HI,

I am looking at suggestions for a good workflow to output a HD 24P (23.98) timeline to DVD (SD) with good quality.  Outside AVID, I am using Sorenson Squeeze for encoding and Adobe Encore for authoring.

This is what I am doing now:

- Switch 24P HD sequence to SD

- Export Quicktime DV using Avid Codec

- Compress to MPEG-2 NTSC 29.97 in Squeeze

- Import MPEG-2s in Encore DVD for authoring

Thanks.

No don't export QT DV.

If quality is your primary concern then output the HD timeline in its native codec (DNxHD I assume) or Animation (100% quality is lossless) or uncompress. Let Sorenson Squeeze do the resizing and compression. Going to DV first before SD MPEG 2 is inefficient way of preserving the color information you have in your HD video.

If you are going to SD first then at least use a less compressed codec (DV50, 2:1, etc) or better yet use uncompressed 1:1.

Best I've found for encoding is TMPGEnc 4.x Express. Here's a link:

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/te4xp.html

I export a QT reference movie from the Avid timeline. Import the 23.976 file into the above software. Set the import type to 1920x1080 square pixel. Set the output to 720x480 NTSC with pulldown insertion and whammo! Excellent results every time. And very fast as well. Lots of additional options if you want them, such as color correction, cropping, noise reduction, audio levels, etc.

Use your favorite authoring package to create and burn your DVDs.

For quickies, I use TMPGEnc's sibling, DVD Creator. Nothing fancy, but it's fast and reliable.

Chris

 Excellent!  Thanks for all the suggestions guys.

Thierry.

I can offer my workflow for HD to DVD. I use XDCAM HD and edit the proxie files before conforming to HD. When I am finished editing I select consodiate/transcode under "Clip".Then click on transcode and select the appropriate codec. I generally transcode 24P projects to DNxHD 36 which gives very satisfactory results and takes suprisingly little disc space. DNxHD 115 would create a slightly better result but takes almost 4 times the storage. Once transcoded, the new DNxHD sequence is then selected and exported to Avid DVD via Sorenson as a Quicktime Ref file using the recommended settings. The mpeg 2 large file settings in Sorenson do a great job with little tweeking. If the original was in 16 x 9 format, the resulting video out of Sorenson will automatically be anamorphic and ready for enhanced wide screen TVs.

Dom Q. Silverio:

If quality is your primary concern then output the HD timeline in its native codec (DNxHD I assume)

I use this technique and it gives very good results with Squeeze 4.5.  The only thing to look out for is if you use a 10-bit codec Squeeze doesn't like it.  Mix down to DNxHD 8-bit.