[Jeff Pulera]

I do this with weddings to switch between shotgun and wireless. Use Razor and put a cut each time you want to switch. Apply “Fill Left” or “Fill Right” to each segment as desired. Drop “Audio Cross Dissolve” at cuts to blend and not get a “pop”.

This effect fills either the Left or Right audio evenly to both channels of stereo track, and mutes other “channel” source.

Make your own Custom effects folder, put these and other favorite effects in it and then they are right there to grab and apply, no searching.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Besides interface as Tim pointed out –

What types of footage do you work with? Compressed, ProRes, Uncompressed? 8-bit, 10-bit? That will help determine speed requirements.

What are the storage needs – how many TBs?

Which RAID modes might you want – RAID 0 for speed (no backup), RAID 1 (mirror), RAID 5 (redundant + performance), etc?

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Mike,

You can use 2-Pass VBR to optimize quality, sorry I was not more specific. Are you using the 1440×1080 Blu-ray preset? You can use 1920×1080, however you’re then encoding more data…will compress more efficiently sticking with the original 1440×1080. Same data rate, with less pixels to compress, equals better quality encoding.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Alan,

Encore does not “transpose”, it can “transcode” though 😉

Don’t add the .m2v and .wav sizes together in your head – .wav files are large, but by default when building the project, Encore is going to transcode the audio automatically to .ac3 Dolby which is like 10 times smaller file size.

It looks like the motion menus are messing you up by taking up large amounts of space on the DVD. It’s been years since I used motion menus, for that exact reason. The simplest solution is, don’t use motion menus!

Consider this – the more you lower the video encoding rate, the worse it looks of course. So the more space that the menus use, the more you need to compromise the quality of the main video program to make it all fit.

If you must, here are some tips. Use a motion background for the menu, but use still buttons. Encode the background video in Premiere as MPEG-2 DVD format, and keep it short, say 30 seconds. Can be set to loop of course. That is what Hollywood DVDs do. Uses very little space that way.

If you must have animated buttons, just be sure to set the loop to say 30 or 60 seconds. What’s likely happening is that the menu video plays for long periods, perhaps the full length of the song clip you dropped in as a motion button. Sucking up all your precious space on the DVD!

If you drop the motion menus completely, remember that chapter thumbnail images do NOT have to be from the chapter mark – you can use ANY frame of the video as the “poster” thumbnail, so find an image that best represents that chapter content and set as poster. Quite effective and doesn’t waste all the DVD space.

Something else you can do, with or without motion menus, is add background music to play/loop while menu is displayed. That takes little space and can enhance the user experience. Design attractive still menus with good thumbnails and just add some music. Your choice.

Keep the video encoding up at 7, don’t compromise for menus that are seen just briefly anyway.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

PAL is 25 exactly. NTSC was originally 30 frames/60 fields when started back in 1941, when TV was black and white. When they later decided to add color in 1950, they wanted the color video broadcast to still be backwards-compatible with the existing B/W TV sets out there. So they stuffed in a color subcarrier into the B/W signal, which made it necessary to change the signal timing every so slightly, so we ended up with this oddball 29.97/59.94 business unfortunately.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Mike,

It will be helpful to know what format you are starting out with. In Export Settings, choose “H.264 Blu-ray” and then an appropriate Preset from the drop-down options.

Under the VIDEO tab, you’ll need to set the bitrate. You should be able to go up to 30-35 range without issue for 72 minutes of video.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Alan,

There is a “Scale to Fit” option, but you will want “Scale to Fill”, make sure to choose the right one.

If you are ever bored and want to read the technical reasoning as to why you get black bars on the HD to SD conversion, see here: https://www.mikeafford.com/blog/2009/03/pal-d1-dv-widescreen-square-pixel-settings-in-after-effects-cs4-vs-cs3/

The BBC was behind that change with Adobe CS4.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

To the original question, I would answer that there is NO difference, and that 1080p30 and 1080p29.97 refer to the exact same format when discussing camera formats.

Camera makers and NLE software vendors play marketing games with the numbers. It’s easier and cleaner to call things “24p” and “30p” than “23.976p” and “29.97p. Or 60p rather than 59.94.

Adobe Premiere calls 1080i video “1080i60” but it’s really 1080i59.94

One of the early Canon DSLR cameras actually recorded 24p video at exactly 24 frames per second, like film. Later versions started using the VIDEO specs of 23.976 frames per second, as do most cameras claiming “24p” recording.

Of course, if you are exporting for web or something, it would be possible to export at a true 30fps rather than 29.97 for example. But in general, when talking video camera recording formats and editing formats, 24p = 23.976, 30p = 29.97 and 60p or 60i = 59.94

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Also, DATA RATE dictates file size, not resolution of the video. If you export an HD video at 8mbps, and an SD video also at 8mbps, the resulting files will both be the same size. Same amount of data per second.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Alan,

First things first, let’s clarify terms to avoid confusion. With video resolution, the second number is always used to describe the format. 1920×1080 HD goes by 1080, 1280×720 HD goes by 720p, and PAL SD at 720×576 would be 576. NTSC is 480, using 720×480 resolution. Calling PAL “720” would confuse it with 720p which is HD.

About the MPEG-2 encoding, do NOT encode at HD resolution. As we know DVD is always SD, there is no sense encoding an HD file to put into Encore, as it will just have to transcode to SD anyway. Compressing the file twice further degrades it. The Adobe Media Encoder does a better job at compressing than Encore anyway.

From Premiere, Export as “MPEG-2 DVD” and use the “PAL DV Widescreen Progressive” preset since your source is Progressive. In the Export Settings “Output” preview window, are there any black bars around the image? If so, change Scaling to “Scale to Fill”. Check “Max Render Quality” box. Set bitrate – for 70 minute, I’d just use CBR 7.0 setting. Export.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers