[Neil Wilkes]

Use Encore’s “Automatic” setting.
2 hours is pushing it for a single layer disc in terms of quality, and will result in a bitrate of 4.82 average with VBR encoding.
(Encore will automatically use VBR encoding at anything under 6Mb/sec as a rough guide)
Whether or not this is acceptable will depend on your source footage.
If there is a lot of rapid motion & fast stuff, or heavily detailed scenes, it might not be sufficient.
To test, try taking the busiest clip you can & transcode it using the following settings:
VBR 2-Pass
Peak Bitrate = 9.41Mb/sec
Average (Target) bitrate = 4.82Mb/sec

Write to an RW disc, and see what it looks like…..

[Neil Wilkes]

Agreed.
CRT sets are still by a long margin the most common out in “the wild” as it were, and they *all* overscan to a greater or lesser degree.
Use the margins.
If using Photoshop CS/CS2, use the D1/DV template as well.

[Neil Wilkes]

Use IMGBurn instead of Nero!
It handles layer breaks really well.
When setting the layer break in Encore, always try to do this manually – this way you get much more control over where it goes.
I do not trust the automatic option at all.

[Neil Wilkes]

I’ll see what I can come up with.
One of the best resources I know of is Steven Gotz’ website
https://www.stevengotz.com/premierepro.htm
This man has to be not only one of the most helpful people I have ever met, but he also really knows his stuff when it comes to Premiere & HDV.

Incidentally, we sorted out our export problem, and it was not Adobe’s fault or our fault. We updated our build of AspectHD to build 68, and discovered from Cineform support that it had a faulty installer – went to build 69 and all is perfect.
I cannot overstate how impressed we are with the combination of AspectHD and Premiere Pro 2. Forget using the native support – spend the $500 on AspectHD, and try it for 14 days unlimited first. It is awesome.
Everything is real time – no need to render clips each time a transition or effect is used (from the cineform selection) but just edit, create & export in CineformHD codec.
This will come out as an AVI file in the “normal” DV resolutions of 720×480 or 720×576 as 16:9 files. These import happily into Encore DVD as well as the TMPGEnc MPEG-2 encoders.
The Cineform website also has some very detailed documentation on Cineform to DVD with Premiere, and recommends using the export movie with the CineformHD codec and then importing this into a standard Premiere project for MPEG-2 encoding. They do not recommend a direct MPEG-2 export from the HDV timeline.
See https://www.cineform.com/products/TechNotes/Export2DVD.htm for details.

File sizes can vary.
Cineform seem to recommend medium file size, which is about the same as normal DV, where Steven Gotz recommends using the maximum size, which equals around 40Gb/hour of fotage.
Experiment & see what suits you best. We just did a project from capture to DVD using Medium, and the client was very, very happy.
Even the VHS versions looked better to me – perhaps because I expected to see higher quality, perhaps not.

I can highly recommend this version – and it is true HD.
1440x1080i, and the detail is superb. I’m beginning to understand what it is all about now…..but still remain on my fence regarding HD DVD and Blu Ray. You can tell the difference even on SD DVD created from this codec.
Try it – it is free for 14 days!

[Neil Wilkes]

https://www.adobe.com/support/feature.html

File a feature request for this.
It woud make a great addition, and the more requests that arerecieved, the more chance there is of something happening.

[Neil Wilkes]

HDV is a funny thing.
Remember that it is in reality an MPEG-2 transport stream, and as such for use in DVD will need to be captured into something like Premiere Pro, using AspectHD as opposed to the Native Premiere implementation.
This, at top quality, will take around 40Gb/hour.
This will then need to be rendered down to a Cineform HD AVI codec, using the usual settings by exporting movie to give you a correct resolution AVI file.
Then this will need to be imported into your Authoring application – assuming it will accept a Cineform HD AVI file – and encoded to MPEG-2 in the usual manner.

This is all right on the edge though, and believe me, it is not for the faint-hearted.
We are having dreadful problems getting edited AVI streams out of Premiere 2.
Still unresolved…..

[Neil Wilkes]

Drop the stereo file into an audio editor, Audition, WaveLab, Premiere, whatever you have, and run a plugin that will check the mono compatibility for you.
There is a free one at https://www.kellyindustries.com/stereo_tools.html
Just insert it into the master output buss and press the mono button.

[Neil Wilkes]

Have you tried activating the “Show Button Routing” option at the bottom of the menu editor?
This should show you every button on the menu.
It’s quite possible they are as small as one pixel square – this used to happen to me regularly at first.
They are definitely there, and showing button routing should reveal them.

[Neil Wilkes]

If the mono compatibility of the Audio is not correct – and this has not been mentioned before – then the problem can come from not only the use of MP3 > WAV > Dolby Digital recompression, but also from the original encoding of the MP3 itself.
For example, in some MP3 encoders, there are different options for stereo, or dual mono, or even some form of “enhanced” stereo.
Did you ever check the mono compatibility of your audio?
If there are phase variances between your left & right channels, then cancellation will do the rest.
My money is still on the MP3 file though.

[Neil Wilkes]

Using an MP3 file in any DVD production is always going to be a risk.
MP3 has already “thrown away” 11/12 of the original audio, and what remains is all there is left to work with.
When this gets imported into Encore, it will first turn it into a 16/48 PCM file by “Filling in the gaps” with zeroes. It can never replace what the original MP3 compression threw away – that information is gone forever.
When this gets recompressed to Dolby Digital, another 10/12 gets thrown away again.
With most audio, the quality loss is appalling and very noticeable.
Occasionally, if the audio is not complex or detailed, you may get away with it, but sooner or later – usually sooner – what you describe is going to happen.

Another possible source of trouble could be the settings on your camcorder.
Unless these have been set – by you – to 16/48, the defaults will be 12 bit at 32 KHz.
Again,. this is losing top end detail as the highest possible frequency will be a mere 16KHz.
and 12 bit audio is 256 times lower in resolution compared to 16 bit.

Double check your camera settings and make certain you are filming at 16/48.
And avoid using MP3 – it is a dreadful sounding format at the best of times, and completely unsuitable for DVD.