[Jeff Gandillon]

In my experience most DVD authoring programs require pretty specific settings for the video they burn to DVD and therefor they will often recompress whatever video you put through them. So your best bet is usually to send it out of the Avid ‘Same as Source’ and let your DVD software compress it the way it wants to the first time. That way you don’t end up compressing the file twice just to conform to the settings your DVD authoring software likes.

Also, keep in mind that unless you are putting HD content on a normal 4Gb DVD to be played back on a Blu-ray player that handles both formats, your 1920×1080 HD footage will end up downconverted to SD and letterboxed (or maybe centercut).

jeff g

[Jeff Gandillon]

Rather than letting your DVD creation software re-encode what Sorenson has already compressed, I would recommend letting the DVD software just do the compression once, assuming it understands the codec you are exporting from Avid. Also, while you can put HD content on an SD DVD it will still take a Blu-ray player to play it back and it would have to be a pretty short file, so I am assuming you are downconverting HD content to SD, which is obviously not going to look as good. If you are capable of writing to Blu-ray disc I would recommend that, especially if the client can view it on Blu-ray, which would solve your other issue.

I am having the same issues with delivering HD content to clients for them to view. It seems like the best bet for a tiny file that still has great looking HD footage is H264, but the issue I have run into is that my clients don’t have software and/or hardware capable of playing back H264 smoothly. Sorenson will compress some great looking tiny H264 files though if you haven’t tried that yet.

jeff g

[Jeff Gandillon]

Have you tried exporting from AE in an Avid video codec? If you haven’t installed Avid codecs on the computer that has AE you can get them here:
https://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=372311&NewLang=en

The DNxHD codec can contain an alpha channel, and since it is an Avid codec you don’t even have to invert the alpha on import. Plus, Avid will “Fast Import” its own codecs.

jeff g

[Jeff Gandillon]

I’m in the same situation, and the trick Job suggested is the one I use. Replacing the ‘Next Edit’ functions of A and S with ‘Fast Forward’ and ‘Rewind’ will function almost identically to Xpress except that it will not automatically select the tracks that correspond to the edit when you us Alt + A or S like Xpress did. The track selection will remain unchanged as you hold alt to go to the next edit, which can be good and bad depending on what your doing.

jeff g

[Jeff Gandillon]

Thanks for the reply!

When I looked around for codecs at the link you gave me I found Meridien compatibility codecs for Windows XP/2000, but not for Windows 7. I guess they don’t expect anyone to make that big of a jump! Or perhaps there is just no good way to get those old 32-bit codecs to work properly on a new 64-bit OS.

jeff g