Screen Capture Blurry After Transcode

This is probably a dumb question because I am not usually the one working with video, but I really need help! I am doing a demonstration on my computer and I need to make it into a DVD. I used Windows Media Encoder 3 to capture my screen and then save it as a wmv. This file looks fine. I edited the video in Premier CS4 and it still looks fine. But when I try making the Premier file into a DVD using Encore, it makes the quality look horrible. Pictures become really pixelated, and text just becomes big blobs. I tried to transcode using the highest setting, but this did not help. Is there something else I can do? Thanks for any help!

First, the screen capture to WMV will heavily compress the footage. WMV is a streaming media, delivery-only format, and is not meant to be edited - strike one. Now, PrPro, while it will Import WMV, will have to basically convert it to DV-AVI to allow for Frame-level editing. DV-AVI conversion, even at an internal basis, does a little bit of compression. Though nothing like the quality hit just going to WMV, there is a tiny hit there is some - strike 2 (well, probably really strike 1.25...). Then, you need to get to MPEG-2 for the DVD. That is another heavily compressed format. When starting with a DV-AVI, it does a nice job. When you start with a WMV, to though the process of converting it back to I-frame footage to edit, and then compress the heck out of it again - strike 3. This does not make THAT much difference whether you do the MPEG-2 conversion (Transcoding) in Encore, or from PrPro. The key word is "much." You might want to experiment with using a standalone encoder to create your MPEG-2, rather than either Encore, or PrPro. Some are better. The ones used by Hollywood with 10-pass encoding run into the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars, and are run by experts, who do nothing else all day, 5 days per week. Besides going to a stand-alone encoder, you will need to bit-budget to find out how much material vs the bit-rate, will fit your disc.
The better workflow would be to NOT use WMV, but instead an I-frame format/CODEC in the first place. DV-AVI (though slightly compressed) would be an ideal choice. Then, the ultimate quality to MPEG-2 would be to Export from PrPro is something like the Lagarith Lossless CODEC, and use a stand-alone encoder and bit-budgeting to get the ultimate 100% DVD-compliant MPEG-2. That would be Imported into Encore, and if not detected automatically should be set to Do Not Transcode.
Hope that this explains where the quality is going, and provides a workflow that would cut the losses.
Hunt

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Screen Capture Blurry After Transcode

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