authoring a dvd for playback in United States

[thecrock]

HI all,

some advice please.
I have a project in Premiere Pro. The source files are 25fps. My target is a USA compatible DVD.

Should I change my Premiere Sequence settings to 23.976 and export an muxed mpeg2 for author with DVD Santa or keep 25fps and choose NTSC in DVD Santa.

Any advice is most appreciated.

[jagabo]

If the PAL source is 25p you can use DGPulldown to add pulldown flags to 59.94 fields per second. You won't need to reencode the video or change the audio length.

[manono]

You won't need to reencode the video...

Unless it's 720x480 already, he will, for NTSC DVD.

But if it's being worked on in Premiere Pro, doesn't that, by definition, mean reencoding? And if it's interlaced (although it shouldn't be if he's asking about 23.976fps), then DGPulldown isn't called for.

[jagabo]

You won't need to reencode the video...

Unless it's 720x480 already, he will, for NTSC DVD.

Yes, of course. I wasn't thinking straight this morning!

[_Al_]

First , is the footage interlaced? Confirm of deny that, it is quite important. If yes, you just cannot do it decently or somehow well directly in Premiere. NLE cannot resize interlaced footage properly and on the top of that change frames per second.

If yes,then there is a problem. Same old, same old. Best to do it outside of Premiere. Using free software for example,
First exporting from Premiere AC3, dolby digital audio, DVD compatible. Then exporting some lossless avi . Loading that AVI into Avisynth, QTGMC bob deinterlace it to 50p, resize it to 720x480, change those 50fps to 59.94 using convertFPS("ntsc_double"), re-interlace it again, and encoding script to interlaced m2v video (using HcEncoder for example, DVD compatible stream. Then authorize DVD from those streams.

[thecrock]

Ok thanks a lot guys.
AI, I dont want to get my hands that dirty. I don't have the time. But thank you for the detailed workflow.

What is the worst that can happen if i export the project from Premiere with TV Standard set to NTSC which by default is 23.976 in Premiere(it can be toggled to 29.97) and author a DVD using DVDSanta with NTSC in settings?

My source footage is documentary quality, pretty rough, so this doesn't have to be perfect. I just need something that is playable and not so stuttery as to look unprofessional.

Once again thanks for the responses guys.

[_Al_]

Again, is your original footage interlaced or not? Use mediainfo to find out if you do not know.

You can be here for a week and discussion would not move on, or folks would throw general advice's, which is not helping really.

[manono]

AI, I dont want to get my hands that dirty.

If that means you don't want to, or don't know how to, determine if the footage is interlaced or progressive, then you can screw it up royally by choosing the wrong framerate. I don't (and won't) use either of the two programs you're using so more precise than that I can't be. You could always make available 10 seconds or so from the source so we can have a look.

[davexnet]

Give AVStoDVD a try, does a pretty good job creating NTSC interlaced from PAL interlaced.
Here's a sample I encoded from a 1080i 25 fps sample I found on the 'net

Set NTSC in the preferences and save. Then add your source to the project.
Pretty slow going on my old AMD FX 4300, about 6 FPS but I think the results are worth it.
Need to have Avisynth 2.6x installed for AVStoDVD.

[jagabo]

What is the worst that can happen if i export the project from Premiere with TV Standard set to NTSC which by default is 23.976

Jerky motion, severe comb artifacts, jagged aliasing artifacts, blurry double exposures...

[thecrock]

So many cool people ready to help. Thank you all.

My footage is 1920x1080 / 25fps / Interlaced Upper.

[LMotlow]

That info won't help much. It could be 25fps PAL progressive encoded as interlaced (25p at 1920x1080 is not valid for Bluray). It could be film with some form of pulldown, which is progressive video with periodic interlaced frames and encoded as interlaced. It could be 23.976 or 24fps film original progressive, speeded up to PAL 25fps and encoded as interlaced. It could be a lot of things. Manono is correct in asking for a sample.

And I guess you know that 1920x1080 won't work for DVD.