24P Highest Quality Export Settings?

M

MDew

Member
Once again I am on a tight deadline for a video (my friend's wedding video), so once again I put my faith in the most un-trustworthy of Programs, Adobe Premiere. I've been using it since 6.0 just because the user interface is about the only one I can actually figure out, though I've had my share of frustration with its unexplainable bugs and glitches. Now I'm at Premiere Pro 2.0 and I still have the same issues I've had since the beginning.

My problem is simply exporting something that resembles what I have in the timeline, but at the highest quality possible with no artifacts (smeared blurs, dancing pixels, jagged lines, horizontal bars during transitions, etc.). I shot it on a Canon A1 in 24f SD, and I'm simply hoping to find a way to carry over that resolution onto the finished product.

So, before wasting my time exporting out the whole 8 min. video (I know Premiere better than that), I made a sample 6 sec. clip and tried exporting it out using a variety of compression methods, hoping to find the right combination. Since I don't know what half of the settings mean, I just bumped up everything to the highest quality possible (720x480, Widescreen 1.2 pixel aspect ratio, deinterlaced).

After exporting out 19 different videos, I still was not able to find what I was looking for, and I'm quite discouraged by this program once again. I'm at a loss, so I figured I'd try here to see if anybody can offer some suggestions. I did look through the threads for advice, but I had already tried most of what had been suggested.

This is what the video looks like in the preview window in premiere:
Preview

Here are a few results of my testing (with the resulting filesizes):

#1: WMV Uncompressed (Adobe Media Encoder) - 153MB

Black screen with audio. Not very exciting.

#2: WMV9 720 24P Preset in Media Encoder (changed to 720x480) - 453KB

Extremely small filesize, and not surprisingly, the video is horribly muddy-looking.


#3: Microsoft DV AVI - DV 24P Advanced - 23MB

Blurry and pixelated :zombie_smiley:

#4: Uncompressed AVI - Compressor: 10bit YUV - 136MB

136 Megabites of...audio.

#5: Microsoft AVI - Compressor: None - 153MB
Image
Blurry, pixelated edges, squished to 4:3 even though set to 16:9

#6: Microsoft AVI - Compressor: CineformHD v2.5 - 21MB

Even worse quality, plus a nifty watermark!

#7: Microsoft AVI - Compressor: DivX 6.2.2 - 2MB
Image
Locks up media player, won't open.

#8: Microsoft AVI - Compressor: Microsoft Video 1 - 57MB

Looks like a Super Nintendo game, once again squished to 4:3.

#9: Uncompressed AVI - 8 bit depth - 105MB

My personal favorite.

#10: Quicktime - QT Alternate NTSC download - Codec: Apple DV/DVCPRO NTSC (set to 720x480 widescreen) - 2KB
Image
Quicktime won't open, but instead I get this very informative error message.

#11: Quicktime - Compressor: None - 102MB

Looks terrible, squished to 4:3 even though set to 16:9

#12: Quicktime - Compressor: H.263, set to 853x480 - 5MB
Image
Finally got the dimensions right (gee, why didn't I think of that?), looks like it had a Guassian Blur applied to it.

#13: Quicktime - Compressor: None (set to 653x480) - 181MB
Image
Probably the best-looking result so far, but not the standard I'm looking for.

So basically I've wasted an entire day doing these test renders and come to no conclusion other than this is a worthless pile of a program. If only there was some way to import my already completed project into Vegas or another worthwhile editing program I might have a chance of finishing this soon. Anyway, if anybody has any ideas on how to help me out, I'd really appreciate it.
 
As a general practice it's usually more efficient to export to the same (or similar in regard to frame size and rate) as the project settings--sometimes better.

Are you able to export an uncompressed AVI and let Sorenson Squeeze or one of the other similar programs handle your compression? If so, I believe you're on the right track; regarding export a shorter piece until you are satisfied--then the full monty when you've got it just right.

Hope this helps at least in some small measure.

Best.
 
Thanks for the tip, that was my thought as well. If only I can get an uncompressed AVI out of it I could use another program to try to compress it to a smaller file size (that's what I've done in the past). However, when I try to render out the video uncompressed that's when it's not showing any video or it's just black.

Out of all the tests I did, since the uncompressed Quicktime gave me the best results, I tried rendering out the full video just to have something to show, but after an hour of rendering at 99.5% I get this:



Man, I LOVE Premiere!:thumbsup:
 
The correct aspect ratio for exporting 16:9 out of Quicktime is 720 x 405 because it's anamorphic. I usually just do an uncompressed .avi (Microsoft Avi, Compressor None) and render out of QT Pro h.264 with 1500kb/sec bitrate.
 
Mdew, are you editing in an HD timeline? Premiere 2.0 is terrible at downconverting HD. The best results within Premiere are to start a new project with your desired file size, and import your HD project into that and manually scale your clips down. Then export from there.
Another option is to use a frame server. It's a free plug-in that allows you to export a small file, that can then be imported into another program. So you could select frame server from Premiere's export options, then open say, Vegas, import that file and export from there. It will read from Premiere's timeline the full HD video, but your letting Vegas do the downconversion.

Personally, instead of rendering uncompressed, I use Quicktime animation. Smaller file size and the quality is excellent.
Premiere CS3 has fixed the issues with crappy HD to SD conversion.
-Kevin
http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/ Frame server
 
Sacksnack said:
Mdew, are you editing in an HD timeline? Premiere 2.0 is terrible at downconverting HD. The best results within Premiere are to start a new project with your desired file size, and import your HD project into that and manually scale your clips down. Then export from there.
Another option is to use a frame server. It's a free plug-in that allows you to export a small file, that can then be imported into another program. So you could select frame server from Premiere's export options, then open say, Vegas, import that file and export from there. It will read from Premiere's timeline the full HD video, but your letting Vegas do the downconversion.

