DVD Authoring?
 

I use Premiere Pro 1.5 to edit sports highlights for local High Schools. Right now I am exporting my projects back to mini dv and then hooking my XL1s up to my Panasonic DVD burner. I have found I get better quality this way than exporting to DVD from premiere with the DVD burner on my computer. The problem is, I would like to create more professional looking DVDs with Title Menus rather than jsut the generic chapter menu my dvd burner spits out. I was thinking of purchasing Pinnacle 9.0 for $50 from Bestbuy. Will this program be sufficient for creating the menus and producing the smoother video quality i desire? If it isn't, what is another good program for $50-$75 that i can use (or am i caught up in wishful thinking for this price?) Thanks in advance for the help.

Yes, Studio can, but the results are somewhat limited. Since you are using PP 1.5, you can export elemental stream and AC3 I think. You can try for free, Mediachance DVD-Studio. It is $99 shareware with a 30 day trial.

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/dvdlabstudio.html

It is very flexible.

forgive my ignorance. I have been shooting and editing for a long time but i have always just submitted my work on minidv or beta sp. I am new to the DVD authoring and burning process. Can you please explain elemntal stream and AC3 to me? I have read some other threads where people are getting the same pixelated video when using the export to dvd command on PP 1.5. will another piece of software like dvd mechanic or pinnacle increase that quality?

Your quality will come from rendering your project properly.
To make a good quality dvd you need to render your video to a MPEG2 file using the best quality (as in maximum bitrate for the length of your video) and then render your audio to an AC3 file.

The nyou can import those two files into an authoring program such as Adobe Encore, DVD Lab, DVD Architect etc.
Those programs will have menu templates you can use or you can create your own custom menus.

do i need to render it before i export to dvd or does that process take place during the export and i just need to adjust the settings accordingly?

the mpeg2 encoder that comes with premiere should have much better picture quality than anything that pinnacle sells, so stick with it... just make sure that you can also export ac3 audio files... i don't know if adobe encore is part of the premiere 1.5 package these days, but that would be your dvd creation package, and with it you would hopefully be able to manipulate the mpeg2/ac3 encoding per matt's suggestion... i don't use that software, so i can't say for sure, and i can't tell you how the export function works.

i use vegas, procoder, and reeldvd most of the time.

Premiere Pro comes with a Dolby Digital (AC3) audio encoder, but you only get three trial uses before one has to purchase it. I always just export the MPEG-2 file along with the audio in .wav format and then let my DVD authoring program (Encore DVD) transcode the .wav audio to Dolby Digital.

While the MainConcept MPEG-2 encoder included with Premiere Pro isn't the best of the best, it certainly shouldn't anywhere near that bad. Like Matt said, the quality of your MPEG-2 export will depend on rendering it correctly. Have you tried one of the "High Quality 7Mb CBR 1 pass" presets when rendering to DVD?

Update:
 

So I was at Bestbuy last night and they had Pinnacle Studio Media Suite on sale for $49.99 with a $30 mail-in rebate. I figured for 20 bucks I might as well try it out. The dvd out put is worse than what i was getting with PP 1.5. So I won't be using Pinnacle. But it wasn't a total loss because my wife wants to start editing our home videos and she likes the Pinnacle format better so it worked out.

Can someone please explain to me the difference between 1 pass and 2 pass? I understand VBR vs. CBR but what is the difference between 4mb and 7mb?

Thanks

Two pass encoding is used primarily for Variable Bit Rate (VBR) encoding. The encoder does a first pass where it identifies the complexities of the material, so that it can compress more efficiently on the second pass when it encodes the video. Parts of the video that the encoder identified as being less complex are more highly compressed than parts that are more complex.

These are the bitrates of the encoded MPEG-2 video stream in megabits per second. 7Mb is nearly twice the bitrate of 4Mb, and so would give you better quality.

The bitrate is very important. The higher the bitrate, the higher the quality.
I think maximum bitrate a dvd player can read is 9.5mb
To work out the maximum bitrate you can use for the length of your video, google search for a bitrate calculator, but....

For videos less than an hour, I usually use CBR at 8mb or higher because it's fast and very high quality.

For over an hour (such as a 1hr 30min video), I use a 2 pass VBR with the maximum bitrate set to something like 8mb and an average of around 6.5mb and minimum of around 4mb. (Use a calculator to figure it out)

This means that on average, your video will be encoded at 6.5mb but for a complex shot (such as lots of leaves blowing around) it can bump up the bitrate to 8mb so you will not loose quality where you need it.
For simple shots suchs as a black title screen, it can lower the bitrate down to 4mb so as to save space as you won't be losing an information in a black screen.

Encoding your video with a 1 pass VBR at 4mb will make your video look pretty weak.

So i've continued to play around with Pinnacle and i really like the set up for authoring dvds but the output quality is obviously tons better on PP1.5. do i just need to suck it up and purchase encore?

Studio 9 can be adjusted to support 6-8.5kbps VBR. Check out that setting before you give up on it.

you might also check to see if the pinnacle product will let you import the mpeg2's that were encoded with the premiere(aka mainconcept) encoder, *without re-rendering*... like i said before, you do not want to use the pinnacle mpeg encoder... afaik, it does not have two-pass capability... does it even have ac3 encoding capability?

you already have decent mpeg2 encoding with the panasonic burner that you have been using... you just need to know how to copy that footage from the burned dvd disc to your computer, then author a new dvd with it... it's really pretty simple once you know how to use a dvd authoring program.

download the dvd lab pro demo that george recommended earlier, and see if you can figure out how to import mpeg2 footage into it.