Thread: Is better to export to MPEG2 with PPro...

....or export to AVI & let Encore do the transcoding...I have been told its better to export to AVI and then transcode with Encore as the output quality is better...is this true? How do others here work?

I've heard it's better to create the mpg in Sony Vegas rather than let DVDA render it. BUT I have no experience with Encore so don't know. In fact I don't really know why I answered your thread other than I don't like people to think there questions are landing on deaf ears.

I often export my videos in the best quality I can and let encore do the conversion as it does maintain a lot of quality. I don't use Sony Vegas but when I export from Avid I export it as a quicktime reference which basically means it exports as native as possible, and Encore works fine with this and it looks great.

I render mpeg2 right out of premiere and then import it into encore. I do this to save time. It saves from rendering the video file twice, once an avi or mov, then let encore compress it to mpeg2). If you export MPEG2 out of Premiere, Encore will just have to convert the audio wav file which takes minutes if that.

However, you need to do some math to determine how long your video project is, and make sure it will fit on your 4.7 GB DVD. If my project is an hour or less, I always compress from Premiere using the following settings.



You can see the file size is about 3.7 GB.

Most DVDs player can play consistently 10 Mbps/sec, however some of the older DVD players are limited to around 8 Mbps/sec. So I don't render above 8. No client complaints yet.

If you're not sure which data rate settings to choose (if you have more then 1 hour of footage to put on the DVD), then you can always let Encore do it. Encore will maximize the quality to fit the DVD disc.

In my opinion, when you maximize the data rate settings when exporting from Premiere or you let Encore maximize the same footage, there isn't going to be a quality difference.

Hope this helps!

-Mike