically so this will fit a single 4.7GB DVD.

When starting with DV footage, the DVD would come out pretty good at these settings. Coming from HDV, the conversion is going to hurt quality unfortunately. Maybe a third-party encoder like TMPGEnc would do a better job with that

Good luck with the project

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers
http://www.sharbor.com

[Stal Lionne]

Hi Jeff and Mike, thanks for your inputs. As you can see, the source format is water over the bridge as I can’t go back an reshoot (basically, I got a vidoegrapher to shoot the scenes, and now he is sick an unable to produce the video, so I am stuck with the raw formats with screaming mothers wanting to see the videos of their kids dancing 🙂
Ok. So I need a solution. So far here’s what I gather from your inputs.
(1) Use one timeline to build video. (Was already doing it that way 🙂
(2) Produce the DVD in wide screen 1440×1080(16:9), progressive 29.97fps @ 7Mbps or 4.5Mbps?
(3) Compress using CBR 4500 (not sure what this is. I don’t mind using 2 single disks if this would help quality)

Also, I tried different outputs after my 10 hrs debacle (which didn’t look good), but I have this problem: The source video fits nicely in AP CS3 source view window (and all the media players I tested it with). But in the program window + encoded output, the video is magnified and cutting out footage. So I tried to scale down the clip to almost 49%. That is terrible as I think any resizing of the frames is going to hurt my quality and render time. What’s up with my settings to cause this? If I am going to do wide screen I would like the video to come out taking up the same safe margins, instead of expanding out of the safe margins. I can provide a screen capture if that would help you see my dilema.

Thanks again,
Stal

[Stal Lionne]

More info:
Please can you tell, based on my published source formats in main thread, which of these settings would give me a reasonably quality video output at a reasonable render time.

(A)
General
Editing mode: HDV 1080p
Timebase: 25.00 fps

Video Settings
Frame size: 1440h 1080v (1.333)
Frame rate: 25.00 frames/second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD Anamorphic 1080 (1.333)
Fields: No Fields (Progressive Scan)

Audio Settings
Sample rate: 48000 samples/second

Capture Format
HDV Capture

Video Rendering
Maximum Bit Depth: Off
Preview File Format: I-Frame only MPEG-2
Compressor: I-Frame Only MPEG
Color depth: Millions of colors

(B)
General
Editing mode: HDV 1080i
Timebase: 29.97 fps

Video Settings
Frame size: 1440h 1080v (1.333)
Frame rate: 29.97 frames/second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD Anamorphic 1080 (1.333)
Fields: Upper Field First

Audio Settings
Sample rate: 48000 samples/second

Capture Format
HDV Capture

Video Rendering
Maximum Bit Depth: Off
Preview File Format: I-Frame only MPEG-2
Compressor: I-Frame Only MPEG
Color depth: Millions of colors

Thanks,
Stal

[Mike Velte]

A 2 DVD set would allow for better quality than a single DVD.
Set up a Widescreen DV NTSC Project. Choose Edit>Preferences>General and deselect “Default scale to frame size”. Import your 1440×1080 footage and scale to 40%. 40% will keep all the action within the action safe zone.
Edit and then export. Format= Mpeg 2 DVD, Range = Entire sequence, Preset= NTSC Widescreen Medium Quality. Change “Bitrate Encoding” to CBR. Change “Bitrate” to 7.5 Mbps. Cook until done.

[Jeff Pulera]

While a 2-DVD set will obviously provide “optimum quality”, this is not necessary. I have been delivering 2+ hour weddings, dance recitals and stage events on DVD since 2000 and have never had a quality complaint using the 4500 CBR encoding (or less even).

2-DVD sets equal double the setup, rendering, duplication, materials and is also an inconvenience to the customer to have to change discs to see the whole program.

I’m not saying NEVER do 2 discs, can be OK for a wedding with a couple copies, but for recitals or other high-volume jobs, seldom worth it. I just sent out a 135-minute recital on one DVD and this is common for me, parents love them, never a complaint about quality or content.

While the suggestion of putting the video into a DV widescreen project will work, it could literally take days to render a 2-hour video, it is incredibly slow that way.

Back to your question about encoding settings, the 1440×1080 settings are for Blu-ray. In the Encoder, you will want to choose “MPEG-2 for DVD” and choose an NTSC preset and be sure to check the “16:9” box for widescreen, and then you can alter the encoding rate to 4500 CBR.

Perhaps if you check the “Deinterlace” button in the encoder this will get rid of the nasty flickers that happen when encoding HDV to DVD, try a short sample perhaps. This would result in a “progressive scan” look to the video.

There is another option that might possibly work for you, IF you have access to the HDV camcorder. Break the completed timeline into two one-hour segments and export each to HDV tape.

Then set the camera to downconvert and capture the footage into a DV widescreen project. This way, the camera is doing the HD > SD conversion. Put the captured clips together on one timeline, THEN export to DVD, 4500CBR widescreen.

I wish I had better news for you, we are all struggling with HD workflows though.

Jeff

[Stal Lionne]

Thanks guys…you have been very helpful.
So, when creating the project, do I start with HDV 1080p or HDV 1080i or NTSC DV Widescreen 48KHz? I am trying to test each projecct settings combination with the final encoding settings…too many permutations in the time I have…Even a small 2 min clip for testing is taking quite a while to encode burn, run to the TV and repeat…

Thanks,
Stal

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Stal,

Premiere project settings should match your source video, i.e. HDV 1080i

Jeff