dvd creation

[dasher]

Hi All

Until recently I have been creating VHS tapes and no problems. I now have an extensive video created in Premiere 6.5.

I would like to know how best to get this on to DVD, encoding etc.

Thanks

Des

[Brian Ellis]

An excellent medium cost authoring software is U;ead DVD Workshop Express, which has a superb encoder inbuilt. The full version has some added features, but it is unlikely to be of greater help to you unless you are going to produce multiple soundtracks/sub-titles (WSE is limited) or intend producing a tape for pressing DVDs.

A cheaper product is Ulead MovieFactory 3 Disk Creator, which has a much less versatile menu system and a very slightly less evolved encoder (but still very good). It is more entry level, but comes with a handful of very useful utilities.

[dasher]

Thanks Brian

I really did leave my question too open. I am using Prem 6.5. Should I first export the timeline as an avi and then encode with software or use the MPEG2 encoder in Prem. I had a shot at the latter and the result on DVD is very jerky. I have read in other posts that Mainconcept is recommended is that also save as an avi and then encode.

Des

[Debbie]

The standard prosedure is capture as *.avi.
Encode to *.mpg-2 (4000kbps - 8000 kbps) with audio 48000 Hz

There are quite a few encoding software on the market.
In my opinion MainConcept and TMPGEnc do the job quite well.

Then you will have to author.
Again, there is a wide range of software out there and it all depends how deep you intend to go into the subject.

You can be happy with just loading your movie into the software and burn a DVD without any menus, or do full authoring with menus and sub-menus and chapters.

My choice is Ulead DVD Workshop because it copes well with all situations.

From your hardware list it appears that you should have no problems. Now it is a matter of software and how deep is your pocket.

Debbie

[Dr Mordrid]

And lets not forget that many DVD authoring programs, DVD Workshop 2, DVD Workshop Express and DVD MovieFactory for a few, have built-in MPEG encoders.

DVD Workshop 2 has the added advantage of having Dolby Digital audio encoding (stereo only), which makes for better compatability with existing DVD decks.

Dr. Mordrid

[dasher]

I read that DVDWS2 has the capacity to capture from camera, what if ?

Bring raw footage into Prem
edit and record back to camera
capture edit into DVDWS2 and burn

??

[Dr Mordrid]

Why not just export it to the HDD then load it right into DVDWS2? No need to go back to the camera.

Dr.Mordrid

[Debbie]

No need to complicate things. Just edit your footage in Premiere as .*avi.

Import the clip in UDVDW 2 as *.avi (I have just run a test using PicVideo 3 ) and UDVDW 2 will convert the clip and burn, if you wish.

Make sure that the material is of the correct res. 720 x 576 (PAL 25fps) or 720 x 480 (NTSC 29.97)

[Debbie]

Doc., You beat me to the reply (quicker to draw !!)

[Indiana]

How good is the Nero Vision Express Software that comes with Nero burning ROM image-quality wise?
It does Dolby digital2.0 as well for sound.

[Frank Marshall]

Actually, I think what dasher might be interested in (and I am certainly curious about) is whether there is plug-in software that can export high-quality, MPEG-2 compressed, DVD-ready footage straight from the Premiere timeline. A standalone codec might facilitate the compression but it's so much nicer when there's a plug-in applet to assist you. Back in the days of MPEG-1 VCD creation, I breezed through the process of readying my footage for CD-Rs by using the Panasonic plug-in. A DVD/MPEG-2 equivalent would be sweet.

[Dr Mordrid]

Not as a plugin encoder per se, but using one.

There are two programs available for Premiere (and Premiere Pro) that are "frameservers". Frameservers can export the timeline to a proxy *.avi file which can then be loaded into whatever encoder you care to use, MPEG or otherwise. Once the link is established the timeline goes straight to the host encoder.

One is by Video Tools and is a commercial product:

http://www.videotools.net

and the other is a bit of freeware by DebugMode;

http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/

I've used both to frameserve from Premiere, Premiere Pro and MSPro7 to the MainConcept, TMPGEnc Plus, TMPGEnc 3.0 Pro, CinemaCraft (CCE) SP and many other MPEG encoders with very good results. All that's required of the host program is that it be able to load *.avi's.

IMO the VideoTools product is well worth its modest price.

Of course you could always buy a plugin MPEG encoder like CinemaCrafts, but then it's only going to work in ONE program and even then may not work in the next build of the editor. The frameservers eliminate this problem.

Dr. Mordrid

[dasher]

Bring raw footage into Prem
edit and record back to camera
capture edit into DVDWS2 and burn

-----------------------------------------------

My thought was that by loading back to the camera and then capturing into DVDWS or Mainconcept that I would eliminate possible degredation in going back to HDD as avi and then to encoding.

Thanks for the help I will go fiddle

Des

[Brian Ellis]

There is no further degradation by saving a rendered version to AVI. If you recorded back to tape, you would either have to bring it back to AVI for encoding anyway or you could transcode to MPEG-2, in which case there WOULD be degradation, compared with encoding an AVI file!