Render settings for a DVD?

[Oliver De morassé]

Hi Dave, thanks for your feedback.

I use AME CS5 to render my compositions. The following presets are shown:

Unfortunately, I see nothing for a DVD. I want the videos to be at the best possible quality for the DVD. Hence, I selected “H.264” Format and preset “HDTV 1080p 24 High Quality”:

You mention I should create a “720×576, 25fps file in mpeg2”. I don’t quite understand why – sorry, but I have never created a DVD before. Also, which settings should I change on this preset (pixel aspect ratio, profile, level, bitrate settings/encoding etc).

Regarding DVD authoring software, have you had any experience of ‘free’ tools such as DVD Flick or DVDStyler – what speaks for Adobe Encore?

Many thanks, Oliver

[Oliver De morassé]

Another thing, I can’t find out where I can purchase Adobe Encore – is this only part of the creative suite or in the Adobe cloud?

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Oliver,

Adobe Encore cannot be purchased by itself – it comes with Premiere Pro, or if you buy a suite such as Production Premium that includes PPro then you get Encore of course.

As Dave pointed out, DVD content must adhere to specific…specifications. DVD is always MPEG-2 standard definition, basically 720×480 for NTSC and 720×576 for PAL. There are a few uncommon variations, but the NTSC and PAL settings are pretty firm.

So, your DVD cannot be “HD”, nor can it be “H.264”, or anything other than “MPEG-2 for DVD”. Period. If you were to import a video into Encore that was HD and/or H.264, Encore would simply Transcode it to the proper standard definition MPEG-2 anyway, no way around it.

Thank you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks Jeff and Dave for your replies. Now it all makes a little more sense!

In AME I found under Format the following choices:

… and here we go, there is a MPEG2-DVD option with the following settings!!!:

To get the best possible quality video (I shot at HD422 25P), dod I need to set Quality to the maximum (i.e. 5) and what about the bitrate settings? BTW, what are GOP settings?

Thanks for all your tremendous help!

P.S. @Dave – Yes I am in Munich and the beer is great… especially on nice hot sunny days like today ;O). I will send greetings to the Paulaner biergarten and also the Wiesn (Oktoberfest).

[Oliver De morassé]

I have done a little experimenting over the weekend.

I used the “MPEG2-DVD” format preset and then changed quality to 5 and bitrate settings to CBR, 9 Mbps. The video looks just fine – however, I am not 100% happy with the quality of output. On my 46″ TV, the whole movie is pixelated and not as high quality at what I actually shot. If I render to a .mp4 and view it on a PC, the quality is much higher. Am I doing something wrong here?

[Oliver De morassé]

Thanks for your feedback Dave.

Sorry, I am still a little confused…

1. I tested several DVD Authoring Programs – I was able to create DVDs with 9 megabytes/sec. (not 6) – however, the quality did not really improve.

2. When I look at a film on DVD on my TV – the quality is great… why can’t I create something similar?

Sorry for the dumbo questions – I have never created a DVD before and the learning curve is steep!