What is the best method for gettting Cineform downscaled HD AVI >SD file for Encore?

Is it worth it to introduce Procoder 3 to the Cineform AVI first prior to Encore?
Or, how about exporting directly from the timeline using Cinema Craft Encoder SP2 (this is the best encoder right?)

- or just take the cineform file into Encore and let it do it's thing?


Thanks!.. Sorry I've not got time to test all the options myself.

As unlikely as it sounds, I've found the simplest way also provides the best results. I "Export to Encore" and then tweak the defaults to get the highest quality possible. I've never had a bad burn this way and the results are shockingly good -- near HD on my 65" screen.

Another way is to render out a single CFHD-AVI of the whole project and drag that into Encore, but I had problems with really bad wavy vertical lines in the DVD with high-motion scenes -- probably set the bit-rate too high.

This conflicts with the conventional wisdom that the best results are obtained by running your files through ten different programs for rendering, transcoding, downsizing, frameserving and whatnot, but it works for me. Note that I believe this provides good results for versions CS3 and later -- there was a lot of talk about Adobe Media Encoder (which I assume this process uses) being badly broken in prior versions.

The best way I have found is to render out an HD master, and then downconvert in AE with the Field Renderer on, with pulldown added if your master is 24p, directly to MPEG2. Once you have clean downconvert, the MainConcept MPEG encoder in Adobe works fine.

The "best" Cineform method working for me is described here: http://supportcenteronline.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=614 go to-Timeline export and media creation-Premiere Pro-How do I create a DVD....).
Choose the relevant NTSC/PAL parameters.
Now I have a great looking SD master and I am converting to mpeg2 with Procoder2 or Sorenson Squeeze 5.

I used to use the above workflow (create an SD .avi intermediate file) when editing HDV CF.avi with 1.33 par.
Since i have been shooting full raster square pix HD, and editing in CF 1920x1080 sq. pix, my experience is the same as Adam's. I can code m2v right off of the timeline, or off of a master CFHD.avi of the final movie, with AME or Procoder, import to Encore, author & burn.
Viewed on HDTV with upscaling DVD player the images look near HD. It's really eliminated a lot of headache and extra work for me.

For us, since we're editing and outputting 1920x1080p at 30fps for our CFHD masters, we have done okay using Adobe Media Encoder for output to mpg's at the highest settings and as progressive. We did slightly better with TMPGEnc 4, but are without internet for time being, so it's totally useless. Stupid company...

For an update on this, I'll point you to David Newman's blog and a recent entry he did on getting the best quality DVD exports using PPro. It's the top entry in the blog: CineForm Insider (http://cineform.blogspot.com/).