Newbie help for Premiere 6

[Jai]

Could anyone tell me what project settings to use with Premiere 6 if I want to capture from a DV camcorder to later convert to mpg for a VCD? I am trying to see if some problems I have been having are related to how I have initially captured my video. Thanks!

[EricB]

When you first start Premiere, choose NTSC or PAL DV as your format. Capture and edit, then same to same format. Encode using TMPGenc or CCE.

[Jai]

Thanks for your quick reply :) I've been having problems makign a watchable VCD where everything looks all digitally scrambled. The process I have been doing is what you suggested, then using TMPEG to encode and Nero (VCD template loaded) to burn. The "VCD" plays in my standalone player and computer rom but is awful. Does this sound like a capture problem, or can I rule this out? Thanks again!

[invisibler]

without knowing more, your issue probably has to do with interlacing and is easily correctable...when you capture DV footage, it is interlaced, meaning that it looks fine when you play it out as DV video, but when you watch it on your computer or convert it to another format, you will see horizontal lines and/or a stuttering, flickering quality...what you need to do is deinterlace the DV footage...you can do this when you are outputting from Premiere or you can do this later when you are encoding in tmpgenc...

in Premiere 6, do so by right clicking your footage in the time line before you output...then click "video option" then "field options" then select "always deinterlace"...then go to output your movie...leave all the settings the way you normally would but in "keyframe and rendering option" change "lower field first" to "no fields"...then output...and run through tmpgenc the way you did before except in tmpgenc "settings" go to "advanced" and change video source type to "non interlace (progressive)"...

otherwise to deinterlace in tmpgenc, export from Premiere the way you previously did then when you import footage into tmpgenc, change "settings" "advanced" "video source type" to "interlace" ...then go a little farther down and double click "deinterlace" and then"enable filter"....good luck!

[EricB]

or...

Not to disagree, but I never deinterlace. What you may be doing is using a standard VCD template which sets the video bitrate at 1150 which is just way too slow. Make sure you encode with the TMPGenc template unlocked, and boost the bitrate to at least 1500 - 2000. The resulting MPG should look good on your computer prior to making a VCD. If you are a newbie, this is called an XVCD where it isn't done at true VCD specs.

[invisibler]

you can make a good looking VCD from DV at the normal VCD bitrate without the movie playing back all "digitally scrambled"

[EricB]

sure... not looking to argue, just stating the facts. I produce xVCD, SVCD, and today DVD! from DV video and never deinterlace.

Maybe if jai wants to define "digital scrambling" we can offer more help. If the scrambling is blocking, then bitrate and motion estimate can be used.

If it is the "comb filter" type lines whenever movement is present, then deinterlacing may be called for.

[invisibler]

I hear you EricB..I agree with you on all counts

[jnunez]

How do you unlock the Template. I need to adjust the bitrate

[invisibler]

to unlock the settings on TMPGenc, first go down to the lower right corner of and click "load"...then load the settings template you want...then click "load" again and in the folder called "Extra" double click "unlock"

[jnunez]

Thank you very much.