[Jeff Pulera]

Better off to export using the H.264 format, don’t use .mov format. You will have an .mp4 playable on most any computer.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

“I’m a bit fuzzy on the square vs. rectangular pixels matter I’m afraid.”

A Pixel is a Picture Element. Every digital photo or frame of video is made up of tiny pixels, the small dots that when combined form the larger image.

With a STILL image, pixels are normally square-shaped with a 1.0 Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR). The width and height of each pixel is the same. Therefore, if a picture is 1000×1000 pixels (or any number of pixels where the X and Y dimensions are the same) then the resulting image is also square.

At the beginning of computers being able to play video clips decades ago, those were usually 640×480 pixels, which provided the same 4:3 ratio as televisions of the time. Or 320×240 was used to create smaller clips, while keeping the same 4:3 image aspect ratio.

In the late 90s, digital video was introduced and for some reason, they decided 4:3 video would now be 720×480 pixels…except that is not 4:3, is it?! So they made the pixels taller than they were wide, with a Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) of 0.9 which obviously is no longer a square pixel.

Remember MiniDV camcorders? That is where the 720×480 thing started. And DVD uses the same 720×480 size for SD video, as do all editing applications.

If we do 720 * 0.9, we get 648. Yes, I know that’s not exactly 640, but that’s pretty close and that’s how they basically maintain the 4:3 aspect of the video image. The interesting thing is that with DV video, whether you are working with 4:3 footage or widescreen 16:9 footage, the frame size remains the same 720×480 pixels!

So how do we get a 16:9 aspect ratio from footage that is only 720×480? Change the shape of the pixels – the PAR – to make them wider, which results in the final video appearing wider! The PAR for widescreen DV is 1.2, so the pixels are wider than they are tall, resulting naturally in a wider image then when all the pixels are put together into an image.

We just need to be careful to realize that the aspect ratio of the VIDEO and the aspect ratio of PIXELS are two entirely different things. With 720×480 pixels, we can end up with a video having a 4:3 aspect by using a PAR of 0.9, or we can get a widescreen 16:9 video aspect by going with a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio.

When you create a widescreen DVD, the DVD player can sense what aspect the video is meant to be and should display it appropriately as either 4:3 or 16:9, so this pixel aspect ratio “trick” works just fine. However, when you play a video clip on your computer, from the hard drive or online, most software video players don’t pay any attention to the PAR and just ASSUME that the pixels are SQUARE (1.0 PAR). So what happens to that 720×480 image that is supposed to be widescreen? It gets played as if it is a 4:3 video and everyone gets tall and skinny!

So that is why the video you downloaded was 854×480 pixels – because using 1.0 PAR, that is the correct size for widescreen video “online”. But we want 720×480 for DVD, with a 1.2 PAR. That’s why I suggested placing that 854×480 video into a 720×480 DV Widescreen sequence in Premiere. Premiere should realize what’s going on, taking into account the difference in PARs and should fit the clip properly into the DV widescreen frame. Then export as MPEG-2 DVD widescreen using 1.2 PAR and you then have an .m2v clip ready to author to DVD in Encore. No funny business with size will happen at that point. Encore will not be confused.

As an aside, the first consumer HD cameras that came out used the HDV format, recording HD video on the same MiniDV cassettes that had been used record much smaller standard definition (SD) video clips before. That would require a LOT of compression to squeeze HD video onto a tape designed for SD video!

HD video is 1920×1080 pixels with a PAR of 1.0 (square pixels). To compress HD files smaller to fit MiniDV tapes as HDV, the resolution was compromised, down to 1440×1080 using a 1.333 PAR. That’s a lot less pixels to have to record!

Check this math out – 1440 * 1.333 = 1920, so when HDV video is played back with the HDV camera or VCR, the output is then 16:9 as meant to be viewed. Video editing software also respects PAR, so for instance a 1440×1080 HDV clip can be dropped into a 1920×1080 HD sequence in Premiere and will fill the screen properly – automatically.

I’ve seen folks edit their HDV footage as 1440×1080 and then export the same dimensions, and guess what? When they play the video on their computer, or upload it somewhere, it looks like a 4:3 video since the players take the 1440×1080 size literally and do not adjust for the 1.333 PAR.

Moral of that story is that if editing HDV footage, when you export then use 1920×1080 with 1.0 PAR so it comes out correctly for the viewers. And if editing DV widescreen footage and exporting for upload, then use 854×480 with 1.0 PAR. But don’t give that size to Encore, as it’s not what it expects and your mileage may vary.

Hoping this is now clearer. Do a Google search on video pixel aspect ratio. For your reading enjoyment, maybe check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_aspect_ratio

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi David,

I do have Encore CS6 installed on my Windows 10 machine and have not had any issues. However, I guess I haven’t made a DVD in a while nor have I made any Blu-ray discs, so maybe there is an issue after Creator’s – I don’t know if that’s even installed on my PC. Sorry I don’t know more.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

When preparing assets for Encore, I will ALWAYS go straight to MPEG-2 DVD, with the separate .m2v and .wav files. That is the optimum workflow for Encore. I NEVER import any other video format into Encore.

