[Jeff Pulera]

I’mm going to assume you are working with NTSC video, or “widescreen DV”. Whether shooting 4:3 or 16:9, the frame size is always 720×480 pixels, but the Pixel Aspect Ratio changes from 0.9 to 1.2 to get the widescreen look using rectangular pixels. This type of “stretched” 16:9 video is known as “anamorphic” widescreen.

Media players unfortunately assume a PAR of 1.0, or square pixels, which is why the resulting file doesn’t look right.

So, when encoding for the web, you need to manually change the image size and pixel aspect in the encoder settings so the resulting video clip will look proper in the player.

Depending on where you look, I’ve seen the settings as 854×480 or 864×480, and specify a PAR of 1.0, and the resulting file will have the proper 16:9 aspect in the player then.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Rachel,

You’re welcome…so I assume this resolved your issue then?

Thanks

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Erik,

ALL the tracks should export by default, not sure why there’s an issue if all audio tracks are active and playing back in Premiere.

A quick fix might be to do File > Export > Audio, or for newer versions use Adobe Media Encoder, to export a .wav file of the timeline mix, then place the mixed clip on track 3 and mute tracks 1 & 2 before export to Encore.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Chris,

From Premiere, use Adobe Media Encoder and choose MPEG-2 for DVD as the format, then choose a preset, such as NTSC High Quality, that matches your video. In the advanced settings, under the Video tab, you can manually adjust the video bitrate.

Adobe recommends a simple rule to determine the bitrate, which is 560/minutes, so a two-hour program would be 560/120=4.66 and just round down a bit, so 4.5 would be good. I recommend just using CBR encoding rather than VBR, has always worked well for me, having done countless 2-hour wedding and event DVDs.

Export the files, which will create an .m2v video file and a .wav audio file, both of which can be imported into Encore as Assets to create the DVD. You will notice that the audio file will be over 1GB, but by default, Encore should transcode the .wav file to Dolby AC-3, which will result in a much smaller file, leaving room on the DVD for the video (without transcoding it again).

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

PS – make sure that “deinterlace” is checked for any file export destined for computer playback

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Rachel,

You probably don’t really mean “uncompressed”, as the file would be huge and not playback smoothly on any but the most powerful edit machines, more likely you mean “compressed to look really good”.

Try choosing H.264 < NTSC DV at 3000 data rate, I've had good results this way, assuming 4:3 video. If widescreen 16:9, then the dimensions need to be altered to 854x480, 1.0 Pixel Aspect. Jeff Pulera Safe Harbor

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Gil,

Did you have the RT.X2 SD? What HD formats do you need to work with?

The Matrox MXO2 Mini will handle full 1920×1080 HD, unlike the RT.X2 which is limited to 1440×1080, so MXO2 is a better candidate for cutting AVCHD or HDSLR footage. I would recommend Adobe CS5 and the MXO2 Mini with MAX, since the MAX hardware will actually provide realtime editing performance beyond what the Mercury Engine alone provides in CS5. The MAX option also provides faster than realtime H.264 encoding.

If you are on a tight budget, the Black Magic Intensity Pro is very affordable and capable, but for realtime editing and H.264 output, Matrox has its benefits with CS5.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi George,

I don’t believe HDV play-thru has ever been supported, are you sure you weren’t doing DV with CS3? The problem is that HDV uses Long-GOP MPEG-2 in a Transport Stream, so you can’t just get realtime playback via 1394 to an HDV camera or deck. In fact, if you try Print-to-Tape for HDV, Premiere will first have to render then entire timeline (to the MPEG-2 format for HDV) then send that to tape. Nothing realtime about it.

If you get certain capture cards, for instance a Matrox MXO2 Mini, this will allow realtime playback of the timeline out to analog or HDMI displays, and also includes realtime downconvert to SD.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

If you must encode to the DV codec, then the data rate is fixed – the only way to get a smaller clip is to shorten the video. Split the clip in two and render two parts and use two discs, don’t know what else to say

Jeff Pulera

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Chris,

Make sure the “loop” button is not selected under the monitor window, happened to me once and took me a while to figure out!

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers