PE4 and CS2

[dalelpaq]

I would like to create an HD movie in PE4 and burn it to a Blu-ray disk. Actually, my plan is to copy the disk into a WD HV player ($129) and use that to view it on my TV. Anyway, I'm working in 1080p30 anamorphic and PE deals with it fine. BTW, if I load my original m2t footage directly into PPro, it doesn't seem to recognize it and I get all those foreign languages instead of a thumbnail. PE4 does see it fine. When I try to burn to Blu-ray, I'm told no burner is detected - I have a LG HD burner that works fine with PE4 if I'm in SD. But, if it was detected, my preset options don't seem to include progressive. I'm guessing the best I could do is use mpeg 2 1080i NTCS Dolby. Since my burner is not detected, I thought I would burn it to file and move it to PPro CS2 and burn it to Blu-ray from there. I didn't get that far (maybe PPro won't do it either) because there doesn't seem to be any option in PE4 to burn HD to file! Am I missing something here? Does PE7 solve all these problems? How to I get PE4 to recognize my burner for HD? Can I burn HD to file somehow? Is there a progressive preset I can find? Will PPro burn to Blu-ray? Any help would be appreciated. Dale

[Paul LS]

PPro CS2 does not have the option to burn Blu-ray and I am not sure if it will recognize a .m2t HDV MPEG2 as it is fairly old now.

PE4 and PE7 will only burn an interlaced Blu-ray disc using the 1080i MPEG2 or H.264 presets.

What model is your LG HD burner? Does it burn to Blu-ray or just HD-DVD, the old discontimued format.

PE4 should have the HDV MPEG2 presets and H.264 presets also. THey should be under Share, Personal Computer, MPEG. In MPEG there are presets for high definition MPEG2 and H.264 for burning to Blu-ray. But I dont have PE4 installed anymore so I can not check.

[Chuck Engels]

After answering Paul's questions about HDV and depending on the response;
if you can you might want to get the upgrade to CS3 or CS4, it would be well worth it.

[dalelpaq]

Thanks. First, the burner is an LG GGC-H20Lwhich is for Blu-ray and not the now obsolete HDV. PE4 recognizes the burner for SD but not HD. I found the mpeg-2 and Blu-ray H.264 options suggested. I have the PE4 manual open now but it's not very clear what to do next. Also, I can go with 1080i - I use After Effects and it, according to several authors, works best with progressive thus I set my HV30 to progressive and download in m2t from where I work without having to dinterlace. I doubt there would be a noticeable difference in quality on my HD TV for the final product.

That said, what I had hoped I could do to beat the ridiculous cost of HD media would be to burn to a file otherwise identical to the Blu-ray disk, then download the file over USB 2.0 to a Western Digital HD player which can then be physically moved from my PC room to the TV room and connected by HDMI right to the TV for full HD display. For $129, it seems a real economical way to look a various parts of my overall project on an HD TV w/o the cost of Blu-ray discs - if it will work.

As for saving as mpeg-2 or Blu-ray files - is it simply a matter of copying them to a Blu-ray disk later or, in my case, if it will work, the WD HD player? Can I still end up with menus, etc?

My guess is After Effects will output mpeg-2 etc as well so I can bypass PE4 for previews if this will all work. But, After Effects is a lousy NLE! so the desire to use PE4.

I'd love to upgrade to PPro CS4 but at this point in my work, PE4, except maybe for making the Blu-ray disks, does all I need. I love Adobe products but they change too fast to keep up financially!!

Your thoughts are appreciated. Dale

[Chuck Engels]

Have you gotten a firmware update for the burner? That is usually the answer to problems where the drive and software have trouble communicating properly.

[dalelpaq]

Chuck, I'll check it out. Standard Def works fine - it's only HD that's a problem!! Dale