Unless you're exporting an uncompressed .avi from PP, you're losing quality. If you have CSx Production Premium, you can export to Encore directly from PP, omitting the step where you go back to .avi. I don't know if you can do this with the standalone version of PP and Encore.

That should improve your quality.

As Tripp stated, skip the intermediary file. In Premiere, use File > Export > Encore for a direct MPEG-2 encode and burn. You can change the settings for the encode - I prefer CBR encoding, and for anything 90 minutes or under, CBR 6.0 should provide a good image. The default setting may not be giving you optimal quality.

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor

Mixing 24f and 60i clips on 1 DVD (encore CS3)
 

I am making a Bonus DVD for my films, and the clips vary from being filmed in 60i and 24f (canon). When I burn the dvd the 60i stuff looks great, the 24 is all jumpy and ugly. How can I get both frame rates to look right? Thanks. I am using Encore CS3

NTSC DVDs are natively 29.97. DVD players sense a flag set on the disk to playback 24p, but even that is written in 29.97. If you edit in Premier Pro, output via AME and author in Encore, this is all pretty invisible to you.

Keep you editor project settings the same for all segments. If the main feature is 29.97 use that. In your editor, interpret the 24f footage to the project's settings. That should get the pulldown right. If I understand what you are doing correctly, that should square you away.

I can confirm this. I use sony vegas 8.0 Pro. It comes with DVD architect 5.0 pro. Which can author a DVD in DDP 1.0, DDP 2.0 and DDP 2.10. It also has the ability to author Blu Ray which is pretty nifty. I would recommend using a trial version. The trial versions of such software is fully functional for 30 days I believe. I think the going rate for the package now is $549. And in case you were wondering, it can author Blu-Ray content to DVD 5 pr DVD 9 as well. There are tons of features, I won't use anything else.

If I have a 29.97 setting project and import 24 fps video, it seems to play fine. However if I interpret the footage as 29.97 it speeds up. So should I just put it on the 29.97 timeline as a 24 video, and then export? If so what export settings should I use? I am going nuts trying all different combos and its still not working

If you place a 24 fps video on a 29.97 fps timeline, it will add frames so that it plays back at the correct speed. If you Interpret the footage as 29.97, you are telling it that it doesn't need to do this conversion, and it will play it back at 24 fps on a 29.97 fps timeline, which will cause it to speed up.

If you have 24 fps footage, keep it on a 24 fps timeline, and encode it as 24p. It will actually be encoded as 29.97 but with the progressive flag which converts it back to 24p on the fly as the player plays it back (if the player supports progressive).

EDIT: I just realized you have both formats on the same timeline. This does create a complication. You must convert one of them to the other format BEFORE editing or else it can get messy. All clips need to be consistent with the framerate. By rendering it out separately before editing, you have more control over the frame blending of the conversion.

I am currently trying to figure out the best (highest quality) Encore workflow.

1. Edit footage in Final Cut Pro
2. Export finished timeline from Final Cut Pro (to a HD .mov file)

Choice (please give some feedback on your workflow)

3-1 Use Adobe Media Encoder to transcode to a DVD compatible format (which one is best?)
3-2 Use Apple's compressor to transcode to a DVD compatible format

What will generate the highest quality DVD discs? I shoot in HDV format so I need to downconvert. I own FCS, CS4, Sorenson Squeeze and MPEG Streamclip.

I exported .m2v files with Media Encoder but now Encore is transcoding the files. Not sure why it is doing that. I don't want to lose quality by double transcoding/encoding.