[Bob Simons]

I render out as an avi, import to Premiere CS4, then render it out as MPEG2-DVD, using CBR 7.

[Bob Simons]

Do you have any recommendation for a more mobile solution, such as a camera mounted light.

Reason being is that with shooting a wedding reception we are moving around a lot to capture action. Setting lights is not really an option except for getting the dance floor.

[Bob Simons]

After some playing around, it did turn out to be the DVD player I was using. Pulled a DVD out of my collection, and it had the same cutoff, left and right.

Canon HV20 shot in HDV mode -> Premiere CS4 HDV 1080(60i) -> Dynamic Link to AE CS4 HDTV 1080p comp, render lossless -> Premiere CS4 export rendered file as MPEG2-DVD, quality 5, 29.97 drop-frame, progressive, widescreen, VBR 2 pass, min-6, target-7, max-8, no multiplex (get two files instead of one), PCM audio, clicked the filter box and gave a value of 1 on Gaussian blur, which softens the image.

I put it onto a DVD and it looks great on my Tube TV with a DVD player, and on my HDTV with a Blu-ray player.

I hope this helps somebody else.

[Bob Simons]

For SD, when you know you are going to put your stuff onto DVD, I usually like to render the sequence as MPEG2-DVD, then increase all the quality sliders to be very high. NOTE: Encore will complain if you try and burn to a DVD using a bit rate any higher than 8 (more or less). VBR 2 pass will give you the best result, but take longer.

With CS4 batch encoding, I’d say use VBR 2 pass set the min, target, max at 6, 7, 8 respectively. Do not multiplex. I typically use PCM for audio, and I like to export my stuff as progressive.

Hope any of that helps you out.

[Bob Simons]

What version are you on? I use CS4, then chop my clip up in a sequence on the timeline. From AE I use Adobe dynamic link, which allows you to do all your tweaking, then render it lossless as a windows avi.