Neil Wilkes
Forum Replies Created
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HDV in Premiere is great with the Cineform AspectHD plugin.
We’re running this with a Sony HDV box, and the results are impressive. -
Please remember that DVD-Video is Video dominant, Audio Subservient.
This essentially means that the Audio is tied to the visual and not vice-versa.
In Short, change the visual screen (Movie or menu) and the Audio must change too. -
If you’re talking about re-encoding an MPEG-2 file, I would agree.
If you are talking about taking an uncompressed AVI, then you are wrong.
We run these sort of processes all the time, and there is no loss as long as you do it all correctly.What you cannot do with any kind of acceptable quality is take a PAL DVD & make it an NTSC one – you must revert back to the original media files, and re-author the project.
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What was the source of the files you used?
What type were they?
Did they come from a VOB file, and have you changed the TV standard or the Audio format at all? -
In Short, no MPEG-4.
It’s not a DVD compliant file type. -
As you will know, the p[roblem area is usually the subpicture highlight layer.
The actual background can be up to a 24 bit uncompressed TIFF file, so detail is always preserved. However, when you go to the button part, we need to use a 2 bit highlight later.
This effectively gives you 3 colours to be used, with no anti-aliasing allowed.
Apple’s DVDSP uses a spec fudge to stack things and excee3d the limit, but menus like this are simply out of spec and will not be guaranteed to work.Basic rules for menu creation, to avoid problems like you describe, are as follows:
1 – Colour Palette
Avoid Highly Saturated colours (above 75 to 90%)
Detail should be defined by differences in brightness (visible in Grey Scale) rather than by the contrast between two colours of the same brightness (IE, dark red text over a dark blue background) – using Solid Black & White is asking for trouble as TV screens are interlaced.2 – Definition & Detail.
Fonts should be at least 11-12 points, with the thinnest parts of the letters at least 2 points thick to avoid moire and flickering
Sans Serif fonts display better than serif fonts
Avoid putting more than 10-15 lines of text on any one screen
In Line ARt, use lines that are at least 4 pixels wide.I hope this helps somewhat, but I honestly think the White on Black will have to change.
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Have you tried creating a folder instead of a disc?
This method should not set a Layer Break, but instead allow you to write a folder to the drive.
You can then set a layer break either with the freeware PGCEdit, or else by loading up the folder into the freeware utility IMGburn, which can either set the break for you automatically by enabling the “Calculate Optimal” setting, or else manually.
IMGBurn will also then write the final disc for you.I know this isn’t what you really asked about, but it seems to happen – and I know not why – that the Layer Break dialogue in Encore simply doesn’t always work. If it’s any consolation at all, all DVD authoring applications have similar issues.
To try & work out why is almost a Black Art in itself, which is why PGCEdit may become your new Best Friend.
It looks daunting at first, because it is massively powerful. But once you get used to it….As far as your faulty project goes, what is it’s structure? You mention a 6Gb+ project but there is no mention of what was used to create the MPEG-2 files. Could it possibly be that they have Open GOP’s, and there is no chapter point at a suitable place to put the break? That would very likely cause what we are seeing here:
The reason for this is that the Layer Break in Automatic mode will look first for a gap between timelines suitable for the break, then (if it cannot find one) it will look for a chapter point in the right area. Failing this, it will go at a GOP header in the right area, and Open GOP’s could prevent this working.
How were the MPEG-2 files created, please? -
The way to work around this is to extend the menu to the same length as the music.
DVD-Video is graphically/Visually dominant & Audio subservient – this means the Audio will always follow the video, and never vice-versa.
So, nip into your NLE and extend the menu time (Copy/Paste) by 6 times making it 48 seconds long – you’ll need to trim to make it 44 seconds.Cannot think of another answer (although someone else might be able to)
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Did you render the motion menu after setting the Poster Frame?
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The way we do this – and this should specifically be in the Premiere Pro Subforums – is to create a new Cineform HDV project in PPro (Cineform greatly improves the handling in PPro, and at $500 is extremely cheap for what you get both in terms of handling & performance. Far superior to the Native in PPro)
then we simply capture the files directly into Premiere from our HDV deck.