[Jeff Pulera]

“Does it not mean anything for the export that the footage was 100Mbps when imported?”

No, not really. First off, one frame of 4K (UHD) video is the size of four frames of HD video. Since you are exporting as HD, take that 100mbps figure from the source video and divide by 4, giving you an equivalent rate of 25mbps.

Now consider that camera recordings are usually a bit more robust (less-compressed) since that footage will need to be edited and manipulated in post. For delivery, the video can be more compressed (smaller file size) and will still look fine to the viewer. You would not want to use that same compressed file for further editing and transcoding, but it looks fine for delivery. So yes you might be perfectly happy looking at 1080p footage compressed as H.264 with 10-15mbps.

As to whether you can properly preview a 1080p file on a monitor with less resolution…it will be scaled down, yes, but you should still be able to see if it looks clear and sharp or not.

You could import your exports back into Premiere and look at them there also, perhaps creating a side-by-side to compare different bitrates. I’ve done that before when “pixel peeping”.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Mark,

I shoot stage events in UHD then edit in 1080 or 720p sequences to enable zooming/cropping in post and it works great!

Create a New Sequence in 1080p, for instance: AVCHD 1080p 29.97

When you drop that first UHD clip into the Sequence, it may warn that clip doesn’t match sequence – disregard.

Right-click the UHD clip(s) and select SET TO FRAME SIZE. Do not use Scale to Frame Size. The SET option will keep the extra resolution and use it if you Scale the image (zoom in).

Per the other reply, choose H.264 for the export format, then there are a ton of presets for different devices, choose something appropriate to your needs.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi John,

What exactly are you importing into Encore? If exporting MPEG-2 DVD from Premiere/Media Encoder, do NOT turn on the DVD muxing – use the default export which provides two files – .m2v video and .wav audio. That is how Encore likes it.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Screen shot please

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

My usual workflow is to create a DVD IMAGE (.iso) and then burn that to DVD using third-party software. Always works. No idea why that would be grayed out, except I will say that sometimes when you take an existing project (having menus and such already in place) and you try to swap out the video source, strange things can happen in the project.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

87 minutes will EASILY fit a 4.7GB DVD and still look good. Over the years creating DVDs of events, the majority of my DVDs have always been in the 2-hour range. So 1.5 hours is nothing ????

All you need to do is lower the bitrate to about 6.3 for it to fit.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

I’ve been using Adobe Encore for many years and have never even attempted a dual-layer burn because of all the horror stories I read on forums about difficulty in creating one successfully, plus the possible player compatibility issues.

How long is the video content – is it absolutely necessary to use dual-layer for this project?

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Jan,

You always want to keep transcoding (conversions or re-encoding) to a minimum. Ideally, you encode to the delivery format directly from the camera source files. Camera and delivery formats are all compressed, meaning a lot of information is discarded in favor of producing smaller files. So now you are taking an already-compressed file (from camera) and compressing it again (for delivery). You don’t want to do that multiple times, since more quality is lost each time.

There would be no benefit to encoding at a high bitrate, only to have Encore transcode (recompress) again.

Figure out the ideal bitrate to fit your material on the DVD, and encode once with best possible settings. The max bitrate for the DVD spec is I believe 9.8mbps (video and audio combined). 8mbps is the max recommended video bitrate, and the audio is usually compressed as Dolby Digital .ac3 at 224kbps. Uncompressed audio is also supported, but can take up a huge amount of room, like 1GB for a 2-hour video, which would take away precious space needed to raise the video quality.

Most DVD producers will not push the max bitrate for the reason that DVDs we make are burned, while Hollywood DVD discs are pressed. Totally different media! Some DVD players may take issue with very high bitrates on burned media, so better not to push it too hard. Depends on media quality also to some degree.

If you video is under 60 minutes, you can simply encode at 7 or 8 and know it will fit the DVD without doing any calculations. At that high bitrate, I will just use CBR which is Constant Bit Rate – all of the video is encoded at the same high quality. When the video duration starts getting beyond an hour, then you need to figure out the bitrate to fit the disc. A rule of thumb is 560/minutes = bitrate, so for a 2-hour movie, 560/120 = 4.6 and maybe round down just a little to allow for other overhead on the DVD, so 4.5 is a safe figure. Assumes you are not using a bunch of motion menus which can use a lot of extra space.

When encoding videos longer than an hour, quality can benefit from using 2-Pass VBR or Variable Bit Rate encoding. This encodes in two passes – the first pass just looks at all the video content to see if each scene is complex or more basic. Does it contain a lot of detail and motion which would benefit from a higher bitrate, or is it a static scene like a title screen or camera is not moving, in which case it will look just great at a lower bitrate.

Based on that first pass which analyzes the video content, the second pass then does the actual encoding, applying the appropriate compression to each scene to maximize efficiency, applying more bitrate where needed and less where it’s not needed. With VBR, you will set an AVERAGE bitrate (the 4.5 from above for example) and then MIN and MAX bitrates also, so it might look like 2.5 – 4.5 – 8 for instance. The bitrate will vary scene to scene, not to exceed 8 or go less than 2.5, and averaging out to 4.5 overall. Having set the AVG, you know the encoded material will fit the disc in the end.

For a more precise bitrate calculation, use a bitrate calculator such as https://dvd-hq.info/bitrate_calculator.php

The only catch with using this calculator or similar is that you must put all the right numbers in each box – if you mess up one number, it throws off the entire formula and the result is then wrong.

I hope this is helpful.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Shane it totally correct – the “MPEG4” format outputs as .3gp files and is specifically for cell phone content. Use H.264

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

A few tips:

1) Don’t shoot in 4K if not absolutely necessary. 4K video is the equivalent of FOUR streams of 1080p. This is exponentially increasing the computing workload on the PC to process 4K and scale to 1080p or 720p. Taking way longer than a 1080p source would to export. Depending on the camera, might be recording larger files as well.

2) Rendering from AE – you are exporting UNCOMPRESSED video. Don’t do that, files are MASSIVE as you’ve already noticed. Try Cineform with Alpha (found under QuickTime), or DNxHD (.mxf) with alpha codecs for instance, these are already in Adobe software. Visually lossless compression – same quality, but much smaller file.

3) Hard drive – where are you storing the video clips? Hopefully not the C: drive, never use C: drive for video. For any video editing software, you always want to have a fast, DEDICATED hard drive for that. In your case being on a laptop, a fast external USB 3.0 drive, like a small desktop RAID (a RAID is 2 or more drives combined for more speed, in a single enclosure). RAID 0 would be common for an inexpensive 2-drive unit. Check with LaCie, G-Technology, Glyph for fast, portable RAID solutions suitable for video content work. If your laptop happens to support the new USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 ports, those drives would be even faster.

4) Exporting entire match – realizing that cameras typically break up the recording into several pieces, depending on the format the camera is recording, if you record as 1080p you *might* be able to just quickly join those pieces together into a single file without having to encode the whole works. For instance, there are lots of free software apps for this purpose – look online for “mp4 joiner” or “how to concatenate video files”, stuff like that.

5) What GPU (video card) is in the laptop? You want to make sure that the GPU Acceleration is being used in Premiere if at all possible (supported hardware required, might need some setup to utilize). This especially helps with scaling the exports.

These things should help you out

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers