Encore transcoding issue

[adaml80754506]

Hi All,

I'm struggling a little with encore and wondered if anyone could help?

My source video is an AVI and I have done some editing in premiere (I know it will be awful quality due to the AVI compression but it's all I have to work with). I'm looking at putting it on blu ray to save multiple DVD's and I also prefer blu ray menus. Anyway so first of all i exported my clip via premiere as MPEG2 DVD, opened up a new blu ray project in encore and when building the disc it wants to transcode the clip. I tried again this time exporting the clip as MPEG2 Blu Ray, again it wants to transcode. I made sure my default option in encore is MPEG not H264 but it still wants to transcode. I really want to avoid transcoding in encore as you can see a drop in quality. Apart from changing the quality to 100% and upping the bitrate I have not touched any of the settings in premiere.

I have done some digging, my source is identified in premiere is 4:3 PAL progressive but I note from the encore manual (https://helpx.adobe.com/pdf/encore_reference.pdf) that encore can only accept interlaced PAL 4:3 720x576 or interlaced PAL 16:9 1920x1080 (with black bars added to the left and right of my 4:3 footage).

So in premiere when I export, it identified the source as progressive and sets the output as progressive - could this be what is causing encore to transcode the clip? I.e. I am exporting a PAL progressive video and putting it into encore that doesn't like PAL progressive?

If I change the export in premiere to interlaced will that cause problems with my video? And would I select top or bottom?

Apologies I have a reasonable amount of knowledge on DVD and video encoding but I'm not really au fait with interlaced/progressive.

I can post info from mediainfo or screenshots on my premiere options if required?

Thanks

[Stan Jones]

A post of media info of your source file in Tree view is always helpful. If a different transcode setting does not work, also a media info of the file you are importing to Encore.

When you import a file to Encore, look at the Blu-ray transcode status column, and see that it says do not transcode. If it says untranscoded, no need to go further, you don't have the file settings correct.

Encore will accept Progressive settings, but I am not sure about pal.

Select a small part of your timeline in Premiere, so it is a 10 minutes or so sample. Use MPEG 2 - DVD, and a preset of pal. Change nothing in the settings.

The quality setting at 100% is actually not the best setting in most cases.

Import that to Encore and let's see what you have.

[adaml80754506]

Hi Stan,

Thanks for your message. I have done everything and once imported into encore I get the following:

DVD Transcode Status = video don't transcode audio untranscoded

DVD Transcode Settings = video don't transcode audio automatic

Blu Ray Transcode Status = video untranscoded audio don't transcode

Blu  Ray Transcode Settings = video automatic audio don't transcode

I've attached the report from mediainfo and screenshots of my various settings.

Cheers

General

Format                                   : AVI

Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave

File size                                : 700 MiB

Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min

Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable

Overall bit rate                         : 864 kb/s

Writing application                      : VirtualDubMod 1.5.4.1 (build 2178/release)

Writing library                          : VirtualDubMod build 2178/release

Video

ID                                       : 0

Format                                   : MPEG-4 Visual

Format profile                           : Advanced Simple@L5

Format settings                          : BVOP1 / Custom Matrix

Format settings, BVOP                    : 1

Format settings, QPel                    : No

Format settings, GMC                     : No warppoints

Format settings, Matrix                  : Custom

Codec ID                                 : XVID

Codec ID/Hint                            : XviD

Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min

Bit rate                                 : 743 kb/s

Width                                    : 448 pixels

Height                                   : 336 pixels

Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3

Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS

Color space                              : YUV

Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0

Bit depth                                : 8 bits

Scan type                                : Progressive

Compression mode                         : Lossy

Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.197

Stream size                              : 602 MiB (86%)

Writing library                          : XviD 1.2.0.dev47 (UTC 2006-11-01)

Audio

ID                                       : 1

Format                                   : MPEG Audio

Format version                           : Version 1

Format profile                           : Layer 3

Format settings                          : Joint stereo / MS Stereo

Codec ID                                 : 55

Codec ID/Hint                            : MP3

Duration                                 : 1 h 53 min

Bit rate mode                            : Variable

Bit rate                                 : 108 kb/s

Nominal bit rate                         : 128 kb/s

Channel(s)                               : 2 channels

Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz

Frame rate                               : 41.667 FPS (1152 SPF)

Compression mode                         : Lossy

Delay relative to video                  : 24 ms

Stream size                              : 87.7 MiB (13%)

Alignment                                : Split accross interleaves

Interleave, duration                     : 24  ms (0.60 video frame)

Interleave, preload duration             : 649  ms

Writing library                          : LAME3.97

Encoding settings                        : -m j -V 4 -q 2 -lowpass 17 --abr 128

[adaml80754506]

Also just as a test I have changed premiere to output as upper field first, which is what encore seems to want on the default settings. The outcome is don't transcode for everything except dvd audio.

So that seems to solve it, I guess the question is what are the downsides of changing the footage from progressive to upper field first? If any?

Also could you elaborate a little on the quality 100% not being the best? I just assumed if I set this as 100% and cracked the bitrate up to the maximum I would get the best result.

Thanks

[Stan Jones · Accepted solution]

I had a chance to do a couple tests.

Encore DVD will support a progressive file, but Encore Blu-ray does not. So my answer was misleading.

I don't recall why I have the view I do of the quality slider. Here is the Adobe PR help page. Note that it has not been updated since 2016, and the slider options are now up to 100% rather than 1-5.

Adjusting MPEG encoding quality vs. target bitrate when using the Adobe Media Encoder (Windows)

Your source footage is odd. When someone says "my source is AVI," I think DV, despite it being repeated so often here that it is a wrapper, and tells us very little. You have DivX, 448x336, low bitrate audio etc. If I were putting as much of it as I could on a Blu-ray, I'd use H.264 Blu-ray. There are no presets for SD, but you can change the pixel size. My test came in as Do Not Transcode for BD.

[adaml80754506]

Hi Stan,

Thanks very much for taking the time to run some tests. I've run a few myself and basically if you want to put progressive SD footage on a blu ray you have to amend it to upper field first in order for encore to accept it. Which makes sense as the blu ray mpeg2 and blu ray H264 export options in premiere automatically do this. 

I'll now have a play about with exporting as MPEG2 DVD and H264 scaled to 720 x 576 to see how the quality looks for each vs file size.

Once again thanks for your help