CS4: Best export settings for web delivery (master)?

Adobe Premiere Pro

CS4: Best export settings for web delivery (master)?

Posted by Andrew Spuur on July 28, 2010 at 12:46 pm

Greetings!!

I recently upgraded to working with HDV footage in CS4 from working with SD footage in Elements 3, and have been struggling a bit with getting the best quality export from CS4/AME for delivery over the web.

I’m most concerned with exporting a best quality master that I can then use to transcode to m4v, flv, etc. So far, the best luck I’ve had is with a H.264 .mp4 export, but it’s still not as clean as I’d like to see. I’m working mostly with NTSC HDV 1440×1080 60i footage from a Canon XH-A1s, with some NTSC HD 1920×1080 30p and 24p footage from a Canon T2i thrown in sometimes. Here are the export settings I have been using so far.

Format: H.264
NTSC, 1280×720, 29.97 fps, Progressive
AAC, 128 [kbps], 44.1khz, Stero
VBR, 2 Pass, Target 6.00, Max 8.00 mbps
Widescreen 16:9
Profile: high
Level: 5.1

What I get is a file that’s about 250megs for a 5-minute video that looks pretty clean. What I’m really looking for is more like a 2.5gig file that’s super clean. Back when I was shooting SD, I would export an .avi file as my master that would run about 1gig or so for a 5-minute file. I’m looking for a similar workflow now that I’m working in HD.

Any ideas?

Andrew Spuur replied 16 years ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
5 Replies

Vince Becquiot
July 28, 2010 at 7:11 pm

Hi Andrew,

There are couple of things you can try. First, make sure you set your PAR to square instead of widescreen.

You can decrease the keyframe interval to a few frames and bump your bit rate to 10-12 Mb/s. I’m guessing this is going to the likes of YouTube?

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area
Andrew Spuur
July 28, 2010 at 7:24 pm

Hi, Vince!

Yeah, I’m uploading to YouTube and Blip TV so in the end I need a .mp4, a .flv and a .m4v. When I was shooting in SD, I would export a .avi as a master, then transcode a .mov, and .m4v in Quicktime as well as a .flv in Episode for uploading. Now that I’m shooting in HD, I’m trying to nail down a new workflow to get my videos looking as clean as possible.

Thanks!
Andrew
Vince Becquiot
July 28, 2010 at 8:29 pm

For either BlipTV or Youtube, all you’ll need is Mp4 (H.264).

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area
Andrew Spuur
July 28, 2010 at 9:20 pm

For YouTube a .mp4 is all I need, but I upload all three file types to Blip. Blip will distribute videos to iTunes, but I either have to pay them a subscription fee to have them transcode .m4v files or transcode them myself. Plus, I’ve found that their .flv transcoding isn’t that swift. It looks like they use a lower-grade single-pass transcode, and I get much better results if I do my own encoding in Episode then upload my .flv file for use in their web player.
Andrew Spuur
July 29, 2010 at 7:58 am

Thanks for the tip, Vince.

I tried exporting various flavors of H.264 .mp4’s, H.264 Blue Ray and Quicktime with a 30 second test video. I was having problems with Quicktime exports, but I finally got it working. It looks like on my Windows 7 machine I have to point the converted file to my desktop in order for Quicktime Pro to work. Pointing to a file location causes a “file missing” error.

After all that, it looks like I was pretty close with the H.264 .mp4 specs I have been using. If I bump up the bitrates, I get some image improvement. The Quicktime files were far bigger and didn’t look any better. So I’m in the ballpark and will keep tweaking a little as I work on each new show episode.

Cheers!
Andrew

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up

Creative Communities of the World Forums