• Adobe Premiere Pro

  CS4, AVCHD, Exporting to Retain Quality

  Posted by Phil Lochner on January 8, 2010 at 11:30 pm

  Hello everyone,

  I have a Sony HDR-S11 AVCHD consumer camera that generates AVCHD files. I’m able to edit these AVCHD files fine in my shiny new cope of PP CS4 (ie my PC is up to par and I don’t have any real issues).

  What I want to do is export these videos in full close-to-source as possible quality from CS4’s Media Encoder. I’ve been having a devil of a time searching around the internet looking for recommended settings.

  Brief Caveat: I do not want to buy any other software to accomplish this goal. I’ve read from several other forums to “just go ahead and buy” Nero or Pinnacle or Vegas, but I can’t put any more cash towards my video editing suite right now.

  Moving on:

  Since AVCHD is H.264, I have started with Adobe Media Encoder’s H.264 Blu-Ray setting. I’m using the HQ 1440×1080 setting on my camera, so I’ve chosen the 1440×1080 29.97 High Quality preset.

  I’ve read that my Sony generates AVCHD files that are H.264, Main 4.0 Profile, which equals a maximum bitrate of 16mbps. Therefore I have gone into the Export Settings and changed Profile to Main 4.0. I changed the Bitrate to CBR, 16mbps.

  The conversion process takes about 40 minutes and my 7 minute test footage ends up being ~1800mb (after multiplexing) – which I can accept from a disk space and time standpoint.

  My question is basically just asking others to double check my “math” and make sure that I’m accomplishing what I want – without going overkill on disk space usage and render time. ie, since the Sony is Main 4.0 @ 16mbps AVCHD, I’m probably wasting disk space by exporting High 4.1 @ 25mbps H.264.. or am I?

  Visually, the output looks “about” the same but I have only run it on a few test videos and would like to have my ducks in a row before I start doing some serious editing and exporting.

  My final use for my exports: High Quality playback using my Popcorn Hour media player on my HDTV. Thus, I’m also Archiving this High Quality footage in case I ever get a Blu Ray burner. Meantime, I can reload this edited footage back into PP CS4 for Exporting to 720×480 so I can burn DVDs until I get the Blu Ray burner.

  Also: My AVCHD footage is 5.1, but unless I start using my Surcode Trials (or buy it, which I can’t afford right now), it doesn’t appear that I can keep my original 5.1 audio during this Export process?

  Thanks so much for your help.

  Phil Lochner replied 16 years, 3 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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