Some of your different options:
1) Export as HD file in same format as original footage, burn as data to DVD (no quality loss, but won't play on DVD players)

2) Export as HD, distribute online (no quality loss)(as to how to do this online, it depends on your audience; I've thought of using BitTorrent but there are probably plenty of other ways)

3) Downconvert to DVD (lost quality)(can be put on regular DVD's and play on basically all DVD players)

4) Spend a lot of money and get Blu Ray or HD DVD burners (I'd assume very little to no quality loss, though I don't know of many people who can play these types of discs)

If your original question was how to do the downconversion to DVD, I haven't used Premiere that much but I think it's just an export setting (when you go to render it, there should be different options as far as HD/DVD/MPEG/AVI/Quicktime/etc.).

Yeah, you can either output an HD video file that a computer can play (e.g. MPEG-2, WMV HD or MPEG-4) and burn that to a DVD-ROM which won't be playable in a DVD player, or you can downconvert to SD resolution and burn a normal DVD which will be playable. I believe some HD DVD players will also play DVDs which have been burnt in the correct format, but that will require special software and you'll only get maybe 15 minutes of HD video on the disk.

I edit in Avid, export downconverted video as DVCPRO50 and then create DVDs from that; works fine for me.

Thanks, yeah I guess I'm referring to the burner that I would have to get. Does any one know when prices might come down, or for that matter what is better blu ray or HD DVD?

"Pain is tempoary, film is forever."

I read something a while back about HD DVD being better than Blu Ray in terms of video quality, but which one turns out to be "better" won't be determined for a while. I think I've heard that the two formats will probably co-exist, but some (possibly biased) reports say that Blu Ray already has more market saturation.

Burner prices have already dropped a small amount, but I'd imagine that they won't reach the price of DVD burners for at least a couple of years. It might almost be worth waiting to see which format comes out on top, since it'd suck to spend so much on a dying/dead format.

Distribution gets down to Sony Playstation vs Xbox 360/Toshiba. Currently BluRay players are far to expensive but if you buy a Playstation 3 it comes with BluRay. It has not sold as well as expected however. Xbox has an add on HD DVD player for $200 and Toshiba sells an HD DVD player for about that so they are doing okay. There is also word of a hybrid player that will play both but I dont' think the price will be very reasonable.

The BluRay vs HD DVD will be resolved by the movie studios to some extent. If the studios align with one over the other that one will win. Currently they are aligning against Sony but Sony still has some big names.

My gut instinct is there will be no winner. That movies will be sold as downloads rather than on either format before long. You will have the capability to burn your downloads for backup purposes and a HDDVD or BluRay will be required because of the file size but it won't matter which you have at that point.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

I'm not convinced about movies being sold as downloads, particularly HD.

Firstly they're huge: I believe a typical HD DVD movie is around 30GB, and some of the broadband suppliers in this area only allow you to download 60GB a month... two movies and you're cut off. Even if you don't have a download cap, if everyone downloaded one movie a week that would be a huge extra load on the current Internet backbone.

Secondly the movie companies will require restrictive DRM, which customers won't want. They buy a movie on disk, and expect it to play in anything forever after... they won't want to buy a movie over the Internet, burn it to an HD DVD disk, but only be able to play it on the PC that downloaded it. The movie companies would have to sell downloaded movies at a sizable discount in order to convince people to accept them over buying physical disks.

Regarding download size, a decade ago it would have seemed impossible to download a regular length movie and now it is done regularly. A decade from now who knows but I'd bet on technology improving.

Regarding the privacy issue I have no arguement because I agree, I'd rather buy a hardcopy myself or use netflix, yet they said the same thing about music and downloads at reduced quality are more and more common despite the restrictions some put onto the music. I think movies will follow suite.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA