creating a dvd out of Premiere Pro CS4, proper settings?

[burrowsfan]

Ok, I need some help! I have about an hour and a half worth of video (and need to do similar hour and a half dvd's in the near future!) on the timeline in Premiere Pro CS4, and I need to export. So I set it to MPEG2-DVD, then custom. I slide the quality bar up to the highest settings, which is 5. Now this is where the questions kick in...read below:

Under that do I set the frame rate to 29.97 drop frame or non drop frame?

Field order: lower, upper or None (progressive)?

Bitrate settings:

Bitrate encoding: cbr, vbr 1-pass, or vbr 2pass?

Minimum bitrate: ??? what should I set this to?

Target bitrate: ??? what should I set this to?

Maximum bitrate: ??? what should I set this to?

GOP Settings:

M frames - 3
N frames - 15

Audio:

PCM or Dolby Digital?

Video Noise reduction:

Does this need to be checked?

Multiplexing:

Not sure what this does either??


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Baldrick]

Doesn't premiere come with a manual that describes all setttings?

But anyway,

Field order: lower, upper or None (progressive)?

If you source is interlaced(like dv or capture analog tv/vhs) then set it to lower or upper. If you source is not interlaced set it to progressive.

Bitrate encoding: cbr, vbr 1-pass, or vbr 2pass?
Minimum bitrate: ??? what should I set this to?
Target bitrate: ??? what should I set this to?
Maximum bitrate: ??? what should I set this to?

Set it to 2-pass for best quality and if you want it to fit on a dvd5/dvd9. Use a bitrate calculator to calculate the average/target bitrate (see our tools list). Isn't the max and min already defined if you choose the dvd profile? If not choose around from 2MBit to 8MBit.

PCM or Dolby Digital?

Use dolby digital, it will take less space so you will get more space for the video.

Multiplexing:

It means if you want single mpg video file or if not then one video file and one audio file. Most dvd authoring application supports both.

[Brainiac]

Adding to what Baldrick said, your best bet (in my opinion) is to choose the NTSC High Quality preset and make the necessary changes.

Yes Baldrick, the max, min and average are defined if you choose one of the presets.

At the bottom of the Export Settings screen, you will see the Estimated File Size. If you make any changes, make sure you look there to see what effects your changes will make.

And be aware that some authoring software works more efficiently with single video and audio files.

[filmboss80]

You did not say anything about the source video or the Premiere preset you are using for editing. For DV-AVI (from mini-dv camcorders), your field order would be lower, but if your source is something else, you need to stay consistent with whatever it is. The default timecode you selected -- drop frame or non drop frame -- ought to be maintained in the encode.

For an hour and a half, I would do VBR with Max bitrate of 7200 and minimum bitrate of 2000 with Dolby ac3 audio (not PCM because it's a space hog) set at 192 for most voice-over related material or 256 for music-oriented programs.

2-pass is loooonnnggg! I'd do single-pass, but that's just me.

GOP settings usually deal with I-frames, P-frames, and B-frames. It looks like Adobe wants to call P-frames M frames and B-frames N frames. If so, I would go with 2 M frames and leave the N frames at the default.

Multiplexing puts both m2v (video) and ac3 (audio) together into a single MPEG-2 (mpg) file. I prefer to keep my streams separate (demuxed) until authoring is complete.