CS4 Media Encoder settings?

[Glenn Oberlin]

I have Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and I am using a Canon VIXIA HF10 it records video in MPEG AVC/H.264,The camera is set to MPX video.What I don’t understand is when I send a sequence to the Adobe Media Encoder to encode and set to NTSC,740X480,23.976, Progressive, Quality 5, VBR,1Pass. But VBR 1 pass is the only setting in Media Encoder. If I use the Adobe Dynamic Link and Send to Encore I can right click on the sequence and pick Transcode Settings, go to Edit Quality Presets and find other settings such as DV High Quality 7MB VBR 2 Pass. Is there a way to access these settings from Media Encoder? I am very new to this, I thought that VBR 2 Pass would give a better looking video. I am trying to get the best video on DVD from my AVC/H.264 files any help would be great ……… Thanks

[Mitch Hunt]

If you're encoding your project to SD to be used on a DVD do the following in AME. In the "format" dropdown box select "MPEG2-DVD" Then click the hypertext under "Preset" to access settings. In the "video" tab move the quality slider to 5, make sure TV standard is set to NTSC, set "Frame Rate" to '29.97 drop frame" and "Field Order" to "Lower". Choose the "Aspect Ratio" option that matches your source videos and/or Premiere project (probably widescreen). Set the "Bitrate Encoding" to "VBR, 2 pass", minimum bitrate, target bitrate and maximum bitrate to 8.0 (this is for maximum quality, if you want higher compression so you can fit more on the DVD you may lower the bitrate, but NEVER go over 8 Mbps for export to DVD). If your source videos are HD, use "Maximum Render Quality" option under the menu to the right of the tabs for high quality HD to SD down sampling. Under the audio tab I recommend selecting "Dolby Digital" for the audio format. Click OK and start rendering!

[Glenn Oberlin]

Thanks Mitch, I'll give this a try, I'm new to this and there sure is a lot to learn but I have learned a lot just by reading this forum. Thanks again ... Glenn