I have the opportunity to borrow a Canon VIXIA HV30 upon occasion. Recently I shot my first footage with it and imported it into the Premiere timeline. (I have CS 2 and CS 3.2 to work with). PP recognizes it as a MPEG file however it is fairly huge and won’t fit unto a dvd in its current state. My goals are to achieve the following:

1) Preserve quality to the fullest extent possible.
2) If/as necessary down converting/exporting either to an SD MPEG-2 or a DV-AVI file.
3) Slightly edit and cut out a small portion of the video while on the timeline.
4) Make a MPEG-2 file that will fit on a standard 4.7 Gig DVD.

Points 2+3 are my main point of perplexity and concern.

For the end result I can settle for:
a) A letterboxed SD version that’s fits on a std dvd.
b) I’d rather have a 4:3 version if the quality loss wasn’t appreciable.

Can I cut out parts from the MPEG file while on the timeline like I could with a normal .avi file and resave the project? Of course then the file size issue still exists.

If I simply export from the timeline to dv-avi the resulting movie may look bad.

Alternatively what’s the best possible workflow to down convert with the option of resizing the video from 16:9 to 4:3?

I think important elements would include the project & file export settings, etc.

How do you all think I should approach this mission as working with HD video with (in) Premiere is pretty much new to me at this stage as all of my background has been with standard avi files with my Canon Gl-2’s. What’s my best solution given the above?

Looking forward to learning, executing and hearing what needs to be stated. Yes, nothing is easy. Need to connect the dots as it were one by one.

Thanks!

Definitely a Noobie (but hopefully just in the very near term)

Use CS3, it'll be easier.

Drop the footage onto the timeline and cut out the bits you don't need. No transitions. Just cut.

Export to Encore. Once there, you can author a DVD and a BD at the same time. Build the disk like you would normally (use HD menus since they'll work on the DVD too) and create the DVD. Remember to convert the fields from upper first to lower first, or go progressive which is probably the simplest.

Then go back and create a "BD Image" on your hard drive. Save that until you have access to a BD burner and player. Then you can make a disk with the best quality.

Tripp,

How to I either resize, down convert to SD or scale down the files to fit into a single layer dvd?

My main HD clip alone is about 7 Gigs in MPEG/.m2t format?

If I shave off a couple of minutes off of the timeline it still will be way to big to fit on a dvd.

I have a blue ray player but that's it so DVD is my only option right now.

Interested to hear you thoughts on that aspect of this process.

Thanks for your response.

Bruce