Premiere Pro output question

[Tim Kurkoski]

You can use a higher resolution by using custom project settings. If you’re going to play the video from your computer, you can use a resolution that matches your LCD screen’s native resolution for best appearance (as long as your still images look good at that size). Be aware that at custom resolutions, you lose some of the optimized playback options in Premiere, and performance may suffer a little (probably won’t for a slide show project, but just to let you know).

Regardless of the resolution, you can output to a WMV or MPEG-2 file and play it back from your hard drive. Use higher bitrates for best results, though if you use a high resolution remember that A) it will require an even higher bitrate to maintain the same quality, and B) higher bitrates require more processor power, so if you have a slow computer you could overpower it. I’d recommend that as you’re assembling the slide show, make some test renders and see how they work.

I am tempted to recommend you go the DVD route. The workflow is better defined, and in the case of a problem such as your computer breaks, you’ll have a backup method to play the slide show.

Good luck, and congratulations!

[Nascarbaritone]

Thanks for the quick response. To follow up on your resonpse I have another question. My laptop is a wide screen display 1280X800 being the optimum setting. If my slide show was not created in wide screen format should I still set the custom resolution of the final output to 1280X800 or something else? And, if it is something else, what should it be? Also, if I go the DVD route is it easier to use the built in Encoder with Premiere Pro or output it to an .avi or .wmv file and convert it to a .dvd file with another program. (I’m assuming that .dvd is the correct file format for it to play on my laptop’s on board DVD player).

[Tim Kurkoski]

To get the best results, you should start a project in Premiere Pro that uses the 1280×800 settings. If you’ve already started working at a different resolution project, you can import that project into the new one. (You can’t change a project’s resolution once it’s started, which is why you need to create a new one to use different settings.) Not using the native resolution of your LCD will result in one of three things:

1. Stretching, which will distort your images and look bad.
2. Scaling, which will expand your images. It could possibly create some artifacting but probably won’t be bad.
3. Cropping, which will create black space around the outside of the slide show.

Whether or not you burn the DVD with Premiere Pro depends on what you want to do with the disc. Premiere Pro 2.0 allows you to create some limited menus, but without a lot of customization. Premiere Pro 1.x only allows you to create a disc without menus (playback begins when you start the disc). A DVD authoring program, like Adobe Encore DVD, lets you create custom menus and do a lot more with the disc.

If you do use an authoring program, you would export from Premiere Pro as an MPEG-2 or AVI file. The video data on a DVD is in the MPEG-2 format, but it is inside a special file wrapper (a .VOB file). Additionally, the MPEG-2 format has to meet certain specifications. Premiere Pro has presets for all of this and will create a DVD compatible MPEG-2 file for you. Most authoring programs can take file formats other than MPEG-2 and convert them for you, but AVI is the recommended format if this is the case- WMV is highly compressed and could result in a loss of quality.

(.DVD is not a file format used by DVD video discs.)

[Clinton Sturges]

I think my problem is very similar.

I set up my video to be 1280 x 720 but when I go to export it the default is a different resolution.

When I set the format to MPEG4 it defaults at 176 x 144 and 15 fps. When I try to increase the frame size I get the error “Invalid framesize/framerate for this level. Please lower the frame dimensions, frame rate or increase the Profile and Level and try again.” I try to change the level and profile, but whatever I seem to try I keep getting the same error.

When I set the format to Quicktime it defaults to 720 x 480, and the resolution is greyed out so I can’t try to edit it.

What I need is the output to be the same pixel size that I created the project at…1280 x 720.

Thanks in advance