Best way to burn DVD.

[downsouth]

Have project finished and have the following options to burn DVD.

...I can use direct out from PP1.5
...Dump back to camcorder via firewire and firewire into stand-alone DVD recorder.
...Save as DVI file, burn disk image, then DVD using ULead.

I will try each method above, but since all of the methods are in the digital format...should it make any difference which method I use?

Jeff
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[Joshua Provost]

No, it can make a big difference. Are you doing anything besides straight cuts in your video? Titles, transitions, overlays, effects, color correction? If so, much of your footage may be recompressed going back out to the camera or out to DV-AVI. Burning straight out of Premiere means no recompression before it gets compressed to MPEG-2 for the DVD, which is a good thing.

If you want to use another program to encode the MPEG-2 and/or burn the DVD, you can export movie from Premiere in a low-compression or uncompressed format, such as uncompressed AVI. It takes up a lot of space, but it's lossless, and you can delete it after you make the DVD. Or, you can keep it around as a lossless "digital master."

[Jeff Anderson]

Here's my ultimate Premiere to DVD workflow:
Export to uncompressed avi
Make mpeg2 with TMPG Encoder
Burn resultant m2v file with your favorite burner.

If you are HD then you will need to resize before encoding to m2v. Premiere does a bad job resizing so I use virtual dub with the lancoz3 method of scaling and the long and slow method of rendering whatever thats called.

Virtual Dub is freeware and TMPG is $30 shareware if I remember right.

And of course the final step is to get rid of those uncompressed avi's! :)

[downsouth]

Great advice...thanks.
I did not know that a DV-AVI used compression. I thought it was superior to a straight AVI....so much for assuming.

Here's a question:
In PP1.5..in the "direct to DVD" process, you can select "multiple copies" option. This means to me, that PP has "stored" a disk image "somewhere", in order to make the other copies.
I would like to "save" that disk image for making future copies of the movie. Do you know where PP "stores" that disk image (iso file)?

Thanks to all,
Jeff

[Jeff Anderson]

not sure where it stores the iso but I know there is the option to create folders instead of actually burn an iso - you can just dump the tsfolders on a dvd and you're done. I'd be the iso created is a temp and is destroyed when its done.