what is your system config?
 

I can't recall my system having taked exceptionally long to process anything through TMPGEnc. My current system is still an old Dell dual processor XEON workstation (3.06 Ghz). I think TMPGEnc takes advantage of multiprocessors or multicore's, so What type of CPU are you using ?

By the way Don, I have done them as you suggested and yes, it did give good output. I was only using the interlaced output for the greatest player/TV compatibility (Brazil). Don't really know if the progressive output would be a prob, but I usually aim for the least common denominator...

In my opinion, better than HDV direct to DVD.

At least one person here says exporting directly from HDV to DVD using premiere (rather than encore), works great. That may be the case. I personally don't require a lot more menu fuctionality than premiere provides at least for current projects, so that definitely sounds like the best way to me. Do you think this will result in lower quality than going the TMPG route then exporting from encore? Will that provide better DVD results?

The cineform aspect import, does that actually improve the footage? Dang, $400 on EBay for that, as much as the software itself. Is it necessary for top quality??? That's kind of rediculous if so. Then another $99 if you want to build out big menus in encore.

I guess that your old dual XEON is a bit faster then my old AMD64x2 4200 four drive, 2gig, 7950gt setup.

I do tend to select all the 'best' options. Maybe I need to go for more basic settings.

whatever suits your needs...
 

One easy way for you to find out, is to download the Cineform Aspect trial, use it and compare your output. For simple stuff, if direct output works for you, go for it!

Our needs are a little higher, so we tend to squeeze everything we can from what we can afford. We're thinking of taking the HDMI camera output from one of our Sony's (HVR-V1U) directly through a Blackmagic Intensity card into a PC for that very reason. Uncompressed is uncompressed, and with Aspect, we're flying high! We'd like to save our master's as high quality HD's, then downrez for current needs. That way, we've future-proofed our long-term productions and could probably even use them on Brazil's soon-to-come digital TV system (ISDB-T) if the opportunity ever appeared...

So you think the HDMI output will edit just like SD on your system using Aspect? Do you plan on storing the HD Masters on tape (export back out to camera or deck) or on hard drive space (that would be a lot of space!).

Also, do you think one of these blackmajic style cards would work on a lap top? I already have an nvidia card in there and I am assuming... another card would not work...

Cheers,
Michael

new system
 

Actually, It'd probably choke and die if I try to stuff uncompressed input into my old dual XEON, even with the Aspect codec. I'm having a friend build a new system for me for this HD project that can easily handle it.

As to the storage medium, I'm waiting for Blu-ray/HD DVD thing to sort itself out and then will buy the biggest capacity disk burner available. That will probably be around 50 GB since I can't wait very much longer. That should be enough space for the Cineform-encoded media and production stuff. HDDs is always an option as well. 120 GB drives are very cheap but don't lend themselves well to shipping for duplication/distribution. Since these are long term projects, initially we'll use regular letter-boxed DVD for distribution and reserve the HD original content for later.

As to the Intensity card and HDMI ingest, I've been grinding that around in my nutshell for a few weeks. I have a friend who works with very high end video for industry/military/gov and I'm thinking of asking him how hard it'd be to put together an embedded portable system just for ingest to an HDD in field, using a board with one slot system for the BM board. I would also have to use the licensed codec from Cineform. It would not need anything else other than firewire i/o to offload the data, plus someway to know how much space is available on the HDD. One single fast little HDD in it could easily handle that i/o.

I'm really needing something smaller for crane/dolly field work using the V1, and don't want to use compressed input if I can do better.

Anybody interested in something like that? He might actually make something if there were enough people showing interest. What would YOU pay for something like that if interested?

If I'm not mistaking, there is a thread some place around here, a guy was asking about this kind of a system he was planning on manufacturing. Come to think, it might have been about uncompressed HD...

The last hurdle.
 

Quick question...

If you encode your movie in TMPGEnc, build your DVD menu in Encore, import your movie into Encore as an asset and burn your DVD with Encore, will Encore re-encode your mpg that you made with TMPGEnc?

If is does, kind of defeats the purpose of using TMPGEnc.

Anyway to get Encore to NOT re-encode your movie?

no re-encode
 

No, it does not re-encode a MPG as it is already in the format Encore needs. And yes, it would defeat our purpose if it did that!

If it wasn't for the menus, DVD structure etc, I would do them directly as progressive 720 DVD's from the PP timeline...but that is not the case. It seems much better to control exactly what is going to be shown, and that can only be done with menus and all on a DVD if your video is already to go when you import it into Encore.

We always preview it before hand in exactly the format we'll be using on the DVD. It's all about control, control, control....if you want to preserve quality.

Thanks Stephen! I entirely agree about the need for control. I just love to add easter eggs to my DVDs. Now if only I could figure out a way to make accessing those easter eggs more intricate by pressing a code on the remote instead of simply pressing up and down until they are highlighted.