[Russ Bennett]

Hi all,

Call off the dogs…the error is found. I was clicking to enable Adjustment Layer directly adjacent to the per-layer Motion Blur icon. Of course this would hide a layer. (Does anyone else do this?!?) I use Photoshop. I know this is an Adjustment Layer icon. But I just goofed and clicked the wrong thing.

Maybe this can be added to someone’s clue bag when troubleshooting in the future. Just because it’s a little round icon doesn’t mean it controls motion blur. 🙂

Thanks,
Russ

[Russ Bennett]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for your reply! I did update to the latest and disable OpenGL previews. (Actually saw you suggest this to someone else on an older Cow post and tried it before posting)

So it could be a different system setting? I wonder what it might be…
Russ

[Russ Bennett]

Below is the solution that solved my problem of creating a DVD with widescreen footage in Premiere Pro CS4.

I had recorded a long event with a Panasonic HMC-150 using the AVCHD codec and shooting 720p at 24 frames per second. I wanted to export this HD 24p footage as standard definition onto a DVD. I wanted several menus at the beginning.

I edited in Premiere Pro CS4 and then exported the project to Encore. I was unsure how to get the widescreen to display correctly. Using the File > Export > Media dialog and clicking on the Video tab, I tried using the 16:9 setting to make my widescreen video acceptable to the DVD format’s 4:3 expectations. Sadly, after a 20 hour render, it gave me an error message:

“PGC has an error at 0.5339s. The aspect ratio of this file is not supported by DVD. PGC Info: name=, ref=Bpgc, time = 0.5339s”

Aspect ratio not supported? But I exported with the 16:9 setting. Why would it not work?
I fiddled for hours until coming to the final conclusion, which solved my problem of making a DVD with my HMC150 AVCHD footage:

Create your timeline chapter markers in Premiere Pro. Set the work area bar to the portion of the timeline that you want to export.
Save the file.
Go to File > Export > Media.

Format Settings: MPEG2-DVD
Preset: NTSC Progressive High Quality. (Even if your footage is widescreen, don’t use the widescreen setting!)
For Output Name, click that yellow/orange hyperlink and name your file something intelligent. Put it where you can find it later.
Multiplexer tab: set Multiplexing to None. (This setting is the exact opposite of my bug workaround for Encore CS3, which is why it took so long to be willing to click None in CS4). If you don’t do set Multiplexing to None, the audio track may be much longer than the video.
You shouldn’t have to change any other settings.

Render the file.

Open Encore to a new project.
Right click in your Project pane and select Import as > Timeline.
Import four files here: your MPEG2 Movie Clip, the Wav audio file, your XMPSES data file, and the Adobe XMP file. (If you can’t find all of these files, you may need to display the date and time the file was modified. In Win XP, it’s a drop-down box in the upper right corner. Not sure where it will be for another OS).

Right click again in the Project pane and click Import as > Menu. Select your menu. I had three widescreen menus and they all worked in the final project. I designed them in Photoshop CS3 at a size of 720×480 with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.2.

Link all of your menus.
In the Build pane, select Check Project. Fix any errors.
Next, I output to “DVD Image”, which creates a generic ISO file that you can burn with any burner software. I also discovered the freeware ImgBurn utility, which allowed me to create discs on my computer without software like Roxio or Nero.

I hope this helps someone who was as stumped as I was.

The final result is that the menus and the video both appear correctly. Also, there had been question of how to salvage the 23.976 frame rate in a 29.97 project. I don’t know the technical hows and whys of the pulldown algorithm, but the final DVD plays flawlessly.

My system specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz
4 GB RAM
320 GB 5400 RPM HDD
Windows XP SP3
Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 4.2.1
Adobe Encore CS4 4.0.1.048

I had at least one other error in the process. It told me “Error compiling movie. Unknown error.” I wondered, If Encore doesn’t know what the problem is, how am I supposed to know? Searching the forum revealed that this error can indicate a media cache or memory space problem. I did three things that helped:
1. Cleared space on my hard drive (17 GB was what I ended up with)
2. Went to Premiere’s Edit > Preferences > Media and under the Media Cache Database heading, selected Clean.
3. Restarted computer.
Even though I had 6 or 7 GB free before this, it was like I was running out of space.

Thanks to everyone else who posted on this forum and provided clues that helped solve my emergency.

Russ

[Russ Bennett]

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They have ESP 150w versions with 1000 hour life at $9.36/ea. plus shipping.
They have FEV 200w lamps for $11.23 ea.

I’ve used the lower-priced Ushio lamps in the last year and have had no problems.

Bulb Connection also has great prices on lamps for the Tota, Omni, DP, etc.

Russ
Productions of Light
ProductionsofLight.com