I am desperate... 720P to DVD. The quality is really bad

[Jordan Hamelin]

Hi everyone,

I just finished a 1 hour DVD, I did the menu and everything also. Theirs around 40 hours of work or even more on it. I have to release it next week and today I did the first test on my TV and it came out horrible.

Here's what I did :

720p timeline > Adobe Media Encoder > Mpeg DVD (16:9)

The footage that was before very clean is now horrible. I know that everyone have this problem, ive been looking for hours on the forum and on google but I cant find a solution. If somone could help me please !!!!

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

you need to be more specific. e.g.

1. Did you use Encore to make your menus? If yes, then you should have exported to Encore from Premiere
2. Color spaces. HD has a color space of HDTV Rec09 and DVD has either NTSC/PAL and the colors come out differently. If you are finishing your product on After Effects, you can change the color space to see what your footage will look like on different profiles. I hope you have a good monitor that is calibrated.
3. What do you mean by 'clean' and 'horrible'? Is it the colors, pixelation, what?

[Jordan Hamelin]

Yes I did my Menus on Encore, i am on NTSC and what i mean by "horrible" is that it came out very pixeled

[George Kilroy]

I regularly shoot 720p and edit in Premiere then dynamic link from Premiere to Encore. I let Encore take care of the transcoding and it works fine. Encore will workout the best/highest data rate for the space available on the disc.

The resulting DVD is fine, obviously it's going to look different to the original 720 footage as DVD is SD quality only but it never looks 'horrible'. I work in PAL-land but I can't see why NTSC should be any more of a problem.

If you are using Media Encoder what settings are you using for your MPEG2?

[Jordan Hamelin]

I cannot use dynamic link (well im not sure for premier to encore...) because I already tried from AE to Premiere and it was saying that I cant because. I am currently tring and it seems to work....

when i was on media encoder the setting were :

Format : MPEG 2 DVD
NTSC, 720x480,
29.,27 fps non-drome frame (i also tried in drop frame),
Field Order : none (Progressive),
Widescreen 16:9


Thanks for the reply btw !!!



EDIT : When i dynamic link my sequence from premier to encore, it say encode failed when I burn the DVD

[Randall Leong]

It sounds like you're trying to author 480p30 video (or more specifically, 720p30 video that's been downconverted to 480p30) directly onto DVD without interlacing it first. Remember, DVD-Video is strictly a 480i format in NTSC countries.

Unfortunately, DVD-Video does not support true progressive-scan video at all. The 29.97 fps video must be interlaced before authoring onto DVD. "Progressive" encoding simply re-encodes 23.976 fps progressive-scan video into 59.94-field-per-second interlaced video onto which a 2-3 (or 3-2) pulldown flag is applied.

You cannot get around this. You're trying to author progressive-scan video footage directly onto DVD - something that the DVD-Video standard clearly does not allow. The purpose of the "Progressive Scan" feature on recent DVD players is for compatibility with non-interlaced display equipment. The player's circuitry deinterlaces interlaced input, and then sends it through the component outs.

I have done conversions from 720p to DVD-Video. But I knew that the DVD-Video standard does not allow true progressive-scan authoring, so I had to convert 720p to 480i (NTSC) before authoring onto DVD.

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Originally Posted by Jordan Hamelin

I cannot use dynamic link (well im not sure for premier to encore...) because I already tried from AE to Premiere and it was saying that I cant because. I am currently tring and it seems to work....When i dynamic link my sequence from premier to encore, it say encode failed when I burn the DVD

Jordan -

After you edit and are ready, follow these steps:

1. Open Adobe Bridge BEFORE you open Encore. Then open Encore.
2. From Premiere Pro - EXPORT TO ENCORE
3. In your settings, choose a bit rate of 6.5 (Max for CBR or VBR). Use the Encore Help menu to calculate your bit rate. I cannot tell without looking at your footage. The other settings are standard NTSC DVD settings. You need not change anything unless you know what you are specifically doing.
4. Premiere will render an M2V file and WAV file (separately) on your Hard drive. Once this is done -
5. Encore will open and import the M2V and WAV into a new timeline. This is the ideal way to get into Encore. The movie will automatically burn to a DVD. However -
6. If you have calculated your bit rate well, and planned your menus, etc. your original M2V file should be ideal. However, if you have made that WITHOUT considering your additional stuff in the DVD, then Encore will recalculate your bit rate and make things worse. You have to plan from the beginning, especially when you have a lot of hours to cram in.
7. Once you're done, burn the DVD by following Encore's workflow.

If the footage is pixelated, the two primary reasons are:
1. You have too much footage for a DVD
2. Your bit rate is too low

Try these steps and let me know. All the best!

[Anton Strauss]

if you use ac3 audio at 256kbps than you can increase your video bitrate to 7700 max

[Jordan Hamelin]

Originally Posted by Randall Leong

It sounds like you're trying to author 480p30 video (or more specifically, 720p30 video that's been downconverted to 480p30) directly onto DVD without interlacing it first. Remember, DVD-Video is strictly a 480i format in NTSC countries.

Unfortunately, DVD-Video does not support true progressive-scan video at all. The 29.97 fps video must be interlaced before authoring onto DVD. "Progressive" encoding simply re-encodes 23.976 fps progressive-scan video into 59.94-field-per-second interlaced video onto which a 2-3 (or 3-2) pulldown flag is applied.

You cannot get around this. You're trying to author progressive-scan video footage directly onto DVD - something that the DVD-Video standard clearly does not allow. The purpose of the "Progressive Scan" feature on recent DVD players is for compatibility with non-interlaced display equipment. The player's circuitry deinterlaces interlaced input, and then sends it through the component outs.

