[Jeff Pulera]

Thanks for the screen shots. I don’t see anything that should cause a video transcode in Encore (using default Encore settings), however I would offer a few tips.

1) If you can, use a fast drive other than C: for exports. In fact, for any video editing work, the media should not be on C: drive as that hurts performance since Windows and programs also need to share access.

2) The “H.264 Blu-ray” preset will offer higher-quality than “MPEG-2 Blu-ray”, at least at lower bit rates (MPEG-2 can look great at high bit rates), but H.264 may take longer to encode. Either will meet the spec.

3) You have the same data rate selected for Min, Target, Max, which defeats the purpose of Variable Bit Rate (VBR) encoding. If you want them all the same, then just select CBR (Constant Bit Rate).

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Ken,

Please clarify, are we talking DVD or Blu-ray? If DVD, then use the “MPEG-2 DVD” format to encode your files. And of course choose a preset appropriate to your material. The only setting you may need to fiddle with is the bitrate, depending on the program length.

Using this method will provide two files, .m2v video and .wav audio, and just import them into Encore. Encore will transcode the audio to Dolby AC-3, but should NOT be transcoding the video. If it is, you did something wrong.

Maybe you can share a screen grab of your export settings for review?

Thank you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Ken,

Do you want to burn a DVD or Blu-ray? Both require quite specific formats in order to meet the official “specs” for DVD or Blu-ray. Which means that anything you put into Encore that does not meet that narrow spec will require transcoding to a compliant format before burning the disc.

For NTSC DVDs, the spec is MPEG-2, 720×480 (with specific MPEG-2 settings)

For Blu-ray, you can use either MPEG-2 or H.264, again with certain settings

Put your camera clips on a Premiere timeline, then Export using one of the available DVD or Blu-ray format presets to export your material to a compliant format, then import the results into Encore to author. Proper video clips should not need transcoding then.

Thank you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

For the life of me, I’ll never understand why posters like omitting critical info from the initial post and then casually add it in later, only after others spend a bunch of time trying to help…without having all the facts to work with.

“Oh, by the way, what you all thought was a PC is really a Frankenstein box”.

So please clarify, are you running Windows or a Mac OS?

Thanks

Jeff

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Benjamin,

Some plug-ins and effects take much longer to render than others. Why don’t you do a simple test as follows:

Put a 5-minute clip on the timeline. Do not add ANY effects. Export to H.264. How long does it take? Now add your effects, and export again using same export settings? Takes longer, right? That is the effects “tax” being paid.

I bet that a plain clip without effects will be close to 5 minutes, give or take. Assuming you have fast drives. You didn’t mention the drive config.

Thank you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Charlie,

The sample shown with the black bars around it looks like a 720p clip in a 1080 Sequence perhaps? Right-click one clip at a time in Project Bin and look at “Properties” and check the dimensions of the source clips.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

In addition to Jon’s good advice, check the box for “Max Render Quality” as that is said to benefit the downscaling quality from HD to SD.

Thank you

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Good comments so far. I notice that your specs say “1920×1078” which should be “1080”, so was that a typo?

As discussed, if you intend to make a DVD for playback in standard DVD players, then the DVD must be created in a very specific way to meet the official DVD specification so the DVD will work in all players.

This means when exporting with Media Encoder, choose “MPEG-2 DVD” as the Format. Not “MPEG-2″ or H.264”, but “MPEG-2 DVD” only. If you encode to anything else, Adobe Encore (or whatever authoring software you use) will just transcode the video again to the correct format anyway.

As stated earlier, DVD is always SD – if you want HD, then you need to make a Blu-ray disc (or put an HD clip on a data disc, but that won’t play on most players).

Hope this gets you pointed in the right direction, but just let us know if you have more questions of course!

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Deck – look for an S-VHS deck, as VHS decks do not normally have S-video outputs. I’ve never seen Component on a VHS or SVHS deck, maybe they exist, I don’t know, but typically S-video is as good as it gets for VHS output. Pro-sumer edit decks like a Panasonic AG-1980 or JVC 9xxx series SVHS decks will have time-base correction and S-video output.

I’d go with the Black Magic Intensity for capture. On a PC, will record as an .avi using Black Magic codec which is high-quality, high bit-rate 4:2:2 video.

While I’ve never tried a “USB capture device”, these are usually cheap sub-$100 units having Composite input (poor) and then they also often compress directly to MPEG-2 or H.264. These formats will have a lot of quality loss, since it is squishing the video down to a data rate that works over USB 2.0, which is not very fast. You get what you pay for.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Your Premiere capture settings of DV, PAL, 48k should be fine. However, use the ESC key to end a capture, rather than STOP.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers