Video fine in Premiere, exports low quality

[trickyspark77]

Please forgive me for seeming foolish, but I have played with settings, read tutorials, browsed forums, and nothing seems to help me figure out my issue.

I am using Adobe Premiere CS5.5

I am importing my video as follows.

Capture format HDV, HDV 1080p30 (preset) (on settings tab I have Timebase 29.97 fps, pixel aspect is HD Anamorphic 1080 (1.333), display is 30fps Drop-Frame Timecode.

When I edit my video ( I use one chromakey filter to remove green screen, one non red filter to clean up the green edges, and a color balance filter)

and am ready to export I use these settings:

Microsoft AVI as format (under summary output it says  C:\Video\filename.avi, 720 x 480, 29.97 fps, Lower, Quality 100, then some audio info.

The video codec is DV NTSC, Aspect is D1/DV NTSC Widescreen 16:9, Render Max Depth is checked, use Max render quality is also checked,

Are any of these settings causing me to get the extremely reduced quality videos? They play back in premiere fine, it's when I export that they loose quality, so I am thinking something is off. My boss set up the export settings, as he said he knew what he was doing. Maybe he does, I'm not sure, I just need some advice. I have a deadline to get some videos done and I'm running out of time rendereing, viewing, rerendering project with diff settings.

Any advice is very much appreciated.

[John T Smith]

You are "down rezzing" from High Definition to Standard Definition... so you WILL lose quality

Sorry... I can't see what you mean by "extremely reduced quality videos" from text... do you have a site where you may upload short parts of your original HDV and the same scene in SD view?

How does your output look when you create a DVD with Encore, and play that DVD on a set top player connected to a TV?

[SAFEHARBOR11]

As John said, you're going HD to SD, but let me ask you this - why the export to DV .avi in the first place? What is the intended delivery medium? If going to DVD, then export direct from HD sequence to MPEG-2 for DVD, don't introduce another codec/rendering step into the process.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera

Safe Harbor Computers

[trickyspark77]

This is going to sound stupid, but here goes.

The president of our college wanted to make some videos where he interviews different workers about their jobs and such. He wanted to do it with a library background (but did not want to do it in our nice library), so we filmed it in front of a greenscreen. Then after no suitable backgrounds were found to insert, we wound up photographing our library and he said that was great.

So I'm having to edit the video,remove all that green, balance the colors, etc, and add an intro made in after effects. All I know to do after that is file>export>media. How to I not go from HD to SD? Can i go from HD to HD?

Max render just created a 7gb video that looks no better than if I left it unchecked. Could you tell me how best to edit the video and keep it HD? It will eventually be placed on the website (or so they say). I have the full Adobe Creative Master Suite 5.5, just in case there might be another program or step I can/should use.

Thanks for all the replies so far.

[SAFEHARBOR11 · Accepted solution]

There is no need to export to anything until you know the target audience. For instance, when you figure out what online settings you need, export DIRECT to that from the original sequence. Adobe Media Encoder has a "YouTube Widescreen HD" preset found under "H.264" and this will do a good job as 720p online for example. Or Export to DVD, or whatever, but always from the original sequence.

If you simply want to "archive" a copy of the completed edit, you have a few options. An excellent quality can be attained using the "Lagarith" codec, available for free download. It is not "uncompressed", but does produce large files. Very good for creating a "master" file suitable for archiving or later re-editing. Pretty much "lossless" encoding quality. Not for delivery.

You can also put together an MPEG-2 high-quality profile to save a master copy. See here - http://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/07/hd-to-sd-dvd-best-methods/

Download presets for AME - Adobe Media Encoder CS4 presets for 100Mbps MPEG-2 I-frame 4:2:2

Use one of these profiles to match your source footage -

Once you download and extract them to any folder, simply select MPEG2 as the output format in AME, click the icon to import a preset, then select the downloaded preset which matches your source footage. (From Precomposed site)

I hope this is helpful to you

Jeff Pulera

Safe Harbor Computers

PS - "Max Render Quality" does not change the exported file size. Recommended to use this setting when downconverting (exporting to a smaller frame size - 1080 to 720, or HD to SD). It does a better job with downscale quality.

[trickyspark77]

Yes, it will be youtube. Thank you for the replies all.I'm working on making them as Youtube videos now. THANKS 😃 !!!!!

I had no idea that I needed to use multiple programs, they just handed me the software, told me they didn't know anything about how to use it, and said "figure it out".

[Powered_by_Design]

Since your source footage is 1080 you can choose the YouTube preset then change the level to 4.2 and then change the size from 720 up to 1080.

When you do this it will change the frame rate so make sure to set it back to what you shot it at.  Maybe CS6 will have a 1080 preset.

GLenn