I've searched and read several very helpful posts about Premiere's encoding and alternatives to it, and want to make sure I have my brain around the concept. I've put together a bunch of old standard def family footage, and am about to output my first DVD (family stuff) using Premiere. Hearing of Premiere's poor DVD encoding, I've searched various posts in these forums for alternatives and they seem to come down to two suggestions more often than not:

OPTION 1
Export dv avi from Premiere, then import that file into Encore and let Encore do the final rendering.


OPTION 2
Frameserve from Premiere to an external encoder, which will encode to mpeg2. Import that mpeg2 into Encore.


I apologize if my terminology or understanding is off, but I have a few questions:

1) Have I accurately summarized my two choices, before I dive into this?

2) Is there a consensus on which option is better, or does that really depend on the external encoder in Option 2?

3) Does option 1 add in an extra step of compression, or since the native video is DV that doesn't matter?


Thank you in advance for any pointers. Just searching these forums has really helped shorten my learning curve.

There are actually several options. And depending upon what version of Premiere you have, it doesn't do a bad job at all.

If you have CS3 the best option is to simply "Export to Encore." No muss, no fuss, and it comes out great. I do it with HDV footage and it comes out near-HD quality.

Prior versions do have a problem with Adobe Media Encoder so your option 2 is probably the best choice, but again there are other options.

Thanks Adam. I did try Option 2 last night, but haven't finished up in Encore yet, so don't know the results. By all reports though, it should turn out pretty well.