Hey,

I had a few questions as I will need to take some of my completed productions in HD and burn them to SD DVD. I'm working with PP2.0 and using the Cineform HD codec. I've read endless threads on this and learned lots but still have some questions. [I will be taking my final encoded m2v and wav file's to Adobe Encore to author the DVD]

When I take my CFHD avi file to TMPGEnc and encode, the final video it turns out just as black video. I'm not sure why this is happening. I'm using the following settings:
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/9084/untitledew6.jpg

( Is this going to give me optimal SD video quality? I'm willing to try anything, Does TMPGEnc use the Lancosz3 resize? )

I tried using Virtual Dub to do the resize, but when I import the avi file the aspect ratio is wrong, So I resized anyway to 720x480 and the picture fills the whole frame there are no black bars to make it the correct ratio.

I'm struggling for a optimal method yet keep running into dilema's each way I go, hopefully somebody can shed some light.

Julian, 16x9 video is still 720x480... just with a different pixel aspect ratio; while a good old TV screen has 0.9 for pixel aspect ratio, wide screen has 1.2.

So go ahead and resize with VDub at 720x480 and don't worry about the size; just make sure you select 16x9 in Tsunami (aka TMPGEnc) when you encode to mpeg2.

As far as black video, the most common cause is a missing codec. I hope this helps,

Thanks Ervin.

I think your solution may work although doesn't that defeat the purpose of using Vdub to resize if its just going to be resized in TMPGEnc? Should I be resizing in Vdub to 854x480 or 720x480.
Also when I export from vdub which codec should I export to [Huffyuv? frameserving (dont know how this works with TMPGEnc) or uncompressed?].

As for the missing video codec I dont understand as I have the CFHD installed, and dont know why TMPGEnc can't read it. Although I suppose I shouldn't have these problems if I'll be encoding from whatever format I export from Vdub.

Lastly, are all my settings correct for the m2v TMPGEnc encode (Do I select 8 bit since my original footage was captured in 8bit)?

Resize to 720x480 in VirtualDub (otherwise TMPGEnc will have resize again, which will degrade quality). Encoding using Huffyuv from VirtualDub should work well. If disk space is an issue, you can use a DV codec. For best quality MPEG encoding with TMPGEnc, select "Highest quality (very slow)" for "Motion search precision."

I ran into a batch of black video when frameserving from Premiere to Tmpgenc 4 express. I discovered that I had to dump the whole project into a new sequence just for output. Don't know, but I guess the new sequence makes Premiere render more completely for the serve.

I tried resizing in Virtualdub, - worked fine, but ended up with the same results resizing in Tmpgenc and saves a step. Just pick the standard DVD output template and it resizes fine. ( You can choose Lancosz3 resizing in the presets). You have to tell Tmpgenc to output the separate audio and video streams that Encore likes and when frameserving fill in the aspect ratio of the orignal and click "lower field first" on the input settings. I made a couple of real "jerky" DVDs forgetting to do that. Normally, Tmpgenc knows what the settings should be but when frameserving you have to tell it.

I don't do a lot of heavy-duty editing, just titles, cuts, and dissolves so I passed on Cineform. Everything works fine, great quality, but I HAVE to frameserve to eliminate monster output files from Premiere.

Ok, just encoding to HuffyUV in vdub using the re-size filter and I put a sharpness filter on set at 10. Then encoded in TMPGEnc this method worked well. I wonder the difference the sharpness filter makes I'm gonna try an encode at max and post results.

How can I use frameserving from vdub to tmpgenc?

This explains how to use VirtualDub as a frameserver:

http://www.videohelp.com/virtualdubframeserve.htm