Exporting smaller files?

[Lois Heckland]

As a follow-up, I also have tried sliding the “quality” down from 100, but it doesn’t have much effect on file size relative to the terrible quality of the export. I know this can’t be the answer, since it is exporting WORSE quality files at LARGER file sizes than the original .avi.

[Jon Barrie]

What codec are you exporting too?
if it’s DV then you are going to have considerably larger files sizes.
You’ll want to use a H.264 codec I’d say. But you must always consider that you are recompressing a compressed image so you will lose quality unless you go to uncompressed but then you’ll be really upset with the file size!
– Jon Barrie

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

[Lois Heckland]

I’m trying the h264 codec (before, it turns out I was stuck in the AVI menu, which is why nothing was clickable). The file sizes are much closer to the original file, but the quality is terrible. Is there any way to get around the double compressing? Maybe another program besides Premiere? I just have trouble believing that the small, crappy video files from my digital photo camera really can’t be duplicated in export.

In any event, I’ve been experimenting with the h264 codec and the files it exports are very jumpy. The lower I set the “keyframe distance” option, the more the jumpiness goes away– at the cost of extreme image quality. Do you have any suggestions?

The end result I would like is to be able to take the tiny video files off my digital photo camera, and make them shorter so all the boring parts are cut out, and have the resulting file be of as similar size and quality as possible to the original. Maybe I am using the wrong tools entirely– any help would be appreciated.

Thank you!

[Lois Heckland]

Hi, more details:

I tried the h264 export with everything at max quality. The bitrate slider only goes up to 14. The video is still very jumpy. Is this something inherent to h264, or is there a workaround?

Thank you.

[Lois Heckland]

Here is a screen capture of the specs for the original file. I realize that gives more information. Thanks!

[Jon Barrie]

If playback is not smooth then there could an issue with different frame rates. Happy says you are working with 30fps. Be sure the timeline and export settings march that. Your codec is xvid -which is heavily compressed. You are never going to get great exports from it. That’s just the mathematics of compression especially xvid/divx codecs.

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

[Lois Heckland]

Thank you. I’ll see what I can do with it.

[Jeff Brown]

One thing to check: 30 FPS is not the same as 29.97 FPS. For NTSC (North America) video you want 20.97. The frame rate difference could certainly lead to “jumpy” encoding.

-Jeff

[Lois Heckland]

Thank you. The original file says 30fps, but I’ll try changing the frame rate and see if it helps.