Export 4k 23.976p footage, edited on 1920x1080 23.976p sequence, to create SD DVD

[Sciman]

I have 4K 23.976p footage edited on a 1920x1080 23.976p sequence.  I export this using H264 Blu-ray (settings that match the sequence) in Premiere Pro and this works very nicely for creating a 1920x1080 23.976p blu-ray disc in Encore (without Encore needing to transcode the video file).

I also need to prepare 720x480 DVDs for this and have tried exporting using MPEG2 DVD (with settings set to 720x480 23.976p), but Encore insists on transcoding the video file...which results in further loss of quality.

Any recommendations for best way/settings to export the video for minimal quality loss, that would be accepted by Encore without transcoding again?

[Sciman]

and of course, it should also say Lower Field First.  (not frame)

[Stan Jones]

Sciman,

Responding to several of your posts....

First, now that  you are up to 22 posts (!) you may find that you can now edit your posts. At the end of a post, look for 3 dots and "more." When you click this, you should see "edit reply." New posters cannot edit their replies. I don't know how many posts makes a difference.

Regarding the exporting as 29.97 and lower field, you are going to pick your sequence settings - 23.976 and progressive. PR will take care of exporting in a manner that EN will accept. On the actual DVD it will be 29.97 with pulldown and fields. But you don't want to change your export settings for those - the proof is in Encore accepting them. The recent PR (including 22.5) MPEG2-DVD format is mostly correct on its defaults - except where it isn't! So you want Jedit's solution: "(1) Encode my 1920x1080 23.976p sequence to 720x480 using MPEG2 DVD 23.976p, aspect ratio to 16:9 and changing GOP N=15 to N=12 (Jedit's solution)"

Now that you have a good export, another issue that you will notice is that there a thin black bars on the sides of the video in the PR export preview window and in Encore. HD does not scale exactly to DVD widescreen. The fix for this is to set the export crop to "scale to fill." (Bottom right of the export preview window.) When you set this, you will see the black bars disappear.

> I will be looking at bitrates vs file size.

Many users disliked ever using the Encore automatic settings, which for longer programs would ensure that Encore transcoded to settings that filled the disk. I liked it, but my content was good with those settings. Other types of material needed a better encoder than Encore's.

My favorite bitrate calculator is still out there:http://dvd-hq.info/bitrate_calculator.php

Many Encore foum posts were not ported to the new system. One of the help pages is still there:

https://helpx.adobe.com/encore/using/project-planning.html#bit_budgeting

@Jeff Bellune Your excellent posts are missing. Any comments you'd add here? (Jeff is the author of the primary how to gide to using Encore.)

Stan

[Jeff Bellune]

The only comment I'd make is that the GOP numbers for NTSC DVD should be N=3 and M= (whatever gives a new I-frame every half second).

At 30 fps, that's M=15 and and 24 fps that's 12. You discovered that Encore really likes that rule, and it won't accept without transcoding any mpeg2 video that violates that rule.

EDIT: I lied. I have to make another comment. 😄

Don't ever let Encore transcode anything except menu bg video. I'm not a fan of the MainConcept MPEG encoder that Pr has used forever (are they still using it? I don't know). On Windows, the TMPGEnc encoder is excellent and not hideously expensive; on Mac I use Compressor. 50 bucks.

[Ann Bens]

I still frameserve to TMPGEnc  if a BD is needed. Dont do DVD anymore.

TMPGEnc Movie Plug-in AVC for Premiere Pro - Export Premiere Pro projects using the TMPGEnc H.264 en...

Edit: I just realized OP is on a MAC? TMPGenc is windows only.

[Sciman]

Thanks for chiming in and offering your thoughts on the encoder used by Pr!  I've noticed quality issues in the past when rendering in Pr by CPU, but have gotten much better results when rendering with hardware/GPU.

[Sciman]

Hmm, still don't see way to edit my posts, but will watch for in the future.  Thanks for the recommendations and extras here!

>"The recent PR (including 22.5) MPEG2-DVD format is mostly correct on its defaults - except where it isn't!"

Turns out the defaults for PR would have been good, if I had chosen the correct preset: "NTSC 23.976p Wide"!  I didn't see this as a choice in the list PR provided, but it did come up in AME.  You can get to it in PR, but need to expand the list to see more presets.

[JeditPro]

Glad the GOP solution works for you too.

Transcoding from 23,976p to 29,970i also works, but 6 repeated frames will be added every second to compensate for the lack of frames and the final video will be interlaced. In this case you can use Optical Flow to "smooth" the repeated frames through interpolation but more processing time will be required. I, in particular, always like to work with the original frame rate.

[Sciman]

Thanks for offering your solution and getting things back on track for me!  I will be proceeding with 23.976p, which was my preference from the start (why I started shooting in 23.976p).  This is the first DVD I've had to produce from 23.976p footage and glad to find out that I don't have to transcode it to interlaced for the DVD.