Exporting from Premiere to compress with VirtualDub.

[Luciano90]

Hi there, i'm new in the forums =D.

Anyway, I'm owner of an Sony HDR-HC3 PAL. A few months ago, I have made a few videos, but I have lots of doubts and problems. My PC Hardware is: Q6600 + 4GB of ram @ xp64.

I capture videos with HDVSplit, which seems to do the work very well...

Then I import it to Premiere CS4, and cut, do basic transition effects, and titles, basic things.
I want to export the videos to then upload them to YouTube.
My problem comes when I need to export. See... if I export and compress directly to DivX, the quality just is increibly ugly, doesn't matter which options I use, I've tried this a few times so...
I tried exporting Microsoft AVI - Under codec: None: 50minutes later got a 35GB file of 8:14 minutes long. It opens with VirtualDub, but I can't seem to compress it (tried DivX and XviD, boths gave errors, i think is the huge file size? :S).
Tried again, MPEG2, but quality is mainly bad.
Tried also with Microsoft AVI Uncompressed, but still makes huge files (tried with 10seconds of movie).
Tried QuickTime - Animation: Quality too bad.

What I need is steps to export from Premiere to compress with VirtualDub. From a 3GB file to 35GB it's a huge difference (avi with none codec). I work with 1280x720 resolution. Audio is processed at VirtualDub with no problems.

My main problem is getting video out of premiere with high quality, and then getting it to work with VirtualDub. It worked fine with 30seconds video exporting Microsoft AVI with codec None, but then with a 8:14minutes video it got really bad the file size, and 50 minutes and it makes not compression at all...

 

[Arson]

I am a big fan of virtual dub as I use it often to 'clean' files that AE or Premiere has issues importing but try using SUPER to encode your final files. It is a GUI for FFmpeg, mencoder, mplayer, x264, and theora. I love it.

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

For web the mp4 compression makes TINY files that look incredible. (11 gigs uncompressed or 1.5gigs compressed down to 260megs and only minor artifacting in a few high detail shots)

 

[Luciano90]

Ok, so I finally made it.

What I did was export with Uncompressed AVI > V210. Then I used VirtualDub without any problems...

@Arson: I know SUPER, I had used it in the past, but I don't remember where, I will try it, I'm downloading it right now...

Any recommended settings for youtube? I just did 1280x720@2300kbps~ + 48kHz Stereo 128kbps audio. (I keep it 48kHz, because in the past it would de-synchronize with 44.1kHz because I think HDVSplit samples the audio at 48kHz)

 

[JeganRX]

VirtualDub is unreliable for H264 encoding due to the AVI format lacking proper support for the codec. There IS a VFW (video for windows - what VirtualDub uses) build of x264, but it is highly discouraged, and features a less-updated feature set. The problem is really not so much with software playback, but hardware playback, that do not like out-of-spec MPEG4 files.

I use MeGUI and x264 for compression, though for YouTube I usually *do* simply use Virtualdub and AVISynth for my workflow, with Xvid rather than x264. VirtualDubMod, while outdated, provides a built in AVISynth script editor and some basic editing tools, so I've stuck with it for years, despite being defunct. As for exporting from Premiere, I recommend a lossless codec such as Lagarith of Huffyuv, which are still large, but no where near the size of uncompressed video. Compressing straight to xvid from Premiere seems buggy for me for whatever reason, but I like to output a lossless master anyway.

Install the LAME MP3 codec for virtualdub to enable better MP3 encoding directly within the program; otherwise encode your audio separately (I use Nero's AAC encoder with most things, through Foobar2000 as a frontend. Plugins let it accept AVISynth input as well).

Shame more people don't embrace the power of the all the free encoding software out there. I've tried SUPER on one or two occasions, though I like to get a bit more into the configuration myself. It's based on ffmpeg though, so quality is top notch.

 

[Luciano90]

VirtualDub is unreliable for H264 encoding due to the AVI format lacking proper support for the codec. There IS a VFW (video for windows - what VirtualDub uses) build of x264, but it is highly discouraged, and features a less-updated feature set. The problem is really not so much with software playback, but hardware playback, that do not like out-of-spec MPEG4 files.

I use MeGUI and x264 for compression, though for YouTube I usually *do* simply use Virtualdub and AVISynth for my workflow, with Xvid rather than x264. VirtualDubMod, while outdated, provides a built in AVISynth script editor and some basic editing tools, so I've stuck with it for years, despite being defunct. As for exporting from Premiere, I recommend a lossless codec such as Lagarith of Huffyuv, which are still large, but no where near the size of uncompressed video. Compressing straight to xvid from Premiere seems buggy for me for whatever reason, but I like to output a lossless master anyway.

Install the LAME MP3 codec for virtualdub to enable better MP3 encoding directly within the program; otherwise encode your audio separately (I use Nero's AAC encoder with most things, through Foobar2000 as a frontend. Plugins let it accept AVISynth input as well).

Shame more people don't embrace the power of the all the free encoding software out there. I've tried SUPER on one or two occasions, though I like to get a bit more into the configuration myself. It's based on ffmpeg though, so quality is top notch.

Hi thanks for the answer.

So I've exported an 1 minute test file with Lagarit it outputed an 1,32GB file at 1280x720.

I have a doubt, should I use 'RGB' for exporting under the codec properties? Or YUV or whatever?

And at Premiere properties, should I use "Use max bit depth", and 24bit or 32bit ?

For audio compression I have LAME MP3 installed, and do it with VirtualDub.

My videos for YouTube I use: VirtualDub, and compress with DivX (H.263?) and LAME MP3...

Do you think it's better to do MP4 with x.264? I use DivX just for the fact that it can be used on my DVD Player, but these videos aren't going for my DVD Player though...

I will try MeGUI, and SUPER, do you recommend MP4 container with x.264 for web videos / youtube? it's better than avi container with DivX or XviD?.

 

[JeganRX]

Hi thanks for the answer.

So I've exported an 1 minute test file with Lagarit it outputed an 1,32GB file at 1280x720.

I have a doubt, should I use 'RGB' for exporting under the codec properties? Or YUV or whatever?

And at Premiere properties, should I use "Use max bit depth", and 24bit or 32bit ?

For audio compression I have LAME MP3 installed, and do it with VirtualDub.

My videos for YouTube I use: VirtualDub, and compress with DivX (H.263?) and LAME MP3...

Do you think it's better to do MP4 with x.264? I use DivX just for the fact that it can be used on my DVD Player, but these videos aren't going for my DVD Player though...

I will try MeGUI, and SUPER, do you recommend MP4 container with x.264 for web videos / youtube? it's better than avi container with DivX or XviD?.

If you're working with intermediate files (from After Effects for example), stick with RGB, but generally speaking, MOST video (With the exception of P2 formats and most higher end formats) is YV12 as Lagarith says. Converting to RGB is a colorspace conversion, and *technically* a loss, though usually unnoticeable. Virtualdub, and by extension, XviD and/or x264, only use YV12 as input anyway, so just output as YV12.

Youtube accepts both formats, so it's perfectly fine to use either. Your bitrate will probably be the deciding factor on the quality here, but for 720p, XviD at 4000+ kbps is usually suitable, especially if it's going to end up on Youtube anyway...

Should answer most of your questions!