Exporting from Premiere Question

[Shawn]

Hey all,

I had a couple of questions I was wondering if anyone could help me with. I'm new to Premiere CS 5.5, but have got the basics down well enough as far as editing goes, however I had a bit of trouble last night trying to export to DVD. The main problem was that the color was off in quite a few shots. It just looked way too red, particularly people's faces. The footage as seen on my camera and viewed on Premiere looks fine, just when I exported to DVD it looks crappy.

I was wondering if my export settings could have something to do with it. I set the video as MPEG-2 and clicked the box that says 'Use Maximum Render Quality' and the other that said 'Render at maximum depth'. I also wasn't too sure about whether I had set the 'TV standard' to the right setting. I shot the footage on my American Canon GL-2, so I put the setting as NTSC, but I am living in Australia the TVs are PAL I believe. Should I have set it to PAL, and if so, could that be why the color is off?

If anybody who uses Premiere CS 5.5 on a regular basis to produce DVDs could give me a bit of a heads up as far as the best export setting to get high quality DVDs from standard definition tapes, I would be very grateful.

Oh and any suggestions as to why everyone is so ruddy ruddy would be icing on the cake.

Thanks a bunch!

Shawn

 

[josh-ozirigpro]

ruddy ruddy?

Anyway, if you're shooting HD you don't need to worry about PAL/NTSC standards - ONLY frame rate becomes an issue with this footage. For instance, if you want that footage to work well on a 25/50 TV then you're going to have to "pull down" the footage if you want the standard frame rate. If, however, it's going to be all-digital (i.e; computer) then it probably isn't such a huge issue.

From what you've mentioned, it definitely sounds like a Render issue. Have you tried using the preset for DVD? Go for High Quality Widescreen setting for DVD and leave the settings at default and see how you go.

Changing the color depth might have an impact on the image and could be the reason for the "off" colors.

 

[Shawn]

Hey Josh, thanks for the quick response. Thing is I shoot in SD, so I'm just a bit concerned about the whole PAL/NTSC thing. Been through a lot of the online tutorials, but most of them seem to focus on Hi-Def, Blue-ray, and/or exporting for the web. Guess I'm a bit behind the times with standard definition. I'll have another go and try using the PAL settings. Just hoping somebody can lend a hand so I don't have to spend all my money on DVDs while I learn from my mistakes...

 

[josh-ozirigpro]

Right! My bad! My brain must've switched off - not enough chocolate in the diet, I guess!

The whole HD thing has become quite ubiquitous and that's why 99% of the stuff you see around is all talking about that. Essentially the PAL vs NTSC stuff was finally worked out (thank god) meaning you can now pinch the lower prices for the US cameras instead of getting stiffed double the price in little old Oz!

I can't really offer too much advice on the pulldown process as I've (fortunately) only ever read about it and never had to do it myself!

However, I still think it's more a render issue than anything else.
You should be able to have a preview of the footage before burning it to DVD...

I'm all for setting up a DVD Donation for you if you need it,
*10c of each item sold goes to FilmMakers in need!

 

[Shawn]

So, I tried again using the 'MPEG-2 DVD' setting for Format, and the only thing I changed from that was to raise the quality to 5 on the Video settings section and to tick the boxes that say 'Use Maximum Render Quality' and 'Render at Maximum depth'. I did one using just one chapter from the finished product and it looked a lot better, though still a bit too red in spots. Encouraged, I burnt the full DVD using those settings, and it sucked again.

Result: Back to the way it was before, way too red.

Could it be that I need a higher quality DVD? Or something else? I'm dyin' here.