Can't find the old sticky on recommended procedure

[tommytucker]

I know it must be moved somewhere. What I would like to know is just a simple recommendation on burning the BEST quality video. What settings. I recently purchased a Samsung 1080i 720p plasma and now want to make sure that I am burning best quality for playback of projects. I was able to burn an ISO image and then make a DVD of that, but VS10+ crashes all the time on that. I know I can create a video MPG file and burn that with no problem, but then I see on the forum that it is a 'lossy' format. To summarize, I have a project of AVI DV files from cam or other sources and I just need to know how to get to the SHARE stage and make the best quality DVD from that. Also, since the plasma is 720 progressive and also will play back 1080 interlaced, not sure about those NTSC DVD versus MPEG2 settings on burn settings.

[Black Lab]

It's actually under the Please Read This First thread, and also on the Video Products Tutorials forum.

I won't get into the reason why it's not called the Recommended Procedure anymore, but if it's the suggested workflow for VideoStudio it should be prominently displayed on the VS forum. If people with problems saw that and read it first it would eliminate a lot of the repeat questions. Just my 2 cents.

Anyway, it's called the Suggested Workflow now.

[etech6355]

Also, since the plasma is 720 progressive and also will play back 1080 interlaced, not sure about those NTSC DVD versus MPEG2 settings on burn settings.

Whether your outputting to a 480i/480p/720p/1080i/1080p has no bearing. All this is handled by your playback device such as dvd players etc. The above settings are TV Display Modes, they are not codecs, so always leave your source video in the same format with respect to framesize & fielding information.
It's totally un-necessary to recode your video to 1280x720 or 1080 nor de-interlace the video because of your HDTV. If your looking to retain the best quality you especially wouldn't do this because this would require a complete re-rendering / re-sampling of every detail of your video file. This will actually reduce the quality of the video compared to retaining the original videos format.

You maintain the same settings as the source video(s). Hardware device players need to see & use the original video to display it correctly on any of the above TV Display Modes.
So if your source videos are Type DV 720x480, 29.97fps, lower field first, 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio you create the mpeg2 file for dvd with those same parameters.
The difference in converting to mpeg2 will be your video_bit_rate & compression for the quality of the video along with your source of compatible audio format. Dolby is usually the choice for audio since it doesn't use much space on the dvd, this extra space that dolby doesn't use can be used by encoding the video at a higher bit rate to increase the quality or put more video onto one dvd.

I playback all my videos, both standard & highdefinition in their original video parameters they were originally recorded at on a few different SDTV's & HDTV's and use the folowing TV Display Modes, 480i/480p/720p/1080i/1080p. They all play nice and smooth. The 1080p mode will give the higher resolution because that's the mode 1080p, which the hardware playback device performs the conversion to progressive scan and drives the HDTV in 1080p HDTV Display Mode correctly. Many of my videos are 720x480 Ntsc Standard Definition. The hardware playback device upconverts the 720x480 interlaced video to whatever Display Mode I have it set to display at. Same with all the SD & HD formats and this also includes down_converting HighDefintion to Standard Definition. This is all done by the playback device. Same as the new dvd players that perform upconversions, it's the samething. HighDefintion players do both, upconvert & down convert.

[tommytucker]

I think I have this right then. No matter what the format of my original project source, I want to have the conversion match project settings of the source, I want to use MPEG2, no compression, make sure that do not convert compliant MPG is checked, don't edit MPG or it will re render.

[etech6355]

No matter what the format of my original project source, I want to have the conversion match project settings of the source

90% of the time yes, using standard source video files. Your usage in wording "No matter" makes this statement somewhat confusing.

I would start reading the product tutorials.
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewforum.php?f=27

It takes a book to explain the "How To's" for video editing.
I suggest when starting to keep things simple. Then progress to complex editing. The most important thing to remember in video are the parameters of the source & target videos:
FrameSize, FrameRate, Fielding, DataRate, Audio Format, Aspect Ratio