Outputting a large project to vhs
 

Hi,

I'm not sure if this fits in this forum, or should be in the Premiere 6.5 forum...but

I've used a PD170 to cover a conference, which resulted in a three hour long timeline in Premiere 6.5

My attempts to get this on DVD were hopeless, so I tried to output to VHS.

I've recorded the timeline onto MiniDV, however, I've run into difficulty on recording from camera to VCR.

Are there any particular settings on the camera I need to be aware of? I thought it would just be a matter of plugging the AV cables into the camera and VCR in, and then pressing record on the VCR and Play on the camera.

Am I missing anything here?

Tyler

Put camera in VCR mode. Check outputs by patching S-Video (or RCA) and RCA cables directly into TV set. If you've got that then you have to make sure your VCR is set to the correct inputs.

I've put close to 3 hours of video on a DVD. You just need to compress at very low data rate. I did this with a conference I shot with PD-170 also BTW. Given there's not much action at a typical conference and do cuts instead of dissolves, it might encode without serious pixalation. You could also make a two DVD set putting about 90 minutes on each.

You can get 3 hrs of a conference on DVD easily bu using the TMPG Pro software.

It makes DVD compression settings a snap and the quality is great.

If belongs in the DVD or Premiere Forum.

While you could put three hours on a single layer 4.7 GB DVD, I highly doubt the quality would be "great" with the high compression required to fit that much video in the space available.

ok, so im doing a wedding dvd set soon.

How much should I put on one dvd wanting to keep the quality at its highest?


Thanks
Si

I just put 6.5 hours on a single DVD for a client. It was talking head presentations. Granted, they went in knowing that that much on a DVD would look like crap, so they weren't surprised. But using two pass-VBR I was able to fit it all on with a bit rate average of 1.3 kbps.

If your client knows the limitations of putting that much on a single DVD, then I think you should be fine. The only time the compression really rears its ugly head is during a fade out or extreme motion.

Please explain something to me. Are you talking about putting a DVD into a set-top player and playing 6.5 hours of video, or are you talking about puting 6.5 hours of video on one DVD that has to be downloaded to a computer and played at low resolution?

I believe this discussion is talking about a normal set-top DVD, right?

Confused

Bitrate calculator
 

Here's the link to a simple to use online bitrate calculator: http://www.videohelp.com/calc.htm

FYI: 4 mbps is considered low quality, 6 mbps is medium, while 8 mbps is considered high quality. Hollywood DVDs are usually encoded somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 mbps. Bitrate is only one of the factors that determine quality - the other big factor is the encoder software.

It’s best to use the highest quality setting when making a DVD and that can top out to about 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes.

That is based on CBR. A good encoder using VBR dual pass and Dolby Digital can be highest quality up to about 1.5 hrs using 8500kbps peak. Content also matters and low motion video can go longer.

Folks that make the DVDs that get glassmaster for Hollywood analyze the material can create a custom compression of the material.