Premiere 6.5 and DVD Authoring

I'm going to build a new computer soon and i'm going for the HP DVD200i, Memorex +RW drive or Sony's multiformat drive.

The question is, i'm looking to get Premiere's 6.5 upgrade (i have 6.0) but i'm wondering if anyone has authored a DVD directly from Premiere (as adobe claims you can "direct from timeline")
so, has anyone authored a DVD directly from Premiere 6.5? How long did it take? What kind of hassle did it put you through?

Thanks much

 

IMO, DVD+R/W isn't as compatible a format as DVD-R/W (check the little thingies in between D and R). If you must have DVD+, then get a Sony +/- (plus-dash?) combo drive EDIT: arse, that's a big link. It's the DRX500UL. Otherwise, if you plan on having the majority of folks watch these DVDs, and you don't want to spend a billion canadian dollars (US$475 :-D ) on a burner, get something based on Pioneer's A04 DVD-R/W burner.

 

I know about the whole DVD Forum's sanction on the -RW format; for some reason, i don't like it as much.. and i'm leaning more towards +RW

having said that, i was indeed considering Sony's multifunction drive (as i said in my original post)

but the question remains, has anyone used Premiere 6.5 to author a DVD via DVDit?

 

Art,

I recently purchased a DVD+RW drive, and next weekend I plan to test it with Nero, Premiere, and a few other programs. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

suring by "authoring" it basically means just the encoding?

anywya,

Nick "Shorty" Long

 

well, "authoring" as in encoding and burning to disc. Adobe's gotten into the habit of using this when they discuss the new features for their 0.5 product update from 6.0 to 6.5

 

I have premiere 6.5 (PC):

Basically all premiere is doing is exporting the timeline to MPEG format along with an accompanying wav (or mp3) audio file (the mpeg file does not have any audio). Premiere's MPEG encoding interface allows you to save the files to DVDit's media folder. Then you fire up DVDit and author your DVD. Personally, I think DVDit is pretty poor in terms of interface and features, but the finished DVD is acceptable. I don't think I would ever use it for anything other than home movies, etc. Personally I'd like to get a different MPEG encoder and a more functional DVD authoring program.

If you have any more questions just let me know.

Bob

 

yah, this is going to be for personal / fun stuff pretty much; for my serious projects which i do for a small production team, i just output to DV and people switch it to SVHS.

you mentioned something about a different MPEG encoder... is there something not too good about Premiere's? Quality wise? and i know DVDit has a proprietory interface (too bad Apple won't make their DVD studio for windows); but i've heard you can import your own graphics from photoshop (does that work out ok?)

 

I wasn't just overly impressed with the quality of the resulting mpeg video file. I set it on the highest settings. Let me put it this way. Let's say you assemble a DV movie on your timeline, export it to the MPEG encoder and burn it to a DVD. If you pop the DVD into your player and sit back on the couch at a reasonable distance, you'll be perfectly happy watching your kids' ballgames or birthday parties.

I was able to import photoshop graphics and they looked fine. The most difficult part is figuring out where to put the graphics (the DVDit folder structure is a freakin' maze).

By the way you'll need some free disk space to do all this because Premiere actually creates the video and audio files. To give you an idea a 14 minute movie on the higest settings was 622MB for video and 151MB for wav audio