[Bouke Vahl]

i have NO idea what eZediaQTI is, but Director makes this easy.
Now director has quite a learning curve, and costs a lot of money.
What i would do is get the free demo (works for a month), do the work and let someone make your final application, or hussle a “stub” projector from someone and attach your files to that.
(i’ll do it for a beer…)

Bouke

[Bouke Vahl]

very funny.
I have to start AE with MC running, or it won’t work….
(i can quit MC after that, but still…)

Bouke

[Bouke Vahl]

Just stick with 1.5
I still use it for commercial products every now and then.
It can do everything the latest version can, (although i have not found out how to remap colors on menu’s)

Bouke

[Bouke Vahl]

It is indeed a small bit of programming. About 4 hours.
Now you can do it yourself in Excel, and save me from working those 4 hours…
If you’re good with Excel (i’m not), you can do it in half an hour…
An Encore subtitle file can be made with any text editor, so why not give it a shot yourself?

Bouke

[Bouke Vahl]

Whatever you prefer, end result will be the same as for correct aspect ratio.
However, test with a few files to see what looks best for you.
(i never trust an NLE to do ‘proper’ scaling on import, so my pref is to do it in photoshop. But if it looks good, scaling by Avid will improve speed and reduce chances of errors on different revisions…)

Bouke

[Bouke Vahl]

Dunno your CPU, but in draft settings (for dailies) you should get about RT performance.
For MpegII i use Cinemacraft. The cheapo version should fit your needs and is dirt cheap. It should give you RT at least. Also try TMPG encoder, also dirt cheap and does MpegII and WMV RT to faster than RT.
If not, upgrade your CPU.

hth
Bouke

[Bouke Vahl]

set your avid to 16:9 (only important for the CG and circle wipes)

If you work in square pixels in photoshop, set up an image with a 16:9 aspect ratio
(1024 x 576 in PAL) and after you’re done, scale the image to your video resolution.
Set your monitor to 16:9 and there really isn’t much more to it…

Bouke

[Bouke Vahl]

Resize 75 % does the trick. I normally crop off a few pixels bottom and top (either crop or a static title with black bars bottom and top)

14:9 is a compromise that BBC uses to be able to reformat almost anything. Check BBC specs for more details, and ask the client for more details as it can mean letterbox or anamorph…
(if it is anamorph you have to set your titles away from the left/right edge as there will be a slight center cut)

Bouke

[Bouke Vahl]

Try to be a little more specific.
A flattened PSD should look good.
However, preview scaled down on a computer monitor is different from final output.
Next, DVD SP 4.1 has a bug that throws out a field on building the disc, so forget about 4.1 if you want to have still menus.
(and raise hell about it with Apple)

Do the normal voodoo to have a computer image look good on a CRT. If you know about this, it should be just fine. If you have an NLE, check the final output there first so you won’t end up making a lot of test discs…

hth
Bouke

[Bouke Vahl]

If it’s 720×576 it’s pal.
All flavours of Avid i’ve encountered are upper field dominant, INCLUDING the DV only avids.
(and yes, it ‘should’ be lower on DV)
As others have pointed out, DVD requires 48 Khz.

Now the mixdown is not needed. If you do an export as described it should be fine, as long as you encode on the same machine as you made the ref movie (avid black does not come across over a network)

But there is definitly something wrong.
48 Khz stereo audio runs at 180 Kb a second, so your .wav should be about 410 MB.
If you do not do sample rate conversion (so if your sequence is 48 and your export is 48) the process should take a few minutes max, even on a slow computer.
Are your markers (in-out) in logical places?

Bouke