Not tried this yet, but wondering what export option one would select in Premiere to get the best file suitable for use in authoring Blu-ray (Adobe Encore). I'll be using Aspect or Prospect (not decided yet)

I realise Premiere has export modes for this workflow, but I heard they are not good for quality/buggy.

Also, I want to try encoding SD from HD timeline in an external application (Procoder 3), what export settings do I need to get a suitable input file. Is the added stage worth it in quality or does straight export from premiere with cineform reduced frame size work just as well.


Thanking you in advance.

I haven't tried this yet either, but I would think the best would be to export to CFHD-AVI and then pull that file into your authoring SW for writing to BD.

And for the downscaling SD option I think in another thread David recommends just changing the frame size and PAR in the CFHD-AVI export.

I've tried a variety of approaches to downconversion of CFHD to DVD. I've gotten the best looking DVDs using Adobe Premiere Export Movie of CFHD to CFDV 480i.avi. Then using Procoder3 to transcode the CFDV.avi to "mastering quality" mpeg2.m2v. Depending on my source material, I find that using the ProCoder3 Gamma Adjustment is very effective for fine tuning the "look" of the final DVD images. I will often use the Procoder3 color adjustment to boost the color saturation a little as well.
If you have a progressive scan DVD player, you can get terrific DVD images by exporting the CFHD to non interlaced CFDV 480.avi. The Cineform downconversion does a good job of deinterlacing. Then transcode to non interlaced mpeg2.m2v with ProCoder.
The fairly new, inexpensive HDMI "upscaling" DVD players will output your 480 pix DVD as 720 or 1080 to an HDTV. This works remarkably well. Using the above workflows, your DVD can look like a hardware encoded Hollywood production with these "upscaling" players.

Hello can you clarify what you mean by "Adobe Premiere Export Movie of CFHD to CFDV 480i.avi"

Do you mean you select HDexport and change the frame size to DVD? Is CFDV a setting?

Also "If you have a progressive scan DVD player, you can get terrific DVD images by exporting the CFHD to non interlaced CFDV 480.avi. "
What settings in premiere do that?

Thank you

Assuming you are in a Cineform 1080i Premiere project, select File> Export> Movie. Click on Settings. This will bring up the export window with the Cineform "CFHD" encoder selected. Within the settings, change the frame size to 480x720, PAR 1.2, in the rendering window select the field dominance (upper first or lower first), or select for non interlaced. The resulting 480 .avi file is often referred to as CFDV (720x480) as contrasted to CFHD (1080x1440).
If you want to produce a progressive DVD, select "non interlaced" in the export movie settings window- in the "rendering" window. This will generate a CFDV 480p.avi file. When you transcode to mpeg2 in ProCoder3, select "non interlaced" on the target parameter page. This will produce a progressive mpeg2 DVD file that you then author and burn- but the DVD will only play on "progressive scan" enabled DVD players

Assuming you are in a Cineform 1080i Premiere project, select File> Export> Movie. Click on Settings. This will bring up the export window with the Cineform "CFHD" encoder selected. Within the settings, change the frame size to 480x720, PAR 1.2, in the rendering window select the field dominance (upper first or lower first), or select for non interlaced. The resulting 480 .avi file is often referred to as CFDV (720x480) as contrasted to CFHD (1080x1440).
If you want to produce a progressive DVD, select "non interlaced" in the export movie settings window- in the "rendering" window. This will generate a CFDV 480p.avi file. When you transcode to mpeg2 in ProCoder3, select "non interlaced" on the target parameter page. This will produce a progressive mpeg2 DVD file that you then author and burn- but the DVD will only play on "progressive scan" enabled DVD players



thanks....

Curious why not encode directly with Procoder from inside Premiere timeline, why go through extra stage of creating CFDV first?

I've tried it all those different ways.
Procoder will definitely encode directly from CFHD 1080i.avi to mepg2.m2v, but the final DVD images look softer to me than using Cineform to do the downconversion to 480i.
A lot of it depends on how the DVD is displayed. If you are watching the DVD on a 480i CRT TV, it all looks fine with just about any workflow. Where the challenge lies is when the 480 pix DVD is played onto a 720 HDTV, which is fast becoming the norm, in the U.S. anyway. When you spread your software encoded 480pix DVD out to a 720 pix monitor, the image looks quite soft. The various workflows I have described seem to me to improve on this softness, some more than others.

