Adobe Premier Elements Help

[BlueDevil]

Hi Guys,
I am putting together a DVD of a recent trip and have run into a problem. For various reasons I had to edit the above water and underwater video seperately. I then intended to simply combine the two projects into one and burn it to disc. However it has turned out to be not so simple. I thought I would simply be able to import one project into the other but it seems there is no facility to do this (or not that I can find). So i tried 'burning' the project to a file on the HDD and then importing this video file into the other project. This works, but the quality of the imported video is awful, even on a computer screen it looks bad so I hate to think what it would look like when I burn it to disc and see it on a large screen TV.

I am hoping that someone can suggest another way of doing it. I haven't tried burning the footage to an actual DVD then importing it since I figured that burning the image to HDD would be more convenient and I presumed of at least equal quality

Thanks, Dave

 

[BlueDevil]

The lack of replies to my question has got me worried! I'm guessing if anyone had a simple solution to my problem they would have posted something by now. I have put a huge amount of time into this project so I am keen to sort it out. To put it simply all I want to do is 'merge' or 'combine' two projects and retain the full quality of each. Anyone got any ideas?

 

[Maui Bound]

Not sure this will help, but I save each project as an mpeg (high def) and then create a new project and import the two mpegs I created separately. I'm not sure if this answers the question.

 

[DaFireMedic]

I usually export the complete edited videos, then use a third party program (Adobe Encore in my case) to produce the DVD. There are far cheaper ones, in fact a low end (but capable) DVD authoring software program probably came with your computer. I don't know if this helps, but I think thats what most people do to incorporate multiple video clips into a DVD.

 

[BlueDevil]

Hi Guys - thanks for the suggestions. I think I have probably found an answer!

I went onto Adobe forums and posted my problem. The suggestion I was given was to export the file to the HDD as an AVI file rather than burning to disc in the DVD format I was using. Apparently there is very little compression with AVI (I'm not too technical on these issues myself). So I just had a quick go at it and my initial impression is that this works well. Won't know for sure I guess until I complete the project and watch it on a large screen TV but what I am seeing on the computer monitor looks pretty much like the original quality.

Thanks for the help - I am feeling much happier now! I was thinking I may have wasted weeks of work on this project, but it looks like I have been saved!!

 

[DaFireMedic]

Apparently there is very little compression with AVI

This depends on the codec used. Avi is the "container", and different codecs may be used within that which use varying levels of compression.

For best quailty, use either uncompressed as the codec, or a visually lossless codec such as Lagarith or Huffyuv (Both are free. Download and install them if you don't have them). The problem is that these produce large file sizes.

You could also export to a DV codec (such as Microsoft DV) which generally looks pretty good, but is compressed 5:1.

The point is to use a good codec when exporting files to avi.

 

[BlueDevil]

Thanks for the further info. Premiere Elements gives two options for exporting files as AVI. It offers either Microsoft DV AVI or Microsoft AVI. I used Microsoft DV since it was the default setting. I notice you say it is compressed 5:1 but the result I have got from it looks pretty good. On the computer screen I don't think I could distinguish it from the original footage. I will burn the whole project to a DVD soon so I can have a look at how it looks on a larger TV screen.

Thanks.

 

[h2ovideo]

DaFireMedic is correct, it depends on your codec, but if you convert all of your project to the same file extension, you can then use any third party DVD burning program to put as many project on as the DVD will allow. A good beginner DVD creator program is made by Sonic, which I think was bought out by Roxio, called DVD Creator. It is easy and a little more sophisticated than the programs that comes on your computer

 

[cjfox]

Looks like you solved the problem, but for the record, I burn trial DVDs all the time, often to move the project between computers. I use the Premeir Elements burning feature, and the 'media downloader" feature to import. Works great for me, no loss that i can tell, and I play back on a 40" Lcd. Helps with slow computers and a big project (over 1 hour).