
neil wilkes
Guide
neil wilkes
Guide
Activity
‎Dec 28, 2024
06:13 AM
Nowadays, there are more and more DVD authoring software in the market. I recommend AnyMP4 DVD Creator, which is available on Mac computers. It allows me to add frequently used video formats, like MOV, MP4, MKV, M2TS, VOB, etc., to the software and burn them to DVD discs. I can customize disc type, aspect ratio, and video quality. Moreover, it offers editing tools for me to adjust DVD video effects and chapters. It also provides NTSC and PAL standards to fit the specific DVD player requirements. You can try its trial version to burn a DVD disc for free. By @ann_1427 Sorry, but that's not DVD authoring - it's putting data files onto a data DVD, with the end result being a DVD-ROM and not DVD-Video. I hate to nit pick about this (actually, that's probably not true ) but it's an important difference. This is exactly why I get so irritated with people claiming things are DVD-Audio when they are simply DVD-Video with no video content. It's not the same thing, any more than BD-ROM with film content is Blu-Ray (and Sony would agree with me here too - you cannot (okay, you should not) sell BD-R as Blu-Ray because it is non-compliant and if they catch anyone doing this they will order all stock destroyed for rights breaches). The tool listed above seems to be able to make a very, very basic DVD but I wouldn't want to replicate from it, and what it is claiming as Blu-Ray authoring is non compliant, and should never be marketed or sold as Blu-ray. Not that they will care - I suspect they are Chinese or China based
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‎Apr 03, 2024
12:45 AM
@R.o.b.e.r.t - why would I want to take an MKV file and make it into an MP4 please? Adobe need to get MKV support reinstated. 3/4 of my archived projects have assets in MKV
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‎Mar 21, 2024
02:14 AM
In English, please.
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‎Mar 21, 2024
02:14 AM
1 Upvote
Well said, Sir. It's just like Quicktime (.mov) and AVI in this respect as well. None of these are codecs, none at all - and it is important too, but for me perhaps the biggest surprise is that we have to keep pointing this out - I have been doing this for decades now, and people are if anything even more ignorant today than they were back when we were having exactly the same discussion about why certain AVI files could not be opened in Encore! It's staggering to me that given how spoiled people are with access to information these days that in general they appear to be even more ignorant. I blame 'social' media, as it appears that these days it is just assumed that if it's important someone will post it on Facebook, or some other appalling, dysfunctional garbage software. Aargh. Rant over
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‎Mar 14, 2024
05:47 AM
1 Upvote
In all seriousness, how can you expect to see a panner on a 5.1 track with a 5.1 master? There is nothing to actually pan! If, however, you split the audio into mono tracks you WILL get a panner. Be aware though that if you set the dots to extremes, it can go haywire - and the LFE is particularly problematic. The biggest problem I have with Premiere is that the audio handling feels like an afterthought to me.
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‎Mar 14, 2024
05:45 AM
1 Upvote
I have also seen this, and as a direct result of this happening I take a very simple precaution: Add a single letter 'subtitle' right at the first frame. Make it a CC or similar, and either leave it up or turn it's opacity right down. Everything else will then be at the correct timecode. No, you should not need to do this - but it will make the problem go away
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‎Mar 02, 2024
04:42 AM
Agreed totally. I would recommend an S-VHS option if possible, capturing through however you can handle it - a digital bridge of some sort may be the way to go. What is your computer setup?
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‎Mar 02, 2024
01:42 AM
Firstly, let's answer the main questions: 1 - Absolutely remain in Full HD - 1920x1080 @ 24fps progressive scan. Why? to capture with as many pixels as you can use on Blu-ray, or even sub-4K streaming if wanted. You avoid losing any definition as captured, and there is no degradation later from reducing down to Full HD from 4K. Assuming that there is no music on the video, then I would interpret the PAL at 24fps - this is often done anyway (just check film run-times between USA & Europe for the same edit where one is at 25fps and the other at 29.97/30fps - people simply will not notice, but when it comes to music all bets are off & you need a bloody good FRC. I know how to do this but am not telling on a public forum as it is part of what we do). Your biggest worry is the audio quality - with music you simply do not want things done wrong, or you will end up with complaints. If things are going on Blu-ray at 24fps then don't even think about drop-frame, as it's really just a way of counting. Stick to 24. All VHS is analogue anyway, so frame rates will be just fine if you capture/digitize at 24 - regardless of what the tape is as it does not matter.
