[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Eric,

To be DVD-compliant, the file you export MUST BE the “MPEG-2 DVD” format. Regular MPEG-2 would need to be transcoded.

For Blu-ray, you can use the “H.264 Blu-ray” or “MPEG-2 Blu-ray” presets. Again, other H.264 or MPEG-2 formats are not Blu-ray-compliant, and therefore would need to be transcoded in Encore.

So, choose the correct FORMAT, then below that, the PRESET that best fits the source, for instance if I start with 1080i footage, for the DVD I choose “NTSC DV Widescreen high quality” preset, and the only thing I will be changing in all the settings in the BIT RATE, depending on program length, to make sure it will fit the DVD.

A rule of thumb is 560/minutes=bitrate, and round down a touch for safety margin, otherwise use a bitrate calculator such as https://dvd-hq.info/bitrate_calculator.php although you must be careful about what numbers you punch in, one little mistake throws off the whole formula.

As long as the video clip you bring into Encore is compliant, it should NOT need to Transcode. If the audio from export is .wav, that will by default transcode to Dolby AC3 in Encore, and that is very quick.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

The “+” and “-” keys zoom in and out. There may possibly be another key that jumps to full view, but I’m not big on shortcuts, sorry.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Find the Audio Crossfade effect and drag and drop directly onto clips on timeline.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Make sure you are exporting the Sequence and not the Clip. I think I’ve seen posts similar to yours in the past. See if GPU rendering is on or off, try reversing setting once. Upgrade graphics card drivers.

Good luck, this is weird

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Eric,

If you’re DVDs only play in every other player, something is very wrong, as you should have virtually 100% success these days. I send out many hundreds of event DVDs each year with practically no issues.

Either something wrong in the authoring process, or you’re using cheap media – I would blame the latter usually.

Also, you might save yourself some time, and a LOT of hard drive space, and export to either H.264 Blu-ray or MPEG-2 DVD formats directly from Premiere, and you will have Encore-ready assets. Why encode twice? And 444 is severe overkill realizing that Blu-ray and DVD use 4:2:0 color at a very high compression rate.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Jonny,

What type of footage are you working with? If for example AVCHD, as you know the SD card will have a complex folder system and file naming employed. If you only Import the video files themselves into Premiere, important linkage and metadata may be lost and therefore Premiere later gets confused about things.

Best practice for any card-based media is to do a straight COPY of ALL CONTENTS of card to a new folder on your hard drive. Copy it all, not just video. Then in Premiere, use Media Browser to import the footage, NOT the “File > Import” method. Media Browser is normally found tabbed at lower left. It correctly interprets footage, combines spanned clips, attaches audio properly, etc.

Hope this helps moving forward.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Gary,

My old HDV cameras shoot 1080i only, so I have no experience with actually working with 24p as I mentioned before. However, one picks up a few things being on these forums daily.

So yes, if taking 25p down to 23.976, something has to give. Wish I could tell you the best method of conversion, but not my area of specialty.

One piece of advice, is never use “Match Source” for exports, take charge of it yourself. Just match settings to Sequence settings basically. There are just some downsides to using Match Source where it will do things you may not want, so I like to be in control of exports.

Was just thinking, if you have 25p clips you must be in a PAL country? While online clips can be whatever frame rate you like, if you want to make a DVD then is 24p even supported for PAL? You will likely need to use a 25p or 25i workflow for best results, but again not something I’ve worked with being in NTSC area.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Gary,

You didn’t happen to check the “frame blending” box in Export settings? That might result in what you are seeing.

The root cause may be the 24p sequence. Is all the footage 24p? As I don’t own any 24p-capable cameras, not experienced with the conversion process involved in some workflows. Is the DVD being authored as 24p?

Can you please share more about the source video formats, and if possible post a screen shot of the Export Settings window?

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi David,

I understand you have no access to the source video/project right now, but I believe that when you export from Premiere to “MPEG-2 DVD”, if you choose Upper Field at that point and encode UFF, then Import that into Encore, Encore will not transcode and will keep the UFF setting.

Not sure about setting up Encore to manually transcode source you have now.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Andy,

A 2-hour video, coming from a clean HD source (focused of course!) should not look “blurry” on DVD.

Use 2-Pass VBR encoding (from Premiere to MPEG-2 DVD) and also check the “Max Render Quality” box.

Instruct the viewer to NOT use yellow RCA composite cables from DVD player to HDTV, worse thing one can do! Use a DVD or Blu-ray player with UPSCALING technology and connect only with HDMI cable. Even Hollywood DVDs look bad with composite cable to HDTV.

I’m assuming the HD source footage is in sharp focus, nice clear video? If there was some focus issue when shooting, then the Unsharp filter in Premiere can work wonders to restore the footage.

Lastly, DVD is SD video at 720×480, it will never look as nice and crisp as HD video at 1920×1080 (with 6x the pixels), so clients need to understand that.

Thanks
Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers