Compatibility with Adobe Premiere

[Ford Prefect]

Hi Folks,
I'm having a strange compatibility problem and wondered if anyone might be able to help.
For many years I was a Media Studio Pro user (V6.0/6.5/8.0) and DVD WS User (v1.3/2.0)
I also Have Video Studio 9 and 10 and DVD MF (V1.0/2.0/4.0/6.0)
What a great set of products, loved them to bits.
I was very saddened by the demise of MSPro and lack of forward compatibility.
Anyway I bit the bullet and moved to Adobe Premiere and Encore (CS4).
Both good products once you get to know them.
However, if I create a movie in PremPro and output it as an avi file (16:9), although it plays OK in Windows Media Player, when I import it into any ex-Ulead or Corel product it shows up as 4:3 (everybody tall and thin).
I'm an experienced user of editing software and a skilled PC user so I've tried all sorts to try and get to the bottom of this.
A couple of friends of mine say they also have the same problems between PPro CS5 and Video Studio X2, and also between Premiere Elements 8 and Video Studio X2.
An additional (very strange) thing which has also been confirmed by my two colleagues is that compatibility seems to be OK on short clips, but never on anything more than 30 mins long. Applies to both avi and mpeg2 outputs from PremPro.
I have genuine Adobe products and have contacted support but they said it must be down to Corel. (How unexpected!!!)
Any views or info welcome, especially from anyone who has both Adobe and Corel products.
Regards.

[Ron P.]

Welcome to the forums..

There must be something with the codecs being used by Adobe's programs, that is not being read correctly by Corel's. In Corel as you know, for NTSC video the 16:9 aspect ratio is done by non-square pixel rendering. The 720 x 480 is not a true wide-screen, 16:9 aspect ratio, nor is it a true 4:3. The last version I had of Premiere was I think 6, and have played around with the trial version of Premiere Elements. I don't recall exactly, but think that you must be more precise with setting your aspect ratio in them, more so than the checkbox for 16:9 in VS or DVD MF.

When you insert your video files, what does the properties show when you right-click on one and select properties, or pressing the i icon to the left side of the timeline? If DVDMF is reading the file correctly, it should show it to be 16:9. If not, try forcing it to change, by going to the Settings, and changing the Project settings manually to see if it might correct it.

Lastly I might try doing a repair install, to see if that may help. If you installed the Adobe products after having DVDMF already installed, those codecs may have over-written the ones used by DVDMF, and DVDMF may not like that.

[Ford Prefect]

Hi Ron,
Thanks for your interest and yes, I agree with you that there is obviously some kind of codec problem.
But Ive tried re-installing in different orders and it makes no difference.
However, you are a long way behind if the last one you used was Premiere 6.
As I said I'm on CS4 which is about six versions later and export is now done using the AME (Adobe Media Encoder). Settings are many and varied but if you choose a preset such as PAL Widescreen, it does in fact automatically set all the right things, including the non-square pixel aspect ratio.
The most baffling thing to me is why does it work perfectly on short clips but "lose" the aspect ratio on long ones?
I'm not even sure what the change-over point is but from info shared from colleagues it seems that less than around 25 minute clips are ok, whereas over 30 min clips are definitely not.
I've just completed a series of tests with one 5 minute clip and one 32 minute clip.
I imported the two clips using Prem Pro, they were both avi clips from my camera and imported with properties of PAL Widescreen, etc. and show a compression using "DV Video Encoder Type 2" when opened in DVD MF6.
I then put them into a Prem Pro project and set the output to be exactly the same avi, PAL DV Widescreen, PAR 1.4587 etc
Now this is the most intersting bit:
The short clip processed just the same and showed up in DVD MF6 with compression "DV Video Encoder Type 2".
However, the long clip (even though it was processed from the same project with the exact same settings, showed up in DVD MF6 with compression "Uncompressed".
So I'm going to send all this stuff to Adobe as it's obviously some kind of problem between PPro and AME which is dependent on clip size.
I'll keep you posted , unless someone else's experiments can shed any light.
Regards.