Without re-reading the whole thread again, I believe I’d only suggested an intermediate codec since I didn’t know if AE actually offered the MPEG-2 DVD export preset. If it didn’t, then you could export to the DNxHD or other high-quality codec instead. But then still, I would then transcode that file to MPEG-2 DVD using Premiere or Media Encoder and would not use the intermediate clip directly in Encore.

I haven’t tested this theory myself, but a lot of users claim that the Encore transcoding does not look as good as doing it from Premiere/Media Encoder, so that’s another reason not to feed Encore anything but .m2v video.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

I was cranky earlier, apologies.

DO THIS:

1) Open Premiere
2) Create a NEW SEQUENCE, using DV NTSC WIDESCREEN preset
3) Go to Sequence Settings,and change FIELDS to NO FIELDS (PROGRESSIVE)
4) Import your .mp4 clip and drag into timeline. If Premiere wants to adjust to match clip, say NO!
5) Does your clip properly fill the screen? If not, we’ll need to fix that
5) Go to File > Export > Media
6) Select MPEG-2 DVD as the FORMAT
7) For PRESET, choose NTSC DV WIDE PROGRESSIVE
8) Set bit rate accordingly
9) EXPORT

For video under 60 minutes, just use CBR 8.0 encoding

For longer vids, use 560/minutes = bit rate, but don’t exceed 8. At some point, 2-Pass VBR makes sense. Or use a bit rate calculator – https://dvd-hq.info/bitrate_calculator.php

Thanks

Jeff

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Jaeson,

…..I’ve been authoring DVDs for 18 years….I am providing the exact details on how to succeed, but you keep wanting to do your own thing….good luck then…..

PS – 720×480 is NOT an “aspect ratio”. Terminology matters.

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Core i5 explains part of the slow export. Is this a laptop? What drive are you using for video clips? With any NLE, should always use a fast, dedicated media drive and not the system drive. If using C: drive that will be a performance bottleneck.

Changing 854 to 720 is changing the frame size – the Pixel Aspect Ratio is different and refers to shape of the actual pixels, meaning square or rectangular. You must set this correctly also, should be 1.2 for NTSC DV Widescreen.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

So I don’t get why you are using AE for this. On the rare times when I find myself forces to use AE, I find it complicated to just do a simple export…too many settings to mess with and possibly get wrong. And if you are basically just converting a file with little to no editing or effects, why not Premiere?

As for the 5.5 hours, either the computer is old/slow or After Effects is slower at exporting than Premiere, but without any PC specs I dunno.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi David,

Unfortunately you are wanting to accomplish advanced compositing tricks with editing software and it is not well-suited to that task.

#1 – As for changing hair color, if the hair was bright green or bright pink to start with, you may have some success, but going blonde to red head or something, not so much! First off, most camcorders throw away a ton of color information when compressing video. The detail is kept, but the human eye doesn’t notice lower color fidelity so that’s the first thing to go.

However…when you try to key this footage, the computer knows the color data is missing and that makes it hard to get clean results with color keying. A fix is to connect the live camera output to an external recording such as Atomos or Black Magic makes and those will record a large (less-compressed) file as ProRes with 4:2:2 color versus the in-camera recording like AVCHD which is very compressed and uses 4:2:0 color usually. This file will provide better keying results.

In any event, for any kind of keying work, lighting is very critical when shooting the footage. You’ll never get a decent key from poorly-lit footage in any format.

#2 – To remove eyes on moving video, you’ll need motion tracking. Not something I’ve worked with, but Mocha is a very popular software for that. I believe a light version of Mocha is included with After Effects CC, not sure if there might be Premiere CS6 plug-in available yet?

Alternately, if the clip is short, it is possible to import a video clip into Photoshop, then paint on each individual frame, then export again. So in theory, if you don’t mind tedious work, you could “rotoscope” the eyes out frame by frame.

#3 – Not going to happen. After Effects might have a shattering effect built-in, or maybe available from third-party, but it would be applied to the source video clip then it would break into pieces. I don’t know how you would get a video clip mapped onto separate shards of glass in a separate clip.

Hint: if Hollywood-style compositing effects were easy…everyone would be doing it and it wouldn’t cost $100 million to make a movie ????

Keyboard shortcuts – on a PC, the arrow keys will help you. LEFT and RIGHT arrows move 1 frame at a time, but hold SHIFT and they move 5 frames at a time. UP and DOWN arrows jump to NEXT and PREVIOUS cuts.

The PLUS and MINUS keys (+ and -) will zoom the timeline in and out to change the time scale.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

I’d missed this reply from you – “using the .m2v and .wav, but I don’t really know how to use them together in encore. ”

You can use Import as Asset, and individually import .m2v and .wav files, and then simply drag each to the same timeline. Or use Import as Timeline and grab both together, ends up the same, either way is fine.

The two file thing is preferred because as I mentioned earlier, then Encore does not need to transcode the video. When you give Encore a single file with audio and video – even if it is MPEG-2 format – Encore first needs to demux (de-multiplex) or separate the audio from the video, which means both of them will then need to be transcoded back into the proper formats as required by the official DVD specification. So why not just give it the correct assets it wants in the first place?

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers