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Bill Anderson
October 26, 2011 at 7:51 pm in reply to: What is the secret to achieving full screen video?

Jeff, I used DVDFab to compress the DVD image. Each of my four clips is just under 48 minutes. I know I’m pushing the limits for compressing video, but the results really do look OK. Not great, but acceptable for my purposes.

Bill Anderson
Bill Anderson
October 26, 2011 at 6:55 pm in reply to: What is the secret to achieving full screen video?

Many thanks, Daniel and Jeff, for your very helpful advice. I needed to understand the logic of what was going on, and you’ve helped immeasurably with that. And in fact, I’ve succeeded in doing what I wanted to do. Here’s what I did:

As Jeff advised, I used Premiere to encode (separately) all four videos with the picture stretched to 720×480. I chose the DVD standard for each, and the result for each was indeed a video file in .m2v format with an accompanying .wav audio file. Each transcoding process took about an hour, or slightly longer than the clip would have taken to play normally.

Then I copied an .m2v file and its .wav to Encore and attached the .m2v to the appropriate button on my pre-prepared menu. This generated a timeline in Encore, to which I dragged the .wav file. Using “preview” I determined that the audio and video were in sync, and then I did the same thing for the remaining three clips.

As Encore no longer needed to transcode the .m2v files, the entire process of generating a DVD .iso took maybe 20 minutes or less as Encore transcoded the .wav files. Very nice. Encore even warned me that the results would be too large to fit on one blank DVD-R, but unlike some authoring programs, Encore let me choose to ignore the problem and proceed.

As Encore had warned, the resulting .iso was almost 9 gigabytes in size, so I had to compress it to fit on a 4.7 gigabyte disc. Then I burned my DVD using Nero. I can’t say the four videos now look as beautiful as they did before I began playing with them, but still the picture is quite acceptable. And … finally … they display full-screen.

This has been a great learning experience. Thanks and thanks agaom … to both of you, Daniel and Jeff. I hope this record of my experience will be useful to others some day.
Bill Anderson
October 21, 2011 at 1:15 pm in reply to: What is the secret to achieving full screen video?

OK, thanks for clarifying! I’ll give this a try. Just fyi, I went ahead and used Premiere to transcode one of my clips while I slept last night — to H.264, unfortunately — and the result looks great. Premiere has given me a full 720×480 version of the clip. I’m sure it’ll do the same thing with MPEG2.

Bill Anderson
Bill Anderson
October 20, 2011 at 9:45 pm in reply to: What is the secret to achieving full screen video?

Thanks, Danny. Now just to confirm: I should transcode my videos individually to H264-video and AC-3 dolby digital audio and then drop them into Encore and author from there? I’m asking for confirmation because in your second NOTE you mentioned BD. I’m authoring DVD, not BluRay.

I can see how this will work. I use Premiere to enlarge the picture in one transcoding process, and then I’ll use Encore to incorporate the four video files I’m dealing with into a DVD build.

But I’m always looking for a shortcut. I’m wondering if somehow (all at once) I can open my four video files in Premiere and set them to be stretched to 720 x 480 video with H.264 video and AC-3 Dolby digital audio, and instead of creating individual files at that point, just use Adobe Dynamic Link to “send to Encore.” I’m hoping my four video files can arrive in Encore either already transcoded for DVD by Premiere or ready to be transcoded by Encore. Basically I want my four videos to be prepared for Encore all in one step, and when that’s done, I want to link the files to menu buttons and then build the DVD.

But in my experimenting I’ve found that Adobe Dynamic Link can send only one video file from Premiere to an Encore project. I can string all four of my videos together into one video on the Premiere timeline, but when I send that to Encore I don’t know how to connect the four videos to their corresponding menu buttons. When they’re strung together in Premiere, they show up in Encore only as a single entity.

So I guess the thing to do is to use Premiere to create four video files on my hard drive, and then separately incorporate those files into an Encore project. That will certainly work. I just fear I’ll have to go through two long transcoding processes for each file.

So, you’re saying that if I output my files as H.264 and AC-3, Encore won’t have to go through a long transcoding process for them in order to create a DVD? I hope? Thanks.

Bill Anderson
Bill Anderson
October 20, 2011 at 12:57 pm in reply to: What is the secret to achieving full screen video?

Thanks, Danny. I am making progress, but I’m still not quite there yet. I’ve discovered how to expand the image size in Premiere, and I’ve also discovered that I can export from Premiere directly into Encore. But so far I haven’t figured out how to export multiple videos into one single Encore project. I can string the videos together in the Premiere timeline and export them as one long video in Encore, but that’s not what I want. I want four individual files in Encore that I can attach to four individual links on my menu. Any ideas? I’m still plugging away at this, learning as I go. Thanks.