[Daniel Ludwig]

joseph,
I don´t understand why you still using MPEG2 for blu-ray if you can encode bd-complient H264 with compressor!

it will have a better picture-quality at lower bitrates, and less artefacts with problematic movements/pictures.

one main point:
if you´re encoding for blu-ray, there is only 1080p23.98, 1080p24, 1080i60, or if you are based in a 25fps-land there is also 1080i50.

but there is NO 1080i/p30 or 1080i/p29.98

that will be the reason why your film has been transcoded I guess.

as for your audio-problem:
if you´ve conformed your video-frame-rates, you also conformed your audio-sampling-rate.

for example: meaning if you previously had 25fps and conform to 24fps your audio will slide from 48Khz sampling to 46.065kHz.

it will be the same with 30fps to 29.98 or 24fps.

this will result in bad audio if you´ll give this audio to compressor or adobe media encoder to encode an AC-3-dolby audio, as the encoder expect/needs 48kHz audio.

so you need to export your audio to aif 48kHz after you´ve conformed it to the other frame-rate.

hope this helps.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

matt,
I would used DVD+R DL instead of DVD-R DL, they are much more common. never used any -R DL in the last years.

never had any isses with +R DL.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

Hi again,
I would stay interlaced for your DVD.

here is a workflow you should follow:

1.) edit your film
2.) export it as self-contained movie (HDV-codec)
3.) downscale it to SD-PAL (upper field first) using innobits purifier, MPEG Streamclip, or maybe After Effects
4.) do a bitbudgeting
(depending on the duration of your film you´ll have a different bitrate)
5.) encode your video to m2v and audio to dolby AC-3 using Adobe Media Encoder, create your own preset depending on your calculated bitbudget
6.) use the previous encoded assets for DVD-authoring

as you haven´t told us the duration of your film, I couldn´t tell you which bitrate you could use. should it be a single-layer DVD (DVD-5) or a DVD double layer (DVD-9)?

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

laura,
could you upload your menu-PSD to any FTP, so we could have a look at it!?

as I´ve seen the rest of the thread, I´ve seen you are talking about creating a blu-ray, right?

is it 1080 or 720!?

a general advice: NEVER use typo-highlights with DVD, and it wont look good for BD within encore as well.

if you author a BD you allways need to have a stand-alone BD-play by side to check your project.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

hi,
this could be (another) bug of encore. which version are you using?

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

hi simon,
the simple answer is: your exported video is 1080i50 as your sequenz-setting is 1080i50. it doesn´t matter if you have deinterlaced your original source-clips or not, because the sequenz-settings has been setuped interlaced.

as you would like to have a progressive-DVD you need to have a progressive sequenz and a progressive encoding.

what you´ve done normally will be called 1080psf25 (progressive segmented frames), meaning:

you put progressive frames into an interlaced recording, the result will be an interlaced film with progressive content on every field, but this might go to much in detail.

now to your second question:
there could be several issues to get DVDs wrong. as that guy has no clue how DVD-authoring works, that could be the main problem. if he just put your movie-file into encore (which version of encore?), I would think of wrong field-dominance, or bad encoding-quality, or whatever.

as your film is HD you should downscale it to SD prior encoding. I would advice to use innobits purifier to do so. this has a 2nd advantage. purifier could reduce/delete HDV-digital-artefacts.

another point to think about: HDV has the nativ resolution 1440×1080, and it will scaled to 1920×1080 while playback. so there could be another issue.

where did you check this DVD? on a class A reference tube-monitor with a stand-alone-player?

if you need another guy to author your disc – it might be possible over here as well – I´m based in cologne, germany.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

hi bob,
normally you need to set the UOPs for that track, but you´ll fall into one of the CS4-bugs.

UOPs wont work within CS4. they´ve fixed this and a lot other stuff with encore CS5.

so it would be a good idea to update to CS5.

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

nop,
there is a new application in town – EasyBD from DVD Logic (PC-app).

it´s about 200$ and if you would like to have nice IG-streams you need additional 500$, so you could get professional BD-authoring for 700$ for IGEditor.

finally if you need replicaton-master, you need to get blustreak premaster (mac-app) at about 400$.

so that´s a lot cheaper than Dostudio, and you can create professional BDs

cheers

danny

[Daniel Ludwig]

hi joseph,
are you sure you´ve changed your MPEG2-setting correctly? a MPEG2-programm-stream is not BD-complient, so you might cross-check if you´ve created correct encoding-settings.

but I would prefer to use H264-encoding for BD as it is released with compressor that came with FCP7.

you could choose lower bitrates to get the same quality-level so you wont get in trouble with playback-issues because of high bitrates.

another reason why encore might try to transcode again is your encore project-setting. depending on your selected framerate and pixel-aspec it will not allow other assets (with other framerates) to pass through without transcoding, they all will be transcoded.

so here might be your big trouble!

cheers

danny

small note: I would allways export a selfcontained quicktime-mov instead of sending from FCP to compressor.

[Daniel Ludwig]

hi gerry,
if you are on mac you need to select format: quicktime, then click on preset>edit export settings, and then there will be a new window where you can select your size, codec, and all the other stuff you need.

if these files are comming from an AVCHD-cam your field-dominance is upper first, but I wonder a little bit: what kind of software will your editor use?

premiere of FCP or maybe AVID?

premiere could import mts-files nativly, FCP could import them using the log-and-tranfer-window (if there is the entire AVCHD-tree). the only edit-suite I don´t know how it would work is avid, but I´m sure there is an option, too.

so why do you want to do this job with adobe media encoder?

cheers

danny