Help! Image is "soft" when exporting to DVD

P

Peter Reynolds

Well-known member
Hi All,

I recently upgraded to Premiere Pro CS3, and I've been having problems outputting to DVD through Adobe Encore.

The footage was shot with the DVX100b, 30P Thin.

When I output to DVD, the footage looks soft - not crisp at all. I've tried this with several different clips and they all come out soft.

Here are the settings

DVD Single Layer
Direct Burn without Menus
NTSC Progressive High Quality
Quality 4
Frame Rate: 29.97
Field order: None
VBR 2 pass
Min Bitrate 1.5
Targe Bitrate 4
Maximum Bitrate 7
GOP (M Frames) 3
GOP (N Frames) 15

I have also tried "maxing" out all the settings (Quality 5, Min-Target-Max bitrate to 9) but the final is still a very soft picture.

Finally, I tried non-progressive (lower field) with all quality maxed and, though slighter better, it's still soft and of poor quality.

The original video quality is very good and I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong. The client won't accept the final product this way, so I'm hoping you can help me.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Best.

Peter
 
Improved quality - but still not crisp

Improved quality - but still not crisp

Update - I tried encoding as non-progressive (lower field), and the image improved in quality. However it's still not as crisp as the original.

I keep thinking that maybe this is a dumb question - that everyone knows DVD encoded from a Premiere timeline will lose quality.

The only problem is that my client also wants the video files as Windows Media for their website, and those are crisp and clear as hell.

It's the comparison that's killing me. Is it possible with original DV footage to get crisp resolution images on a DVD? If so, how?

Thanks.

Peter
 
i will be honest with you about Premiere. The encoder in that program is utter #@(*&@. I usually download a file called DebugMode Frameserver then i tell premiere to export a movie. The Dialog for saving will pop-up, then select "Settings..." under "General" Section -> Select "DebugMode Frameserver" as the "File Type".

DMF will send out a fake avi file, then thats where I use another encoder called TMPGEnc Xpress. TMPG X is very effective at producing nice quality dvd(encore) ready mpg files. You can drop those mpg files directly into encore without needing to transcode.

I have seen other issues with Encore as well. It tends to produce soft dvd menus which annoys the living @(&# out of me. But if its a menu-less dvd, then it will just burn that mpg directly to dvd without touching it.

Hope that helps.
 
Adobe Media Encoder is a Swiss Army Knife. It does a lot of things, but some of them not particularly well. Transcoding files for DVD is one of them.

dcrin3's suggestion sounds similar to what other people do, apparently with superior results. I have not yet invested in TMPEGenc, but used the old free version years ago for encoding MPEG-1 files. It worked very well and I'd expect the current product to do the same. I don't install new software on my editing box without a big vacant hole in my production schedule. Cineform was the latest disaster and their tech support only responds three days later. TMPEGenc will have to wait until my blood pressure drops by half.

Another thought that might help and save you some money is if you have Nero, export a DV file from PP, then bring it into NeroVision for transcoding. You will suffer generational losses if any of the footage needs to be re-compressed (transitions, color correction, compositing, etc.), but I still think that overall it will be better than AME.
 
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