Best export format settings for mac

Adobe Premiere Pro

Best export format settings for mac

Posted by Guilherme Maranhão on February 5, 2012 at 7:35 pm

Hi,

I have a mac OS Lion 10.7.2 and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. I’m new to premiere pro and video editions and have just finished my family’s vacation video clip edition, that contains photos and videos.
I’ve tried PNG as suggested in another post, but didn’t work for me.
I have tried several other export format settings too, but the only satisfying one was MPEG2-DVD with preset “Match Source Attributes (Highest Quality)”. The problem was that it seems to be specific for DVD, that’s why it was generated two separated files, a m2v for video and a wav for audio.
I would like to play it on my mac and I couldn’t do it with the players I have installed: QuicK Time didn’t run it and VLC ran without audio.
I have 4 questions:

Is there a player that can play both video and audio? Or is it just for DVD purpose?
If not, what would be the best export format settings to have a HD 720p video with best quality? All the other settings produced very low quality videos, even in very huge size! I have tried flv, mpeg, mov…
Do I need any specific codec for it?
I have already installed perian codec. Wouldn’t it be possible to export for AVI format? Why doesn’t it show on my format options?

I have searched many forums and didn’t find the solution yet!
Size is not a problem. All I want is the HIGHEST quality video.

Does anybody have any suggestion?

Thanks a lot, Guilherme

Lucy Hannen replied 13 years, 4 months ago 5 Members · 10 Replies
10 Replies

Angelo Lorenzo
February 5, 2012 at 8:53 pm

When exporting any movie into a delivery format, you have to ask yourself how will people be watching the film?

Will it get burned to DVD?
Are you going to upload it to Vimeo/Youtube?
Do you just want to render out to a high quality format so you can archive your video and revisit it later?

I would suggest, if you just want to watch it or upload it to YouTube or Vimeo, try the following:

Container: Quicktime
Video Codec: h.264
Quality: 100%
Keyframe: Enable and set to 8
Limit datarate: enable… my suggestions for a good quality tradeoff are 4000kbps (standard definition), 8000kbps (for 720p) and 15,000kbps (for 1080p) and you can adjust those to taste.
Audio Coded: AAC
Guilherme Maranhão
February 6, 2012 at 1:39 am

Hi Angelo,

Thanks. I’ll try these settings.
Guilherme Maranhão
February 6, 2012 at 2:32 am

Hi Angelo,

Thanks so much! Perfect quality and size!
Gabriel Sanchez
February 6, 2012 at 8:06 pm

The problem is that you where exporting in mpeg2 (DVD) in demux mode, so video and audio streams are separated into two different files, m2v for video and probably ac3, aiff/wav for audio. You have to select DVD mux, so you´ll obtain an .mpg file with contains both video and audio streams muxed in one file. Angelo´s settings are fine for Mac, but you could choose h264 instead of quicktime too, so you´ll export an .mp4 file instead of .mov, better for Youtube as i have noticed.

Regards
Guilherme Maranhão
February 6, 2012 at 10:15 pm

Hi Gabriel,

Thanks for the tips, but for now I don’t intend to upload it to YouTube. The quicktime format was the best.
Guilherme Maranhão
February 7, 2012 at 2:34 pm

Hi Angelo,

Using these settings you´ve suggested, do I need to export it as 1280×720 resolution for show it on a HDTV?

Thanks
Guilherme Maranhão
February 10, 2012 at 2:05 am

Hello guys,

I’ve created another sequence to build my video. Now I am using a AVCHD 1080p30. My video contains photos and videos. The videos are 720p, but my pictures have very high resolution, 3968×2232. I won’t edit them because there are lot of pictures. So, my question is: What would be the best format for this sequence? mp4? mpg? mpeg? mov? I thought that they are very similar! Are there big quality differences between them? Size is not a problem, but if the formats don’t make big differences on the final product, the smaller one could be sufficient?

Any tips?
Anna Chiaretta
March 29, 2012 at 5:25 pm

So going back to the initial questions of what the export is for, what format would you use for creating an archived large (uncompressed?) file for future use.

Something from which to make DVD, YouTube, or podcast compressions or just playback for screening in the future.

I am working on FCP, AVID and Premiere all simultaneously right now, just because of the one license each on different machines and the slow ween off of FCP, I am designing the workflow of our future. So I am trying to come up with something that for when we choose switch totally to one of these interfaces all previous projects will be relatively accessible if someone puts in a request years down the line. Would love to hear people weigh in with their workflow thoughts.

Previously in FCP land my workflow was HQ ProRes422 for Archiving, H.264 best quality 15 mps QT for playback, and then a lower bitrate H264 QT for YouTube…

thanks!
Lucy Hannen
March 16, 2013 at 7:43 pm

Hi there! I have actually the same question, but I will use a HD-ready beamer (1080-720) to screen the film..
What would be the best settings to use when I export my HD (1920-1080) film out of FCPX?
Also H264, and then as Quicktime? I would also like to preserve the best quality..

Also I wonder, does it make any sense to export it as a 1920-1080, while my beamer can only get 1080-720? Or would it then be better if I change the resolution of the film to 1080-720? I know the beamer will interlace every two pixels.. but which quality is better: interlaced 1920-1080 (thus 1080), or 1080-720?

You must think these are very stupid questions.. sorry, I’m just beginning to find out….

Thank you so much!
Greeting from a snowy whit south Netherlands
Lucy
Lucy Hannen
March 16, 2013 at 10:51 pm

This is very interesting and (for me anyway) an eyeopener!

https://lifehacker.com/5908969/why-you-should-watch-and-record-video-in-720p-instead-of-1080i

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