Why use Encore if Premier Pro will make a DVD?

[Ricky Breslin]

I'm trying to eliminate having to use Adobe Encore. Is there any specific reason to use Encore in your opinion rather than just using Adobe Premier Pro 2.0 to make your MASTER DVD?

[Eric Shepherd]

Hi Ricky,

If all you need is a quick DVD with a basic templated menu, or no menu at all (put the disc in and it plays), Premiere is great and is all you need. If you need to customize the menus, set up special circumstance things, you'll need Encore for that.

Does this help? :)

Eric

[Ricky Breslin]

Thanks. Well I guess I really want to know if I'm going to get a better quality MASTER from using Encore vs. PP 2.0?

Are both programs using the same internal devices for encoding my master?

[Mike Teutsch]

Originally Posted by Ricky Breslin

Thanks. Well I guess I really want to know if I'm going to get a better quality MASTER from using Encore vs. PP 2.0?

Are both programs using the same internal devices for encoding my master?

What are you referring to as a "Master."

Mike

[Ricky Breslin]

I'm talking about making a MASTER DVD, like the one I send to the replicator.

[Mike Teutsch]

Originally Posted by Ricky Breslin

I'm talking about making a MASTER DVD, like the one I send to the replicator.

That's what I thought. If you are thinking of a MASTER as in the Encore menu, that is sent to a professional replicator, that is an export to a DLT (Digital Linear Tape) machine, not a DVD disk. It is used to send to a replicator for putting copyright protection and such on your replicated disks.

MASTER's can only be exported form Encore and to a DLT machine. If you want to send your finished project to a replicator in any other form, call them to see what they require.

If you don't care about copyright protection and just want someone to make you a bunch of copies of a disk that you already have, that's different.

What do you have and how long etc.. Maybe we can help you out.

Mike

[Ricky Breslin]

Thanks. Well we litterally sell thousands of our instructional DVDs and I'm at the point where I want to step our game up.

We're creating a $499.95 training program that will be licensed to beauty schools around the world and I want the best picture quality possible. Here is our current workflow:

1. Film with Sony A1U in HDV 60i mode

2. Firewire from Mini DV to Adobe PP 2.0

3. Edit in Adobe PP 2.0

4. Record audio and lay Dolby Digital 5.1 audio in timeline (We have a SurCod Audio Encoder that encodes all our audio to legit AC3. files with Dolby Digital Standards)

5. Export everything in one timeline via Adobe PP using MPEG Layer II

6. Take the MPEG Layer II and bring it into DVD Lab Pro to burn.

You can see a sample of our work here:
http://www.braidsbybreslin.com/weave-preview.html


But after studying for hours, I feel we can produce MUCH better DVD's!

Here's how I'm thinking of changing our workflow.

1. Film with Sony A1U in HDV 60i mode

2. Firewire from Mini DV to Adobe PP 2.0

3. Edit in Adobe PP 2.0

4. Record audio and lay Dolby Digital 5.1 audio in timeline (We have a SurCod Audio Encoder that encodes all our audio to legit AC3. files with Dolby Digital Standards)

HERE'S WHERE WE CHANGE:

5. CHANGE THE ENCODING PROCESS. Export HDV source footage to MPEG Layer II file via Cinema Craft http://www.cinemacraft.com/eng/sp.html ($1,995.00)

6. Export audio file via SurCode for Dolby Digital 5.1 Encoder for legit AC3. file.

7. Take these 2 source files (WHICH SHOULD LOOK MUCH BETTER) and burn via Adobe Encore for final DVD.

Whatchu think?

[Eric Shepherd]

I can't help with the DLT and that stuff, but I'm wondering why you're doing training videos in 5.1? Is your audience using 5.1 systems for playback? Do you 6 discreet channels of audio in your production through the mixdown process or are you splitting 2.0 into 5.1? If you use 2.0 audio, you can give the audio better sound quality AND give more bandwidth to the video track. Just a thought.

[Mike Teutsch]

Ricky,

OK, I would say that the quality of your video looks pretty good right now, but I don't know what it looks like at full DVD resolution. Don't know about the http://www.cinemacraft.com/eng/sp.html , but I would think that your HDV video from the AU1, that is HDV isn't it, would be fine down ressed (sp) to SD, without any other software.

As far as Dolby 5.1, that is surround sound five channel and I doubt you will need that at all. Capturing good audio with the best mikes and equipment you have is the most important thing. Just keep it clean and rich, with the proper volume. I would doubt that even one of your potential client's/purchaser's would ever watch your DVD in an environment with 5.1 digital theater sound, (five speakers). Good mono or stereo would be just fine.

I would make the best movie you can, use really nice and interactive
DVD menu's and such, allowing people to move around the DVD at will so they control their learning experience. You can burn your own DVD then have that duplicated, or buy duplicating machines for a very reasonable cost. You yourself can make hundreds of copies per day, at a reasonable cost.

If you wish to have another make your copies, that's fine too. Most will be able to make them from your DVD, but they will not have any copyright protection. For that they have to be from DLT master. Some may take a MiniDV tape of your finished project.

For regular DVD's, you can get them replicated for very low prices, or so they seem to me, but check with them for the format they require. For smaller amounts, like yours, they will just burn them to "DVD's. For really large amounts, hundreds of thousands, not like yours, they will be pressed from a master disk.

Sorry to be so long winded. To the point----Make the video with the best lighting, sound, enjoyable and entertaining content that you can, maybe hire a graphics artist to do covers and such, then have them replicated. Remember that shooting in HDV is fine but you will be selling them in regular SD or DV. You don't want to do HD DVD or Blu-ray, as your customers will not need that and won't have th players to play them on.

Good luck---Mike

[Eric Shepherd]

You can use a DVD+/-R as a Master disc too. I did it with DiscMakers last year with no problem. They can replicate (burn) or duplicate (press) them with either burned discs. I believe you can set protection bits when you burn DVD's yourself too, to prevent most people from copying them.

[Ricky Breslin]

Originally Posted by Eric Shepherd

I can't help with the DLT and that stuff, but I'm wondering why you're doing training videos in 5.1? Is your audience using 5.1 systems for playback? Do you 6 discreet channels of audio in your production through the mixdown process or are you splitting 2.0 into 5.1? If you use 2.0 audio, you can give the audio better sound quality AND give more bandwidth to the video track. Just a thought.

Hey Eric, thanks for the post. Here's how we do our audio. In Sony Sound Forge 9.0 they allow you with the new version to record directly to 6 channels using 5.1 surround. So it's great!

So my wife will record using a Rode NT1 mic that goes thru our TASCAM US-122 Pre-Amp straight to SF 9.0. We'll save the .Wav file and bring it into Premeir Pro 2.0.

In Premeire Pro 2.0 it recognizes are source 5.1 wav files from Sound Fourge as 6 seperate audio files and it sounds great.

When then make all of our levels good, etc and export using the SurCode Audio Encoder for Dolby Digital 5.1.

Make sense?

[Ricky Breslin]

Originally Posted by Eric Shepherd

You can use a DVD+/-R as a Master disc too. I did it with DiscMakers last year with no problem. They can replicate (burn) or duplicate (press) them with either burned discs. I believe you can set protection bits when you burn DVD's yourself too, to prevent most people from copying them.

Oh yea, we burn these by the thousands, we have have 30,000 in storage right now. We pay .94 per disk. They come shrink wrapped, etc. We do bar codes, ISBN numbers, the works!

We give our replicator -R's.

[Eric Shepherd]

Originally Posted by Ricky Breslin

So my wife will record using a Rode NT1 mic that goes thru our TASCAM US-122 Pre-Amp straight to SF 9.0. We'll save the .Wav file and bring it into Premeir Pro 2.0.

In Premeire Pro 2.0 it recognizes are source 5.1 wav files from Sound Fourge as 6 seperate audio files and it sounds great.

Make sense?

In a word, no. :)

Because it's a mono microphone, it's only giving you 1 channel of audio. You can pan it to any of the 5 channels, or to all, but it's 1 channel nonetheless.

Most people do not have 5.1 channel surround systems. It's useful if you're going for a certain effect, such as immersing your viewers in an environment. If you're in machine room, you could capture 4 channels of surround sound (front left and right, rear left and right) and split those to the those speakers. Then put your NT-1 signal into the center channel for dialogue. But putting dialogue into all 5 speakers will just sound weird to most people. On Surround systems, the center channel is 99% of the time the only place dialogue resides. On a 2.0 (stereo) system, dialogue is panned to the center (mono) with possibly stereo soundtrack/ambient sound.

Unless you're using a 4, 5 or 5.1 channel microphone setup, or spending a lot of time with environment mixing on a 5.1 channel editing system, you won't be using 5.1 sound. Just do it in stereo. You'll also save hard drive space as you'll be using 2 wave files, or maybe just one because your mic is a mono source), vs 6 wave files.

Here's what I would do:
* Record into the camera with the mic, as long as your signal path is clean, since you have one of the cleanest mics *ever* there ;)
* Capture into Premiere
* Add music in stereo on another track
* Export stereo audio as PCM for the best audio quality.

This is much simpler and gives you better sound quality.

The more channels you add, the more the audio is compressed to allow the bandwidth of reading more audio tracks off the disc at once.

You could do 2.0 channel AC-3 but that's still compressed. PCM is not, it's Wave quality (uncompressed). AC-3 is similar to MP3, it alters your audio to use less bandwidth. If your picture quality doesn't look so nice, you can do 2.0 AC-3 to give more bandwidth to it, but it should be fine really..

[Ricky Breslin]

Are you sure about the 5.1 surround not being legit? From what I understand, you're saying that our MONO audio file we record is basically being shared to 6 different speakers making it "less" effective in a sense.

My replicator REQUIRES AC3 files so that's why I bought the 300$ AC3 Encoder plug in from SurCode. So I could always take my sterio file and export it using the same program, no biggie.

But I have to admit, it's a freakin' drag dealing with the 6 wav files and making the levels all good, etc.

But on the other hand, it doesn't seem like it's really hurting anything by going the Dolby Digital route, we've burned a master and listened and it sounds great...

[Eric Shepherd]

I'm *positive*. Unless you're sending different things to the various channels, you're making a 5.1 channel *mono* recording.

If they require it, just give them 2.0 AC-3, which is stereo with no subwoofer (LFE) channel. You can also do 1.0 AC-3, but I would use stereo music tracks.

Definitely ditch the 6 track stuff, you're just wasting space and cpu power. It will sound fine either way. You would hear more of a difference between AC-3 and PCM if you had for example, a very nice symphonic recording, on a nice speaker system, in a nice listening environment. Speech can sound pretty good on AM radio, so it'll sound fine either way with this. :)

So the final verdict is 2.0 AC-3, microphone panned center, music in stereo. :)

And for leveling your signal, use a compressor on your speech, and stay away from any Normalizing. Just raise the clip levels if necessary. Normalizing just makes your peaks as loud as they can be and raises everything else up below that, but doesn't really smooth out and match your levels the way a Compressor will.