HiDef video edit and support in PE 7??

[dsttexas]

I've seen some posts by Chuck that you can't do HD video in Premier Elements, but that other software supports this.

I just bought a Canon EOS Rebel t2i camera that besides being a fantastic photo camera also records full HD 1080p video at 30fps, creating .MOV files, and want to start editing and burning HD DVD's, using my now fairly well understood PE7.

I was able to import some of these into PE7 and they certainly looked like HD in the Monitor. I burned to disk (hard drive) and used Nero to burn a DVD, but when played on HD TV it was not shown full HD screen but was shrunk in on all sides. Playing back the avi in Media Player and others on the PC seems to show full HD format, although lots of very un-smooth frame to frame skips and jumps.

I half suspect my DVD drive is not up to HD specs - Windows XP Dell XPS 410 system with DVD drive labeled: HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GSA-H31N.

So, my questions are:
1. Just what does PE7 do regarding HD movies, and do I need to look elsewhere to do this, and if so where?
2. Is my DVD drive an issue (tried googling it but not much HD info)?

Thanks folks!
Don

[Chuck Engels]

I've seen some posts by Chuck that you can't do HD video in Premier Elements, but that other software supports this.

Not sure how you came to that conclusion Don. Premiere Elements is a great High Definition Video editor.
It's just that it doesn't capture with much functionality so we recommend using another program to do the capturing, that's all. And that is only if we are talking about HDV from a tape camcorder, not from a hard or flash drive camcorder or camera.

Premiere Elements can handle most HD formats, some are a bit more challenging than others. It is the best editor you can get for the money if you are editing HDV from a MiniDV Tape based Camcorder

As far as burning HD Video to a Standard DVD there are particular ways to do that and your player has to be able to handle the format correctly. What export settings and format did you use and what player do you have?

[Paul LS]

You have burnt a standard definition DVD and your HDTV is expanding it to almost full screen size. To burn a HD disc you would need to burn to Blu-ray or a AVCHD disc and play it back on a Blu-ray drive.

[dsttexas]

Chuck - not sure what threads I saw regarding my comment that PE7 doesn't support HD video very well - it must have been related to capture issues as you mentioned. Sorry for the confusion.

As for the settings I had used, they were pretty much what was defaulted:
Playback setting for both playback and export were "DV 29.97i (720x480)". The only other option was "none".
Device Control was: "DV HDV device control", where device type was "standard" (not 'HDV device')
Display format was: 30fps drop-frame timecode"

When Sharing, I selected "Disc", then on next screen for DVD vs Blu-Ray I had "DVD" (If select Blu-Ray I get no burners detected msg and can only burn to Disc not to folder), and choose "Burn to folder (4.7G)" and for presets I had "NTSC_Dolby DVD" (I now see the 'widescreen' option as well, and may try that to see if makes a difference, along with "HDV device" above)

Given the above, and my DVD drive burn capability, I can see why what I got was a standard def. 4:3 format video shown in a shrunken view on my HD TV. My playback DVD is a 6 year old Sony SLV-D300p which as best as I can determine will only handle standard def. video DVD's.

So my questions now are:

1. Are there any settings changes you hinted at that I can make to burn a HD video on a Verbatim DVD-R disc? and
2. Would this produce anything better on the above DVD player? Or on a Blu-ray player?

I think as Paul LS stated, I'm looking at both a new Blu-ray burner drive for my PC and a Blu-ray player to do this HD Video stuff the right way. Which leads to one last question:

3. Other than possibly less cost, is there any reason I should burn to AVCHD disc's rather than the latest Blu-ray disc's? I might burn 5 - 10 a year at most.

Thanks guys!
Don

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

.....I'm looking at both a new Blu-ray burner drive for my PC and a Blu-ray player.....

Keep this in mind for when you make the purchase:-

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ ... -per-disc/

[Chuck Engels]

There are instructions here somewhere on how to burn a HD AVCHD file to a standard DVD and play that on a HD or BluRay player. I'm sure someone can point you to the proper thread. I do recall that it is not done with Premiere Elements, so as you can see the move to HD is not a cheap one. It may be just as well to get a BluRay burner and use Premiere Elements to burn BluRay discs.