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‎Mar 01, 2024
03:20 AM
Hiya right back, and Yup, that's me - I had to stop posting because the Encore forum got killed, and I didn't really have an obvious new home on Adobe who no longer seem to care one jot about replicated media as I know for a stone cold fact that they could easily renew the Authorcore license if they chose to, plus of course they 'sunsetted' the servers they no longer wish to honour - not just Encore forums, but also activation servers, so it is obvious Adobe really don't care at all about their older products which is kinda typical of the hypocritical world we live in, where we are constantly being bombarded with THE MESSAGE and how we need to not eat meat or breathe because 'CO2 = Bad' instead of CO2 = Plant Food, yet ever more streaming and digital this, that & the other is promoted - where do they think these massive server farms get their electricity from?
But as usual, I digress.
As far as digitizing the VHS tapes goes, yes it was rotten quality (Betamax was far superior) but the industry does not care, otherwise DVD-A would have been actually promoted and HD-DVD would have [abuse removed by moderator] of the sorry mess that is Blu-ray (and yes, I make these things so understand just how [abuse removed by moderator] they are compared to what might have been if Toshiba had kept their nerve an extra month and Sony had not bribed film studios with hundreds of millions of dollars) but again I digress. You will have to stop me doing this or we will be here all day!
Anyway - digitize and capture at 1920x1080 at 24fps. Don't drop the frames, it only causes confusion and isn't necessary as Blu-ray supports 24fps as well as 23.976, plus these are international standards as well & the discs will play everywhere - you need to forget the whole PAL/NTSC thing ever happened. VHS is analogue, so it doesn't matter what you capture at & to be blunt the higher the resolution the better although I would say using 4K is overkill.
Capture to Quicktime ProRes HQ 422 codec too - do not use the MXF version of ProRes that I believe is only there to confuse the issue in Premiere - you hunt for Quicktime, then select the ProRes HQ codec.
Please email me privately if you need specifics - I will be happy to help.
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‎Feb 29, 2024
07:28 AM
Your biggest problem here is the way Sony put the whole spec together, as if using 25fps or 29.97fps you simply cannot go progressive scan - to use 1920x1080 you need to be at 24 or 23.976fps. These are the allowed resolutions (see attachment) Your next problem is going to be system compatibility. An NTSC disc is probably going to play on a PAL system, but a PAL disc is almost guaranteed not to play on an NTSC system - because of the limitations of displays. You also do not want to be using MPEG-2 either - you will be much better off using H.264 for Blu-ray as you can get the same quality as MPEG-2 in half the file size, and by far & away the best encoder available for Premiere Pro & Blu-ray export is the TMPGEnc AVC-264 plugin from pegasys This is built on the far superior X264 engine, which is streets ahead of the lousy MainConcept 264 encoder that is built in to Adobe's Media Encoder. What are you looking to do - exactly - and what is your source footage please?
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‎Feb 05, 2024
02:26 AM
1 Upvote
Wow. I am off to check this right away as if this is true then it has got to be a bug, right?
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‎Jan 08, 2024
02:29 AM
2 Upvotes
Personally, I am not at all sure what it's for - as pointed out above, it's a prores in an mxf wrapper, and a lot of folks don't accept them. I tend to use Quicktime prores myself.
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‎Nov 15, 2023
07:11 AM
2 Upvotes
The first thing I would do is to dump the awful MainConcept based stock MP4 encoder, and get a copy of the far superior TMPGEnc Encoder for Premiere Pro. This is built on the superlative X264 Pro encoder, and it is so much better than the stock Adobe one it's just night & day superior. I use it for all MP4/H.264 and even for our Blu-ray authoring it's that good. The next thing I would do is look at your settings. 20Mbps is simply too high for YouTube (although I admire the attitude 'better is, well, better' that you seem to have) and with this encoder you'll find you can easily cut the bitrates in half with no issues to worry about. Personally, I would use a 2-pass VBR in 'Very Slow' mode, with a peak at 10Mbps and a target set to 7.5Mbps at your shot resolution - that should be fine, although it is always advisable to do some test passages before the full film. Please drop me a message or amend this if you need more?
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‎Oct 11, 2023
01:22 AM
I would absolutely agree with you with one caveat - I would maintain the source resolution, regardless of what it is. So if the source is 1920x1080, then my interim ProResHQ would be the same. If it were in SD then I would make an SD ProResHQ from that. If uprezzing is mandated by the client, I would use a dedicated tool for doing that - from an interim ProResHQ at the supplied resolution. Why anybody work with an MP4 makes no sense to me at all.
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‎Aug 02, 2023
01:56 AM
It depends on what the source footage is as well as the intended platform of your MP4 file. Encodists used to be a specialized job that took a lot of learning - there is much more to video quality than bitrate - but in these days of 'preset outputs' the skill is disappearning rapidly. Requirements for Blu-ray are very different to streaming platforms (where total file size is usually a consideration) and the AME uses MainConcept for it's engine which simply is nowhere near as good as x264 engine is. There are heaps of variables. Sadly, how much you can tweak them also depends on your chosen encoder. So - more details, please. Platform, intent, type of footage - it all matters
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‎Jul 26, 2023
03:32 AM
It came up in my feed via email, so I responded as it was something I knew about. At no point did the board tell me I was replying to an old thread (it used to do this IIRC) and if it is 6 years old howcome it came up in my email feed? Most peculiar - although I thank you for the report here.
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‎Jul 26, 2023
03:30 AM
Please, I beg you - speaking as a sound mixer & mastering engineer who also happens to create Optical discs - never, ever time stretch audio unless there is absolutely no choice at all as it will inevitably introduce artefacts from this process. Thankfully there is a better approach, and that is to resample the audio whilst leaving the DAW at the project sample rate. For example - and you need a DAW that can handle this - if your project is at 48k (and for video it should never be at any other rate except possibly 96k) and the audio is playing out too fast, find out what percentage it is running too quickly at and resample the audio to an accordingly lower sample rate. So, if it is running 4% fast, decrease the sample rate by 4% - this will slow it down - and export at 48k. You may need to adjust using trial & error, but you will be in the right ballpark & there will be no DSP artefacts from Time Stretching.
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‎Jul 26, 2023
03:24 AM
Could you please go grab a copy of MediaInfo and run it on the source footage please? I am thinking your footage could be 'Progressive-Segmented' type which can cause iossues if it is not correctly interpreted. MediaInfo will give you all the details you need, and once you know the source settings & frame rate you can then simply right-click on the asset in the Project Browser, select 'Modify' and then 'Interpret footage' - this will allow you to override the import setting and specify the true frame rate - and the footage will then match what it should be (or at least, it should do). The answer above - variable frame rate footage - is unfortunately a fact although I really wish it were not something that could be done at all - never mind being a default setting in some devices - as a variable frame rate can be a total disaster. If at all possible, disable this in your devices - there should be no place for this setting at all.
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‎Jul 26, 2023
03:20 AM
There will always be visual artifacts when changing frame rates in Premiere - there are 3 options: Frame Blending, Frame Sampling & Optical Flow and none of these delivers clean footage at all. You will either get what some people refer to as 'Judder', or an odd skipping effect that looks like dropped frames, or weird blurring where any rapid footage (for example - a concert piece where it's one of these modern bands that dance around all over the place whilst onstage can give the illusion that the people onstage have 4 legs). Interpreting the footage doesn't work either as it alters the run time, ruining any audio that comes with it - although if the audio is going to be replaced & does not need to sync up to the video interpreting the footage is probably the safest option. The best fix of all is to not try & mix frame rates, but to do any conversions before you start to import the assets in the first place.
