Hi,

I am looking to buy some software to help me create DVDs of AVI files that I create . I would really appreciate some advice on a couple of issues if anyone can help.

For my work I create AVI files (of 3D traffic simulations). I can create these as MPEG-4, Cinepak or just as full frames (ie uncompressed). However, in order to get a decent video I set the screen resolution to 1920x1200 when I record these. Any less and the quality is too poor for presentation.

I need to create a PAL DVD with a menu and a number of these videos on it. The first problem is that PAL DVDs use MPEG-2 which has a resolution of 720x576. At the moment I use VirtualDub to resize the original AVIs to 720x576 - this seems to be able to do it without losing too much quality. Then I render this file to MPEG-2. I have used Ulead and Adobe for this so far and Adobe gives massively better results when rendering. I assumed rendering to MPEG-2 would be the same on all software but is it the case that the softwares use different quality encoders?

Anyhoo, I then create a DVD such that there is a simple menu with a button for each clip, a background bitmap and the start and end of each video clip has a cross-fade from and to black at start and finish.

Simple, but I have to use three or four items of software to do it which is riiculous! (ie virtualdub, adobe premiere pro, adobe encore and ulead) So my question is this:

1) Can anyone suggest a good package that will do all of this for me (ie accepts 1920x1200 AVI and converts to MPEG-2 at a decent quality and can also produce DVDs with a flexible menu system and a simple cross-fade at start and finish of each clip).

2) For my personal understanding! Are all mpeg-2 encoders the same or is say adobe better than ulead??

I have looked at adobe premiere pro and DVD encore but neither accept 1920x1200 files and I would need premiere for the cross-fade and encore for the DVD menu as far as I can work out. Expensive to buy both for such a simple operation!

Any help and/or suggestions greatly appreciated...

Jon

Have you tried just importing your large AVI files into Premiere Pro? You should then simply be able to either:

a) right click on the clip in the asset list and choose 'interpret as' (or whatever it's called), choose a suitabel option to convince Premiere it's normal DV-AVI, then drop it o n a timeline; or

b) dump the high res version on the timeline and just scale it to fit.

Export as MPEG2 and then import into Encore. done!

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

Hi Alan,

Thanks for your help. This works but the quality of the output video is not as good as when I run it through VirtualDub first to resize it and then render it in Adobe so I will probably continue to do this for the timebeing.

One more question relating to my problem - To make menus etc in Encore is it a requirement to have Photoshop or can you just use bitmaps etc for backgrounds and buttons? Having to buy Premiere, Encore and Photoshop seems a bit much to me for what I need to do...

Thanks again
Jon