Personally, instead of rendering uncompressed, I use Quicktime animation. Smaller file size and the quality is excellent.
Premiere CS3 has fixed the issues with crappy HD to SD conversion.
-Kevin
http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/ Frame server
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip & the link. This project is in SD, so it's not really a downconverting issue (though I will have to worry about that since my next project is in HD). I tried the frame server but it appears it doesn't support Premiere Pro 2.0, because I couldn't access it from there. Sounds cool though, I wasn't aware that was possible.
 
jade8472 said:
The correct aspect ratio for exporting 16:9 out of Quicktime is 720 x 405 because it's anamorphic. I usually just do an uncompressed .avi (Microsoft Avi, Compressor None) and render out of QT Pro h.264 with 1500kb/sec bitrate.
Click to expand...

Since I already tried uncompressed AVI and could not get any video (just audio), & since I don't have QT Pro, I tried rendering in Premiere Pro with Quicktime and the h.264 compressor @ 720x405. I didn't have the option of choosing bitrate (I think it was set at project settings). But would that be essentially the same thing?
Anyway, I wasn't too impressed by the results:

Am I just expecting too much, or should uncompressed look better than this?
 
MDew said:
I tried the frame server but it appears it doesn't support Premiere Pro 2.0
Click to expand...
It works with 2.0, I know this because it's all I used when I exported projects from Premiere. You access it by selecting export movie, not through the media encoder. If it's still not working there must be a problem with the installation.

The thing that jumped out at me, is that the DV codec looks blurry and pixelated. That should have been a pretty close match to your original footage. And the WMV file as well, which Premiere encodes quite well. Which begs the question, are you viewing it at the right size in the windows media player? Make sure you've selected "fit player to video on start." 480 video will actually look quite small on a computer monitor and will not fill the whole screen.

-Kevin
 
I did find that my Media Player 10 had been set to "fit video to player" instead of "fit player to video" (which took forever to find). I looked through all of the clips again, but they still looked like very poor quality.

I tried re-installing that frameserver, but I still couldn't get it to show up in Premiere 2 or Vegas 7. Anyway, I tried rendering test clips of raw footage in Vegas as a 720x408 WMV and a Widescreen AVI, and it looked & worked great! So this frameserver will allow me to export out my whole 8 min. Premiere Project in Vegas (and allow me to select the rendering options in Vegas)? That looks like the only way I'm going to get this done, unless I re-do the whole thing in Vegas.

THIS is the quality I'm looking for!



I'll keep trying...
 
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Yes a frame server will allow you to export your Premiere timeline from Vegas. You have to keep both programs open, as Vegas will be reading the files directly from the Premiere timeline, so it's a little slower than a straight render from Premiere. For the record I only really used the frame server for HD to SD conversions, I could get nice results using the Adobe media encoder to export WMV files. To export h.264 I used "export movie" and adjusted the slider to my liking. I have found that Sorenson squeeze or Quicktime pro will encode quicktime files better than Premiere.

If you want to post a file I'll give it a shot for you. If all else fails.
-Kevin
 
Thought I might be able to burn the project to disc to sidestep this whole exporting issue, but about an hour into that process I get this:

Does anything work with this program?
 
Sacksnack said:
Yes a frame server will allow you to export your Premiere timeline from Vegas. You have to keep both programs open, as Vegas will be reading the files directly from the Premiere timeline, so it's a little slower than a straight render from Premiere.
Click to expand...

I tried re-installing it for a 3rd time, and Frameserver shows up in Vegas, but I still can't choose it in Premiere (neither in Export->Movie or Media Encoder). So if and when I get it to do that will I be able to select Vegas to export with, or how does that work?
 
how does that work?
Click to expand...
You would go to EXPORT/MOVIE, then choose Debugmode frame server as the file type, and set all your normal output options. I would save it to the desktop. A few options will pop up, I'd just leave them at their default settings. It will build a small avi file, might take a minute or two. Then you open Vegas, Set up your project, import that file, lay it on the tmeline, then export. When it's finished just select STOP SERVING in Premiere.
-Kevin
 
OK, thanks. I will keep trying to get it to work but I don't know why it's showing up in Vegas but not Premiere. I made sure to select the Premiere and Vegas plugins when installing the frameserver.
 
ARGGHH! :kali:I've just about come to the end of my rope with this thing. The root of the problem is that uncompressed AVIs and WMVs stopped working with Premiere, when they have always worked in the past for me. When I export as an uncompressed AVI, the screen is either static-looking (see picture #9) or Windows Media Player stops and thinks about it, it reads "codec acquired" at the bottom, and then it just plays the audio (#4). If I can just get this to work, then I can take the AVI into QTPro like you guys have suggested and re-export w/ h.264 to get a reduced-size video. That's exactly what I need.

Is there just a codec I'm missing that I can download from Adobe or Microsoft that will help solve this?
 
I got Frameserver to work with Premiere finally (the directory was set for 6.0 instead of 2.0). I left it at the default settings and tried to render out a short clip. The render progress bar came up but did not move at all:



The window for Frameserver came up as well, but stayed stuck like this:


There was an .avi file on the desktop, but when I threw it in Vegas it was just an audio file.
Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?
 
I finally figured out a temporary solution that solved the problem - I exported as MPEG-2 with Premiere, took that in Vegas, and exported that as an .AVI. Can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. I need to find out why Premiere won't export as AVI or WMV though....
 
If it's any consolation, I've just exported my first project with Premiere CS3 six ways from Sunday and even when the files work they look terrible. I'll add my two cents if I find a solution.
 
From what I can tell it's going to be worth the extra effort to try to learn Vegas, and avoid Premiere like the Plague!
 
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