How to get best WMV quality with premiere?

Tomas Riuka

Well-known member
Hello,

i wonder if anyone can share their experiences how to get best WMV quality and what is the workflow? I have two main questions:

- what intermediate codecs (free ones) do you use if you want to add effects in AE ?
- how do you convert to WMV? If i try converting to WMV directly in premiere, i get crappy wmv quality, and it doesn't matter what settings i use...

so to get better quality, i export video to uncompressed avi and then compress to WMV using procoder, it gives WAY better results, than directly encoding to WMV using premiere's windows media encoder...

How do you work with intermediate files for effects , so that 3 min video wouldn't take 15 gb (as in case of uncompressed avi) and how do you convert for best wmv quality?

thanks..
 
With Ppro 2.0 you'll want to use the adobe dynamic link to make a lossess intermedary codec between P.Pro and AFX.

Just select your video clips, COPY, then jump into AFX and PASTE. Your clips will appear. No intermediary needed.

Use Adobe Media encoder in Premiere Pro to create WMV files straight from the editor. Again, no intermediary codec needed. This saves space over the long haul, as you are not creating multiple copies of the video files during your workflow.

As for best settings, A 2-pass VBR will always yield best results. Bitrate is also important, 640x480 at 30P is good betwen 1000kbps and 2000kbps, but do some encoding tests to find out what is best.
 
Since I didn't know it myself, I should point out that only the Windows version of Premiere Pro can export to WMV. I searched in vain for it on my Apple version, finally checking help only to discover the above fact.

In that same vein, in case someone else comes a-Googling for an answer, Flip4Mac can indeed export to WMV, but only to Windows Media Player 9 (WMV3). No earlier versions, to the degree that's an issue in September 2009. Also, from the website, "WMV9 Advanced and WMA9 Professional and Lossless is supported only by Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD." That's the $179 version. The technical specs are here.
 
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