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‎Jul 26, 2023
03:11 AM
You're on a Mac, so that's an immediate disadvantage right there, sorry to say. The best tools that are still selling new seats are the following - both are Windows PC only though, so if you need to do a lot of authoring I would highly recommend putting together a PC that can run these tools. Media Chance Labs DVD-Lab Pro 2 Scenarist SD The first one can be bought outright (follow the link) for a mere $90. The website has a lot of tutorial material, and the manual is superb as well. I still use this on a regular basis for all DVD-Video & Video_TS content for DVD-Audio/Video hybrids and can highly recommend it. Scenarist can be bought outright but it is expensive (although not as dear as it used to be) with the additional option of a monthly subscription model that also gets you full tech support as well as all updates as part of the package and is THE 'Hollywood/Studio' industry standard. The learning curve is steep but it works well, and is still in development too. Additionally, the core is very similar to what Adobe licensed for Encore, with the main difference being that unlike Encore, Scenarist SD is full spec with no features disabled or not accessible. The other link posted by Peru Bob is end of life and has been superseded / abrogated by version 7 Much as I love TMPGEnc & their products however, I am n ot a fan of this software at all - and again, it is Windows 11 PC only (the options I listed above will happily run on earlier versions, with DVD-Lab Pro 2 happily running on Windows 7, 8, 10 etc but I have no clue if it will run on 11, and Scenarist is also perfectly splendid on Windows 10 and a Bootcamped Mac too - just like DVD-Lab Pro 2). The reason I am not a fan of the TMPGEnc tool is because it is seriously restricted in spec implementation, and it's abstraction layer design will rapidly box you into a corner there is no escape from - just like Encore used to do if I am to be honest (and I used to like Encore). TMPGEnc do make superb tools however - in particular I can highly recommend their Premiere Pro plugin for H.264 encoding as it is vastly superior to the dreadful MainConcept powered AME built into Premiere, and again whilst it is Windows only it is backwards compatible to Windows 10 build 15.x, and encodes not only to H.264 but also MP4, MPEG-TS and - perversely, given that you cannot actually import the result back into Premiere at all - MKV!! But I digress, and I apologise. For DVD authoring it is necessary to get a PC to do the work these days. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
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‎Jul 21, 2023
01:24 AM
There could be a couple of reasons for this. The one that leaps immediately to mind is that you will be signed in on a totally different IP address (which will raise a big red flag at Adobe Towers, I suspect) or else the alternative is that they have already used both available usage slots (although if this were the case it should tell you that you have no activations left, or similar).
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‎Jul 14, 2023
05:25 AM
What build of Premiere / AME? What OS? The more information that is given the easier it is to help.....
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‎Jul 13, 2023
02:11 AM
1 Upvote
I believe my understanding of mono and stereo to be solid. Mono tracks are a singular track, recorded using a single microphone. Stereo tracks are usually 2 tracks, with varying waveforms on each track, recorded using multiple microphones.
This is not the whole story - stereo is not just something done with multiple microphones but a file that contains different audio information in each of the left/right channels. Recording tracks with multiple microphones will simply give you multi-mono, not true stereo. Using stereo gives you a far better sense of space as well.
This article does a really good job of explaining the difference between mono, multi-mono & stereo
https://producerhawk.com/dual-mono-vs-stereo/
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‎Jul 13, 2023
02:05 AM
Alternatively you can put the source on a sequence and simply delete the audio tracks you don't need.
Multiple tracks are usually there for a reason though, so please be careful - 2 things that come immediately to mind here are dual mono, and an M&E stream (Music & Effects). With the dual mono you can simply keep 2 files and change the panning in the Audio Track mixer to suit
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‎Jul 13, 2023
01:51 AM
1 Upvote
Reverting to the original is literally the only option that you have.
Normalization is something that really should be avoided at all costs - you just don't ever need to do it.
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‎May 25, 2023
05:38 AM
Brilliant guess, but it didn't help.
Many of the tracks don't have this problem. (Again, none of them in Audition, etc).
