[Trevor Styles]

Hey Eric–yah…when i first looked into this I called a place in LA (I live in Montana…we don’t make movies here :)) abbout authoring it for me. They were going to charge $1000…so when I heard about Cinema Craft for $800…I thought I could do it myself (because I know how to use Encore).

I am viewing on a BluRay Player on a Hi-Def TV. (so progressive)

Interesting—I ran many tests in Cinema Craft. When I choose 23.976 as my frame rate, my picture is all interlaced and looks bad.

When I pick 29.97 as the FPS and 5000 VBR with an 8 pass encode, I get a pretty stunning picture. So I think that’s what I should be doing. (even though my master file is a file done in Premiere rendered using the dv 24p codec). The other interesting thing is, when I bring that master file into Premiere or After Effects it reads the FPS as 23.976…but when I click on “Properties” in Cinema Craft, it reads it as 29.97. The only logic I could make of this, is that it is truly a 29.97 file with flags inserted so that certain programs “read” it as 23.976…cinemacraft not being one of them. I don’t know…maybe that’s it?? I am new to all this…this is my first feature film, that I wrote, shot, produced, directed, did all the visual effects and sound for. You can see our web page (waydarkerthanyouthink.com) or our Facebook page (way darker than you think)…like I said…I don’t really know what I am doing. I used a chunk of the $$ we made from the premiere for this codec…and now I need to get dvds created before Oct 22nd…yikes.

[Trevor Styles]

no I get it. Thank you. Yah–I spent the money because I plan on selling a minimum of 500 dvds. I just completed a feature length movie…but have no clue what I am doing as far as a lot of this stuff (I am doing it all myself). I just wrapped our Premier Party, where over 500 attended our no-budget zombie flick. I did the encoding in Adobe Encore…but noticed the picture was not up to MY standards (especially with the titles)…so I did the research, and came across Cinemacraft. The User Interface is “less than friendly”, and the directions have been of little help as well as the forums. So I tried here. I have had to teach myself all the programs thus far…and it has been a HUGE undertaking, as I have no “training” in any of this.

Cinemacraft gives me 2 options:

1) 29.97
2) 23.976 with 2:3 pulldown

I did an 8 pass VBR encode at 29.97 fps, and it looked GREAT on my dvd player. Which makes me wonder if that is the correct FPS for this file?

My concern though…should I in fact be doing the encode as a 23.976 file with the 2:3 pulldown? And what is the GOP N & M (set at 15 and 2) for? Do I need to change those?

I am fast realizing this encoding thing is far over my head. Truth be told…when I purchased the encoder I thought it worked IN PREMIERE…so I would just click the codec to use, and Adobe would figure the rest out. I didn’t realize I would have to set all the parameters myself, and that it was a “standalone” program. I thought it would be a great investment, since my dvd sales should MORE than cover the cost of the codec and everything I have put in thus far, plus I would be able to use it for all future dvd projects. Any help is appreciated…

[Trevor Styles]

Eric…I clearly stated I ahve never USED Cinemacraft before. So I am a novice to it, yes. I got the program for $800…which I thought was fairly “standard” as far as price goes, considering what everyone says about its compression ability. I will be able to more than triple my money back just in initial sales of my DVD…but I want the best quality, so I invested in a nice encoder…I just don’t get how to “use it”. So yes…I take “offense” to the notuion that you are implying something else.

The question stemmed from this:

I, as I stated, did all of the editing on a 24p advanced timeline in Premiere..and output at 23.976 frames. When I bring it in to other programs (After Effects/Premiere) it specifically calls it a 23.976 file…HOWEVER when I right click on the file in Cinemacraft-it reads it as 29.97)…which brings my question….23.976…or 29.97??? This has confused me.

[Trevor Styles]

Excellent–thank you everyone!!

[Trevor Styles]

well, I have only ever worked with Mini-DV footage…and output to a 4:3 tv. In Adobe, there is the “Title safe area, and the Action safe area”. On a 4:3 tv, the action safe portion of the frame doesn’t show up on the tv. So if you have a mic barely in the frame, it never used to show up on a 4:3 tv. Now I am outputting to an HD TV…and the ENTIRE action safe area shows on the tv.

So, I think I have a few options, and was just wondering what the best route to go is.

#1. Use a letterboxed matte on the entire image, resulting in a letterboxed image, not “filling the whole frame ” of an HD TV.

#2. Upscale the images that have the problem zones…thus only “upscaling and degrading a few images here and there. (the ones with the mic/mattebox flags in the “action-safe” zones)

#3. Crop the image in Premiere, resulting in either a black box around the frame, or resulting in an upscaled image, which results in a lossy image.

What is the best route to go?

[Trevor Styles]

I am at 1 hour 50 minutes…so that’s why I was thinking of putting standard def footage onto a Blue ray disc (so i wouldn’t have to compress the dvd image further)…my DVD file reads at 5.5 GIGS…which is a bit much for a standard dvd. So I will try your suggestions–thank you so much! 2 other questions:

1. The action safe area shows up ENTIRELY on my TV. How can I crop this area out? I shot this knowing I would have some “safe area” that wouldn’t show on the TV…but that doesn’t seem to be the case (microphone bobbing in and out slightly, as well as matte box flags)

2. If I applied the “Magic bullet Instant HD” plugin to my footage, and rendered, then went to Blu ray—what would this do? Would it degrade my footage, or help it, if it’s on Blu-ray, and a hi-def tv?

Thanks for the help!!

[Trevor Styles]

Yes…I know that Bluray is for Hi-def material. I guess I was under the impression that Blu-ray supported up to 25 GB of material, as well as one of the formats being 720X480…so I thought I could create an image with as little compression as possible, and thus have a better image and sound then what a 4.7 GB DVD is capable of holding. I have had horrible luck using dual layer dvds, so i thought I would go with Blu-ray.

Is this not the case? Can you not put standard definition footage onto a Blu ray?