Exporting in PP 2.0

[Jon Barrie]

1. Finding the right export setting/codec. I like the quality of MPEG-2, but the file sizes are enormous (700+ MB). WMV seems to be the only setting in the encoder that produces workable files sizes, but the quality obviously is lacking.

Web is usually FLV or H.264 (PPro2 may only have limited access to these formats as they became prevalent post PPro2 (CS3 and CS4 have access to FLV and H.264 export options and are optimized for low file sizes and great quality)

2. The original footage is in SD widescreen (squeezed) with the hope of it being stretched to a faux HD look when done. When I export in most formats my video looks squished even with the 16×9 mode enabled. Again the only setting that reflects the proper aspect ratio (864×480) is WMV.

Don’t use WMV there are limitations within codecs that won’t allow an non-uniform video size. DV will always limit to the DV dimension frames. FLV and H.264 (QT) do not have these limitations and can set the frame sizes to your own custom needs.

3. I also have to turn a version of my video (native 720×480) into a 800×350 aspect ratio for a specific web page. I am having enormous difficulty doing this inside PP 2.0, with my only option being After Effects. Why can’t I change my aspect ratio in PP’s encoder?

After Effects will provide a better quality stretch. For web you will always need to use square pixel aspect ratio (PAR) 1:1. So you would be stretching to fit 720×480 1.2 PAR to 800×350 1.0 PAR set in the export settings from Render Queue.

Hope this helps.

– JB

Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net