I have done conversions from 720p to DVD-Video. But I knew that the DVD-Video standard does not allow true progressive-scan authoring, so I had to convert 720p to 480i (NTSC) before authoring onto DVD.

So i should render in 480i ? How do i do it ??

Originally Posted by Sareesh Sudhakaran

Jordan -

After you edit and are ready, follow these steps:

1. Open Adobe Bridge BEFORE you open Encore. Then open Encore.
2. From Premiere Pro - EXPORT TO ENCORE
3. In your settings, choose a bit rate of 6.5 (Max for CBR or VBR). Use the Encore Help menu to calculate your bit rate. I cannot tell without looking at your footage. The other settings are standard NTSC DVD settings. You need not change anything unless you know what you are specifically doing.
4. Premiere will render an M2V file and WAV file (separately) on your Hard drive. Once this is done -
5. Encore will open and import the M2V and WAV into a new timeline. This is the ideal way to get into Encore. The movie will automatically burn to a DVD. However -
6. If you have calculated your bit rate well, and planned your menus, etc. your original M2V file should be ideal. However, if you have made that WITHOUT considering your additional stuff in the DVD, then Encore will recalculate your bit rate and make things worse. You have to plan from the beginning, especially when you have a lot of hours to cram in.
7. Once you're done, burn the DVD by following Encore's workflow.

If the footage is pixelated, the two primary reasons are:
1. You have too much footage for a DVD
2. Your bit rate is too low

Try these steps and let me know. All the best!

At step 2 : I use adobe media encoder ?
At step 3 : where do i choose my bitrate setting ? when i do file>export on premier i can choose the bite rate setting and the max is 9


should I render in 24p or 29p

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Step 2: File > Export... > Export to Encore (keep the timeline selected)... >
Export to Encore Popup will open - Select Author with menus for your purpose and select the preset, etc for your purposes.

NO NEED TO USE ADOBE MEDIA ENCODER

Step 3: There are two steps to this process:

1. Initial bitrate - When you are exporting from Premiere to the M2V file, it's one transcode. When you select 'Settings...' in the Encore popup you will be taken to adobe media encoder to choose your bitrate and other criteria. This is all within Premiere.

2. Final bitrate - When you export again from Encore you have to recalculate (if you haven't planned earlier). This final bitrate for video must be kept below 6.5 for most DVD players to play the disc. Sure you can go higher, but you run the risk of the DVD being unplayable on old or cheap players. This is within Encore.

I can't give you specifics for bitrates until I know the scope of your project in detail. It's not that simple to hit the sweet spot. Adobe itself recommends trial and error. I had to burn 20 disks once to get it absolutely right, where no disc space was wasted.

Remember to keep your Bridge open.

[Noa Put]

What version of premiere/encore are you using? I have cs3 and it does a pretty bad job going from hdv to dvd.

Now I first export to the same resolution as my original file which is 1440x1080p at 25mbs as I have a canon xh-a1 and then I use that file in TMPGENC for further conversion to dvd compliant files. The end result is a much better looking dvd image quality.

[Jordan Hamelin]

Originally Posted by Sareesh Sudhakaran

Step 2: File > Export... > Export to Encore (keep the timeline selected)... >
Export to Encore Popup will open - Select Author with menus for your purpose and select the preset, etc for your purposes.

NO NEED TO USE ADOBE MEDIA ENCODER

Step 3: There are two steps to this process:

1. Initial bitrate - When you are exporting from Premiere to the M2V file, it's one transcode. When you select 'Settings...' in the Encore popup you will be taken to adobe media encoder to choose your bitrate and other criteria. This is all within Premiere.

2. Final bitrate - When you export again from Encore you have to recalculate (if you haven't planned earlier). This final bitrate for video must be kept below 6.5 for most DVD players to play the disc. Sure you can go higher, but you run the risk of the DVD being unplayable on old or cheap players. This is within Encore.

I can't give you specifics for bitrates until I know the scope of your project in detail. It's not that simple to hit the sweet spot. Adobe itself recommends trial and error. I had to burn 20 disks once to get it absolutely right, where no disc space was wasted.

Remember to keep your Bridge open.

I cant find export to encore



Noa : Im on CS4

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Apologies, I use CS3,

For CS4, try this:
Adobe Dynamic Link > Export to Encore. (but keep your Bridge open).

The reason why exporting directly to Encore makes sense is because you avoid the intermediate transcoding to an AVI or whatever. Of course, you can export to uncompressed AVI/TIFF/MOV, etc. Source is directly converted to MPEG-2 according to the quality settings correct for your particular project/footage. It gives great results and I've done whole movies this way with spectacular results. Never needed another software or work around.

If the Dynamic Link route is not working for you, then you'll need to render to an intermediate codec for your final footage. Why don't you try taking a small slice (a minute or so?) and render to AVI (compressed but keep medium settings) and then import this into Encore and burn a test DVD using a RW DVD? Keep the bit rate at 6.5 CBR and watch it on a player. Then take it from there.

[Jordan Hamelin]

its says enable to encode... what am i suppose to do with bridge ? just opening it and little on ? why do i need to open it ?

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

You mentioned earlier that you had a problem burning from Premiere to Encore. One of the things that make the workflow stable is to have Bridge open at all times. It worked for me when Encore started behaving stubborn. If you can get the job done without it, it's okay.

Does Enable to Encore give you a pop-up screen to Encore? Since I have never used CS4, I can't be precise with the menus but the option is still there.