In my view, the high standard for DVD imagery on an HDTV monitor is hardware encoded HD footage- e.g. a Hollywood movie DVD.
The closest I have come to achieving that standard with software encoding and a simple workflow is the above described progressive workflow played on an inexpensive ($80) Sony HDMI "upscaling" DVD player.

David, any thoughts on the Blu-Ray portion of this discussion? Just export to CFHD-AVI and let Encore do the rest for BD? Or is there a better way?

And related to this: In exporting to CFHD-AVI, what's the difference between High HD and High HD Optimized? Finally, should we go from CFHD-AVI to Encore or CFHD-AVI -> Cineform M2T -> Encore? Does it matter?

David, David or Jake -- any thoughts on this?

Never go to M2T first. Stay as CineForm AVI as long as possible. High (classic format used on Dust to Glory) and High Optimized (slightly better for 1080p.)

So CFHD-AVI straight to Encore for BD is best? Let Encore do everything else?

Yes. That way you can test the AVI, so you know it is good, and if anything goes wrong after that you can blame Encore. :)

Sounds good and, most importantly, easy.

Thanks David.

So i finished a project that i filmed on hdv, pal dv and ntsc dv.
I am exporting from Premiere Pro 2.0 a Cineform HD NTSC .avi progressive file.
The fields look ok, but on the right side of the screen, there is a weird vertical line (2 or 3 pixels thick) show on the avi file aswell as on the dvd built in Encore.

I am also having issues (after installing Cineform's Prospect HD) importing a Premiere pro project (or copy and pasting clips from PP's timeline) into After Effects.
Before i use to copy the clip in the timeline, jump to AE and paste it. Now, the clip apears in AE, but the portion of the clip is not the right one, the timecode is off or something, any solutions for this?

Thanks

Just to close the loop on the BD part of this, FWIW--

Following David's instructions above resulted in a flawless BD in the first try. Played perfect on the PS3, which should put to rest any rumors about BDMV not playing on PS3s for now.

If anyone is still reading this thread......and who has experience in burning progressive DVD-Rs, I'd be interested in your experience in playing such progressive DVDs on "non-progressive" DVD players. The reason I ask is three fold. First, someone above who certainly appeared to be well experienced and well informed said, "but the DVD [a progressive written DVD] will only play on 'progressive scan' enabled DVD players". Second, I have been burning only progressive scan DVDs for all clients for several months now, and the percentage of complaints I've been receiving about non-compatibility with their players has not increased over when I was producing only interlace format DVDs - and in connection with this, I was testing my DVD-R production for a while (I quit, because I always got the same results! - duh)) on two "non-progressive" players, one switchable, and two progressive units (in the guise of BD and HD-DVD) and all the progressive DVDs played on all the players except one interlaced format player. Third, which naturally leads me to the third query, dear reader - WHAT AM I MISSING - is this all an accident, and am I seriously missing the point, and succeeding in spite of myself?

By the way, I just purchased an EX-1, specifically to work only (from start to finish) in progressive, and now that Sony has evidently repaired a back focus issue as well as can be for the moment, my next heavy experimentation will be testing out various formats such as 1080 30p, 1080 24p, 720 60p, etc. to see what might give the best overall appearance in primary subjects with only moderate speed movement (to avoid the rolling shutter issue) - I suspect, from what I've read elsewhere that my favorite format will be 720 60p.

William,

While I strong recommend producing DVD from progressive sources, particularly 24p, there is no such thing as a progressive only DVD. DVD are ALL interlaced, and 24p sources are encoded to DVD with 3-2 pulldown (24 over 60i -- this is how features are produced.) This is why the customer complaints for compatibility have not increased with you progressive source, you are always delivering 60i. The advantage of 24p in 60i, is it widely compatible for interlaced and progressive presentation. All a progressive scan DVD player is doing is looking for the 24p cadence and reconstructing the full frames on progressive outputs (improving the resolution on HD screens.)