Good HDV to DVD solution.
 

hi everyone,

I was very disappointed with the results made by PPro 2 when I was exporting my HDV production to DVD. But I've found a good way to easily export it without losing too much quality (and without the need of cineform). You can export your sequence to MPEG2 files (let say 25mbps) in adobe media encoder and load it in vegas for transcoding to DVD architect widescreen templates(with "best" settings). Just go in architect and create your DVD. The HDV to DV conversion in Vegas is much better than the one in PPRO 2. If you'd like to keep your HDV video, you can export in PPRO to mpeg2 with 15mbps which is almost as good as 25, and then burn it to double layers DVD. I can fit my wedding video on 2 double layer disks and give it to my clients for playback on their computer (for now since we don't have access to HD-DVD or Blu-Ray burners).

More general question:
Are you aware of a documented comparison about MPEG2 encoders ( similar to what has been done by the Russians for various MPEG4, comparing PSNRs, etc..)

The rumors" are that Canopus Procoder and TMPGenc are the best , but what kind of evidence do we have ? Any one aware of which encode Vegas uses ?

I belive Vegas uses the Main Concept encoder. That is the same as Adobe uses, but I agree, the output from Vegas looks much better then PPro.

Jean - How or where along the workflow do you do your editing without Cineform? Directly on the raw HDV mpeg2 clips? How powerful a computer do you need for that? Thanks - PK

Might it just be possible that you are not using the same bitrate settings ?

My workflow is :

Export the timeline to Windows AVI file and then encode it with TMPGenc. Finally, put the mpeg2 file in any authoring software to get the DVD folder.

The picture quality is much much better than that encoded by the Mainconcept encoder come with Vegas or Premiere.

If I dont have Aspect HD, can I still export my native HDV project to an HD AVI file or only DV avi?? other question, should I export with lower or top field first? And if I want to go progressive (progressive DVD), should I de-interlace when creating the AVI file or when encoding to MPEG.

Is this normal?
 

Ok I tried the solutions above and when exporting 6 minutes of HDV to WM-HDV at 7mbps with 384k 2 chan audio, 1 pass cbr from Premier Pro 2.0's Encoder, it took 1 hour and 36 minutes to export a 6 minute project. Is this normal, is this what others are finding?

Also I haven't been able to export using Adobe Encoder to MPG2 without it crashing after about 25%, but this one as well takes about 1 hour.

All this on a very new and very fast machine. Any help would be nice as I have yet to be able to turn out a nice project other than downconverting from HDV to SD.

Miguel