Need help with export settings from Premiere

[galenb]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if you video editors out there could lend a hand and let me know what your export setting are in order to achieve the highest quality while still maintaining a relatively small files size. I just exported my first project from Premiere 6 using H.264 and it looked awful. I noticed that it was capped at 6 Mbps so that was obviously the reason. I thought, what the heck I'll just turn off the cap all together and see what happens. Well the file size inflated to 755 MB from 184 MB but the quality was only a little bit better. Obviously I just don't know what I'm doing. ;-) So I figured I'd see what you guys are using. It doesn't have to be H.264, I just didn't know what else to use.

Thanks for any help you can give!

[Axel]

You are talking about Premiere [u]CS[/u]6 ?
Now, the Adobe Media Encoder was tested to be among the best encoders for H.264.
Encode for small file sizes in two steps: First export with high bitrate (~30 mbps for full HD), maximum render quality, maximum bit depth, [u]C[/u]BR (because at high bit rates, VBR makes no sense), high profile, everything best under the tab 'video'. Load the - hopefully perfect - master again in AME and go down with the bitrate to ~10 mbps, as high as possible without the file size exceeding the limit of the site you want to upload to (they encode again, in [i]very[/i] low bitrate). Philosophy is, the better the original, the better stays the quality when you export for web etc.
Classic MO was to first render uncompressed. [url="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57198583/jib.mp4"]This[/url] (right click save as) was exported from ~ 20 mbps GH2 to ProRes @ ~110 mbps, then exported with maximum 2 mbps to H.264, level 4.1, VBR 2-pass. No great quality anymore, but still okay. Had I exported with this bitrate directly, it would have fallen apart.

[galenb]

Sorry, yes Premiere CS6. Oh and I'm basically just prepping for Vimeo at the moment. I usually just give clients uncompressed work on disk when I'm doing FX work so this whole encoding in order to get small sized files but still have great quality is throwing me for a loop.

Thanks Axel! Anyone else? I'd love this to be a thread about everyone's individual exporting preferences.

[galenb]

So this is what I've been able to come up with so far:

http://vimeo.com/50466184

This was using h.264 @ 12Mbps cap, setting the keyframe to every 32 frames... Looks nothing like the original now. All the detail is smeared out, there's banding and a lot of noise seems to have been enhanced.

Thanks for any help you can give me!