HD TV and DVD sizes

[elDuck]

Hello,

I'm an utter newbie to video. I've been working through some problems over the last few days and am making progress but I need some guidance on sizes.

I've got a JVC Everio and (the hard way) have found out all about MOD files and that they can't be read easily into Adobe Premiere and that they are MPG2 files (sort-of) and how useful (or not) the software that comes with the JVC and Premiere Elements itself is...

Thankfully, along the way, this morning I found *this* lovely site and can see I'll be popping back to it! I wish I'd found you all a week or two ago I might have saved myself a lot of money and effort along the way.

Anyway, right now I am converting 99 files using HandBrake, into AVI files, ready to load the family holiday up into Premiere and edit it down to a manageable short video to watch. That looks like a nice tool.

But I could do with some guidance on screen sizes, please (I realised this only after sending 99 files to convert: doh!).

Now the Everio shoots a 16:9 wide-screen picture and squishes it into a 720x576 PAL file.

I will be shooting for two purposes:
1. for eventual on-line use.
2. for watching on our TV/DVD player.

For '1.' I will want a window size of about 640x360 and I have already done this in HandBrake under picture settings by setting the width/height to 640x360 which "un-squishes" the widescreen shot again. Result.

For '2.' I need help. I know that the HDTV format is 1920x1080. My DVD player is not an HD player, just an old thing that does DVD in either 16:9 or 4:3. And I would have thought that making AVI files to edit as 1920x1080 from a 720x576 file is going to not give me brilliant quality anyway. Just now the conversion is going on at 640x360 and that's when I realised that may not be the best answer. Maybe I should be converting to 720x405 to keep the ratio but without adding or losing pixels to interpolation on the width?

So what size should I be going to in order that I preserve the 16:9 widescreen format and can play it back on the average TV/DVD? I know that if I play it back on a 4:3 TV it will squish, but if I play it back on a 16:9 TV I want it to actually play as 16:9. So what size ought I be converting to in HandBrake so that when Premiere imports it and goes to spit out a DVD it has the best chance of fair quality from it?

Thanks.

[guns1inger]

If you want to maintain the quality you currently have then you want to do as little conversion as possible. If these are already mpeg2 files, and DVD compliant (see What is DVD - top left corner) then you are better off getting a dedicated mpeg-2 editor, editing the files, outputting as mpeg-2 (a smart, dedicated mpeg-2 editor will do this with as little re-encoding as possible), and authoring the results to DVD.

16:9 PAL DVD video is stored at 720 x 576 pixels, not 720 x 405 (and you can't have 405 lines anyway - it must be even, and should be a multiple of 16). All your resizing will do is reduce the quality so it looks even worse on your HD TV.

[elDuck]

See - I said I was a newbie

Point taken about an MPEG-2 dedicated editor.

I *thought* that I had purchased a proper editor. The software that comes with the Everio is awful and achieves very little. Searching around on the web I found that Adobe Premiere was apparently a good choice (I'm not that convinced now that I have used it although I *can* see potential) and it says that it handles MOD files - until I tried to use it and it crashed every couple of minutes (literally). The advice on various forums is one of: convert to AVI and then work on that to do ones editing; or rename to MPG and use it in whatever tool you have. But Premiere has a problem with MPG files that causes the crash (look up ippmpegdecoder.dll and you'll find what I mean). Adobe's own readme says to convert from MPEG. That's rather like admitting they didn't get it right when they wrote it!

Stuff from the Everio is only going to be family stuff so "high quality" is a relative statement I just don't want to make any awful mistakes with conversion and have to do it all again.

With regards editing, I also will be looking to edit files from a Canon 5D Mk II which is (in theory, I have not tried it) a MOV file with "Video: H.264, Audio: Linear PCM" and a 1920x1080 frame size.

My plan is to work out a good path through Premiere for these two uses. That way I learn one tool and can edit either bit of material from it and output it to DVD or the web as I need.

So my JVC stuff might go through HandBrake first and then into Premiere but the 5D output would go straight into Premiere. Either could go out to a DVD to sit by the TV... or on occasion up on the web.

All I'm looking to do is find the right workflow to optimise my chances of editing the files for these purposes.