*I resaved one of the audio files as 48Hz (instead of 96). That did the trick.
For more info: saving to 64Hz works, but 88.2Hz adds a different kind of noise. Is 64 clearly better than 48 btw?
Finally, I did try out different sequence settings, but that didn't affect anything.
I suppose I've found a workaround, but I wish I knew what was going on.
By @Peter25837956gbne
It sounds like your problem is all the Sample Rate Converting being done here.
As a general rule of thumb, there are 2 'families' of sample rates. 44.1k and 48k
44.1 is used for CD, with 88.2 also being used along with 44.1 on SACD titles as well.
For video, however, we ought to work at 48k sample rate wherever possible because it is the usual standard for audio on video. 96k is grand indeed, but usually too high for using with film, especially if DVD is intended because of the bit rates involved. Sadly, YouTube (amongst others) have not helped the situation by allowing users to upload video with 44.1k audio.
64k is all but pointless (I cannot think of anything that uses it) and for all sample rate conversions I would highly recommend Voxengo's R8 Brain Pro.
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‎May 25, 2023
05:27 AM
Quicktime H.264 has been removed some time ago.
By @Ann Bens
So it has - only just run the updatb mes for the last 5 months worth, maybe longer - been mid project on a very intricate & complex set of sequences & arrangements/edits & did not wish to risk breaking something by updating until end of project.
Sincere apologies for the duff information there
One more question please Ann - What's 'Shutter Encoder' please?
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‎May 25, 2023
05:18 AM
Has the sample rate changed?
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‎May 25, 2023
05:08 AM
Hi David.
As has already been posted, you can't do UHD with Encore and you certainly don't want it to re-transcode your footage for the what - 4th time? It's the workflow you're looking at that really worries me though - why are you rendering your interim video files as lossy mp4 please? Whenever you have to render out an edit or anything at all that will later on especially be put to an optical disc please never use a lossy type such as MP4, H.264 - none of them. At the minimum you should do these to a Quicktime ProRes 422HQ file. They are a lot larger than the MP4 are for sure, but you're not making the fundamental error of encoding to a lossy file type that in turn will need to be transcoded to a lossy file type. You're throwing away resolution by doing this, making UHD utterly superfluous even if Encore did handle it.
The other thing is that by doing a UHD title in the first place you are also excluding all those who do not have a UHD capable player & display as a UHD Blu-Ray is not backwards compatible with 'Full HD' Blu-ray (aka 'regular') and you would therefore need to create both types as there were a seriously small number of UHD players sold (Personally, I believe this is why studios are currently trying to push streaming on demand instead of optical discs - they uprezzed a lot of catalogue to UHD/4K, but the UHD format was not the same evolutionary jump from regular Blu-ray as Blu was to DVD, and the lack of backwards compatibility on the discs sealed it's fate. If it had been allowed to mix HD & UHD on a disc - and it should be possible if the menu system is in 1920x1080 HD, with the UHD version of the film or whatnot being available as an option for those who had a player that could play it but no, that would have been too easy. The point is they spent money upscaling titles and want to get some sort of return on their payout - I have no sympathy as that'll teach them for faking their 'UHD' content in the first place).
Ahem. Sorry about that. Back to the topic.
Frame Rate is another consideration with Blu-ray. If your footage is at either 25 or 29.97fps (or 50/60fps) then you have to encode it as interlaced, not progressive scan and additionally you will have definite territory issues. 25fps often won't run in the USA/Japan, and 29.97 will often not run on EU Blu-ray players either. I'd absolutely recommend that if you have any choice in the matter, shoot & edit at 24fps (not 23.976) as Blu-ray can handle this universally in all territories with no need for either frame rate converting (which inevitably causes artefacts) or interlacing (which throws away half of your vertical resolution)
Blu-ray is a lot of fun, but has a steep learning curve.
Welcome to the madhouse!
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‎May 23, 2023
06:14 AM
No problem at all.
If on a PC, simply select the 'Quicktime' option & then the H.264 codec.
I can post screenshots if it will help
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