Has anyone found the perfect settings for each step in order to take a project from Poser 7 to AfterEffects to Adobe Premiere 6.5 to Roxio My DVD in order to end up with a widescreen dvd project?

I don't think it's necessary to use both Premiere and After Effects, since both will output the same type of file. On the other hand, perhaps you need effects that only Premiere can do?

First you will need to know your target screen resolution. I'm only producing HD so I don't remember if NTSC / PAL is an issue for regional DVD production but I do know that the pixel aspect ratio is 0.9. This is a short hand explanation; let me know if you need more detail.

In North America, you would set your Poser render dimensions to at least 720x486. The extra six pixels are "compressed" by the 0.9 pixel aspect ratio. You would render out a series of still images and import them into After Effects using the DVD preset, depending on which region you live in. Combine your passes and add effects to taste and export an uncompressed AVI, which you can load into Roxio. 

[edit] the instructions above are for "full frame" and I just realized that you said "widescreen". Not much difference.

First, you'd need to know your target frame aspect ratio (the example above is 4:3, which fits standard definition CRT TVs and monitors). This is different from the pixel aspect ratio. Some common widescreen aspect ratios are: 1.6, 1.778 and 2.35, though there are several others.

I work in 1.778 for HD content, so I will use it for an example. In Poser you would set your Render Dimensions to 720x405, but your After Effects setting would remain the same as listed above. Upon import, vertically center your image sequence in the workspace. This will produce a letterbox on a 4:3 screen; it should be full frame on a 1.778 screen)

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First of all, thank you so much for replying.  One line you wrote unlocked the puzzle for me.  You mentioned loading uncompressed into Roxio.  I had tried loading uncompressed into Roxio, but the Roxio preview couldn't play it back smoothly so I assumed it wasn't working.  After I read your note, I went ahead and burned a dvd anyway and it worked nicely.  So, it's not always a matter of what you see is what you get!

And I just wanted to mention that I use AfterEffects to crop and brighten (when needed) scenes from Poser, and then I put them into Premiere to build my movie using layers of audio and transitions between video segments, etc.  I don't know AfterEffects well enough to be able to build it all there.  I should do some of the tutorials to learn more about it.

 Once you learn After Effects well enough you'll know that you don't want to do everything in After Effects. One can edit with it, of course, but at the risk of your own sanity.

Best to rough cut your project in Premiere or Final Cut know your scene length to the frame. Render only what's needed and build the effect scene in AE. 

Does no one work in fields anymore? If so, you'll want to consider rendering at field rate. 

Most players here play NTSC and Pal, in the US you'll want to make sure its NTSC. 

I don't use Roxio but you want to keep all animation uncompressed right up until the moment the DVD program does its own compression. Otherwise your losing generations. 

If it doesn't take too much typing, can you please tell me a little about fields -- how and why to work in them?  I've seen the settings but have no idea what to do with it.

Fields. This discussion lean towards theory. Some of the information may be inaccurate and I encourage those with more experience to chime in.

When television was first broadcast over the airwaves (1935?), bandwidth was pretty limited. For the sake of argument, NTSC video plays at 30 frames per second. Rather than overload the bandwidth, interlaced fields were introduced. Interlaced fields reduce bandwidth by transmitting half of the picture twice as often. I know, doesn't sound like it makes sense.

A CRT monitor has an effective resolution of 720 x 480 pixels. All the "odd numbered" lines of pixels are transmitted, followed by all the "even numbered" lines of pixels. For NTSC video, this happens at 60 frames per second; for PAL this happens 50 frames per second. This can be illustrated by pausing a videotape. There will be (turbulent) noise because the fields change quickly, but you will also see that half the picture is missing. That's interlacing.

With the advent of HD content, progressive scans have become more common. Blocks of pixels are displayed for the screen's top left corner to the bottom right corner (and repeat). You can see this artifact in action watching ESPN when signal fidelity decreases. Those blocks are the progressive scan.

Fields are necessary for broadcast TV and videotape, but (possibly) not for DVD.

[edit] After Effects does sound, transitions and everything else Premiere does. The key difference between them is the way they handle the types of input files they accept. Premiere leans towards video but you can do rasterized motion graphics. After Effects leans towards motion graphics and can handle most standard definition video content. I personally do not use Premiere for animated 3D renders. [/edit]

1080i interlaced
1080p progressive

replicand is correct that fields is for broadcast television and progressive scan negates its use (that's my understanding). Web use doesn't need fields. Or if you're going to film you don't want fields.

Some video has come from TV has fields and ends up on YouTube, all the motion looking very nasty.

Fields will make motion look smoother as 60 images per second equals higher temporal resolution. 

Watch a camera pan at the movies and at a moderate speed it is unbearable to watch.
That same speed shot on video will look smooth thanks to fields.

There is a dark side to this story and that is frames (2 fields) have a dominance. If field dominance is inverted this will look very nasty as within every frame your video will play backwards, advance one frame in time and within that next frame play back. The result being that your shot will run backwards every 30th of a second while it is also playing forward. 

There is a lot more re: fields but if they are no longer needed for most media I am glad.

re: After Effects
Don't get me wrong, love, love, LOVE After Effects but I find it a PITA to edit anything more than a single effect shot. For doing effects shots, Wunderbar!

Thanks for this info.  What I think I'm hearing is that I don't need to work with fields for my particular project if the end result is to make a high quality dvd that will play on tv's, but won't be broadcast on tv's.......

 Dealing with fields ended for me when I left television for film. DVDs came later and I had heard conflicting reports on how DVDs handled them. 

I have noticed field problems in some DVD title sequences from time to time.

SandyKG, if your project has any shot where there is a strong lateral movement; where the camera pans from left to right or someone walks across from one side of the screen to the other or a car drives by. Burn your DVD and look at that scene and consider how the motion looks to you.

If the motion seems shaky you might want to render it on fields and then see how that looks.

If you shot video that will have fields in it whether you like it or not. In that case, if you're doing any effects on a live action shot with fields your CG animation will need fields with the same field dominance. 

I'm glad I haven't had to deal with these questions for a while but I'm intrigued at what the real answer is. Hope I haven't made anything too confusing.

My entire project is comprised of animation produced in Poser and some stills.  I think I'll ignore fields for now.  Thanks so much for taking time to respond to my questions!