HDV to DVD HIGH QUALITY

[Carl Middleton]

I'm using the Nero 6 Suite.... came with my computer. :D

[Brian Brown]

Originally Posted by Denny Gay

I am interested in trying this. So if i understand correctlly, Should you render an HD project in Premiere, out to 1440x1080. Then import that into AE in a DV comp and scale down to 45%. And from here render from AE to 480,standard def, ???

A bit late on this, I know.

FWIW, you don't have to render an intermediate out of PPro. You can import the Premiere file into AE and skip that render and potential generation loss. That is, assuming you have CS3. AE versions prior to CS3 didn't work so well with the long-GOP stuff.

HTH,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions

[Mike McCarthy]

Originally Posted by Brian Brown

A bit late on this, I know.

FWIW, you don't have to render an intermediate out of PPro. You can import the Premiere file into AE and skip that render and potential generation loss. That is, assuming you have CS3. AE versions prior to CS3 didn't work so well with the long-GOP stuff.

HTH,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions

Be advised that many Premiere features do not transfer over when you import a Premiere project into AE. Things like titles, synthetic elements, and effects, can all cause issues. Check your project carefully after you import it to AE, or QC your file after export, but don't necessarily EXPECT it to work fine. Also, the render out of Premiere Pro shouldn't be in the HDV codec. Anything including uncompressed would be better than that, in case that wasn't obvious.

[Ger Griffin]

hey guys,
just tackling this at the moment myself.
Apart from the audio sync issues associated with the hdv project in premiere pro 2 this seems to be the only other significant issue with editing hdv.
Mike, thanks for the advise, Could you be a bit more specific as to what filetype & how i should be outputting the hdv project prom pp2. you say it shouln't be in the hdv codec, even uncompressed would do. surely this filesize would be huge, no? what alternative options are there?

[Mike McCarthy]

I use Cineform for things like that, or Matrox's codecs since I have access to an AXIO. HD MPEG would work directly out of stock PremierePro, as would free codecs like HuffYUV, which is about half the size of Uncompressed.

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by Marcelo Lima

I imported on NERO and he gave me high quality file.. Great!!

the next challenge is do the same with Blackmagic intensity pro MJPEG video...


Thank you all for help me...

Usa CF, vale a pena... (Use CF, it's worth it!)

[Dave Mody]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarthy

Dan, there are two things you can do to speed up that workflow. Instead of making an HDV comp, import the footage directly into the DV size comp and scale to 45%. It will save one step in each frame render, especially if you are interlacing the output. Also, saving directly to MPEG2 in AE has few disadvantages. You can't do 2-Pass VBR, but I have done many tests and seen no significant improvement in 2 Pass. I used to do everything in 2 pass, blindly accepting that it MUST be better, but on closer examiniation, I have not found that to be true. Your uncompressed intermediate file to Encore will have no loss of quality, but the total processing time will be a bit longer.

Mike,
The AE help file says the following methods:

Nest the composition Create a new composition at the smaller dimensions, and nest the large composition inside it. For example, if you create a 640 x 480 composition, place it in a 320 x 240 composition. Use the Fit To Comp command to scale the composition to fit the new smaller composition size: Press Ctrl+Alt+F (Windows) or Command+Option+F (Mac OS), and then collapse transformations by choosing Layer > Switches > Collapse. The resulting composition rendered at full resolution and best quality will have excellent image quality, better than if you had rendered using a reduced resolution.

Stretch the composition This method produces the highest quality reduced-size movie but is slower than nesting. For example, if you create a 640 x 480 composition and render it at full resolution, you can set the stretch value in the Output Module Settings dialog box to 50% to create a 320 x 240 movie. For a composition rendered at full resolution, the image quality is excellent when the Stretch Quality is set to High.
Note: Do not use stretching to change the vertical dimensions of a movie when field rendering is on. Stretching vertically mixes the field order, which distorts motion. Use either cropping or composition nesting if you need to vertically resize a field-rendered movie.

The nested composition is what Dan Wilder was recommending. I'm confused about the note on when not to use the Stretch Composition method because I'm not sure what field rendering is.

Mike, do you have any comments on these two methods?

In creating the MPEG2 file, what "quality" (Premiere defaults to 3, AE to 4) and what data rate settings do you use?

My first experiment with AE was to create a DV composition, import my 'uncompressed' rendered premiere file. Drop it into the DV composition and set the scaling to 34% (puts black bars across top and bottom). I wasn't too happy with the image quality, so now I've added a 'sharpening' filter set at 20. Does anyone else use a sharpening filter?

Dave