Creating your own DVDs?

[Mad Dave]

Hi All,

Similar question to yesterday - I have Episodes 1-11 of Lost series 2, saved as XVID files (349mb each) and would really like to put them onto one or more DVDs that will play in a normal DVD player. Obviously it will need some kind of menu to select which episodes needs to play. What will I need to do this? I have a DVD-RW drive and also a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro - is this all I need?

Cheers

Dave

[Wildfire]

Nope Permiere pro will not do it for you. You'll need a DVD authoring package, not and editing one. You may be able to find some burning software that you can do it with eaisly.

[Mad Dave]

Doh. I also have Encore - any good?

[_dan_]

DVDit 6 by sonic is a very nice piece of DVD authoring software. You can create menus, sub-menus, add subs, languages etc etc.

If you want something less complicated, the Roxio Easy creator software is pretty good too.

Edited to say, you can create DVDs with Premiere Pro, just not the menus.

>> Edited by _dan_ on Thursday 2nd March 17:04

[Wildfire]

Yep if you know how to use Encre it is a great piece of kit.

[Mad Dave]

Thanks Dan.

And Wildfire - I don't know how to use it, in fact i've never even installed it, but I'm sure I can work it out - I managed to work out Dreamweaver, Flash, Quark

[ErnestM]

Wildfire said:

Nope Permiere pro will not do it for you. You'll need a DVD authoring package, not and editing one. You may be able to find some burning software that you can do it with eaisly.

Actually, I have been playing with Premier Pro 2.0 lateley and there is a rudimentary menu system in it now. Not as good as Encore, but not bad either.

Encore (I'm playing with 2.0 of it as well) is still my favourite...

ErnestM

[Wildfire]

Ah I only have Premire Pro 1.5.

Got Encore 2.0 though, much more versatile than 1.5, just wish I had the time to work out how to use all of it, between , AE, Premiere, Avid, PS, Illustrator and extensive 3D Studio Max time is a little short.

[Mad Dave]

I have Premier Pro 1.5 and Encore 1.5 anyway. Managed to work it out in Encore - seemed pretty simple. Only problem I have is that the movies I want to use are apparently the wrong resolution, so i'll try pulling them into Premier (once i've installed it) and try and alter that.

[Wildfire]

Yep Encore is really fussy about that, it needs to be the following for PAL playback:

720 x 576 (1.067) for 4:3
720 x 576 (1.422) for 16:9

[Mad Dave]

Can I modify it in Premier? It's just some episodes of Lost that were downloaded from the internet - I can see them but a friend of mine is a huge lost fan and doesn't have a computer, so I need to put them onto DVDs for her

[.Flyer]

I needed to burn some Lost epsodes to DVD and tried DVDit Pro 6 and Encore 1.5, but because the episodes are from the US and encoded at some funky fps rate (23.98), the files need to be converted to our fps (can't remember).

Tried several other solutions and ended up with Roxio Easy CD and DVD Creator 6 (which I already had). One of the apps in the suite is DVD Builder and for simple DVDs like burning a couple of episodes of Lost, is ideal. Encoding takes a couple of hours, but it's really easy to use.

[Wildfire]

24 fps for film
25 fps for PAL/SECAM
29.97 for NTSC

[Wildfire]

Shouldn't be an issue to burn them as NTSC as most DVD players automatically adjust for both and as long as she has a relativly modern TV then that should also auto adjust.

[voyds9]

Mad Dave said:

Can I modify it in Premier? It's just some episodes of Lost that were downloaded from the internet - I can see them but a friend of mine is a huge lost fan and doesn't have a computer, so I need to put them onto DVDs for her

Can't you just get her across for supper one evening.

[Mad Dave]

Thanks Flyer, ill try Roxio.


Voyds - that's some supper, 11 episodes!!

[_dan_]

If you create a PAL 25fps project in Premiere Pro and then load in your 24fps programme then it should convert it automatically. No worries.

[ErnestM]

Also in Premier, if your footage looks a bit "compressed", you have probably imported 4:3 into a 16:9 project (or vice-versa if the footage looks "fat". Quick, easy tip - right click on the imported asset and then "interperate footage". Also, don't forget the transform -> crop (with zoom) effect as that can get rid of any lingering "black space" around your footage. Interperate first so that you don't loose anything...

ErnestM