Poor quality of video exported from Premiere Pro

[Ivan Myles]

[Evan Thompson] “Is there any free program that can convert without changing dimensions or quality?”

What are the desired dimensions? As long as you use multiples of 16 you should be OK.

Expression Encoder 4 is free for VC-1/WMV, but it does not support DNxHD; use JPEG2000 instead. You can convert DNxHD to H.264 using QuickTime Pro ($30).

[Evan Thompson]

Ivan,
The Sequence dimensions were 720X480, and I’m using DVDVideoSoft FreeStudio to convert it. But I can’t set exact dimensions for that, just the “quality”. I’ll try the other things out.
Thank you for you help.

-Evan

[Ivan Myles]

If your sequence uses 720×480 anamorphic video, you may want to export a version with square pixels for H.264 playback on computers/web because most media players do not recognize rectangular pixels. Set the export aspect ratio to square pixels and change resolution to the square-pixel equivalent.

[Evan Thompson]

Thank you everyone for all the tips.
I have been trying your suggestions but the video was still having that weird effect on it, no matter how high the quality was. I put the settings on the absolute highest quality, but the outcome was still horrible. It just didn’t work the way it should. It made me feel like everything I was doing was a waste of time, and that nothing came out how it should.

I expected that all the export settings I had tried really should have worked. And I was right, they should have.

Now I have found the problem: My sequence’s and composition’s settings and sizes weren’t synchronized. I recreated my compositions and sequences and then exported them all on the same settings. It looked just how it did when it came out of After Effects: Perfect! Just how I created it.
I didn’t know these settings would have that kind of impact on the end result.
Now that it is finally coming out like I would expect it to, it is well worth it.

I’m sorry to have bothered everyone with this issue.
But I am so relieved to know how it is going to be turning out from now on.

Thank you all for your support, keep up the good work.

-Evan

[Ivan Myles]

Glad it worked out for you.

[Evan Thompson]

Hello again,
I have one more question
The quality of the video is coming out beautifully now. I am now free to worry about file size.
I exported a 5 minute video to MP4 (H.264) with pretty high settings. The outcome was a perfect quality 3.45 GB video file. I am doing an MP4 as a secondary video that I might upload to YouTube. I was thinking that a much smaller file size would be best for YouTube. So I downgraded the quality, taking it down to about 690 MB. But that introduced a slight fuzzing in the video.

What is the best or max Bitrate for YouTube uploads?
Is there a file size limit for YouTube?
Is it possible to get perfect quality on YouTube, or does it have to lose some quality?

Also, is that a problem that a 5 minute MP4 is 3.45 gigabytes?

Thanks,
-Evan

[Ryan Holmes]

[Evan Thompson] “What is the best or max Bitrate for YouTube uploads?
Is there a file size limit for YouTube?
Is it possible to get perfect quality on YouTube, or does it have to lose some quality?”

Vimeo has a good compression guidelines page. I would start there with your settings: https://vimeo.com/help/compression

YouTube will accept up to a 20GB file. Once you upload your video to YouTube they will recompress it again. So when you watch on YouTube you’re not seeing the file you uploaded, you’re seeing a recompressed version of the file you uploaded. Compression is all about size vs. data rate trade offs. The higher the data rate the bigger the file. If you’re fine with uploading a 3.45GB file to YouTube, then there’s nothing stopping ya.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Ivan Myles]

I agree with Ryan’s comment. As long as time and bandwidth available, you are better off uploading a high quality file because it will be recompressed by the video web site.

There are a few ways to produce smaller files. With the settings listed above as a reference point, increasing key frame distance is the best way to reduce size with minimal impact on quality. One key frame every 0.5-2.0 seconds is normal, although some encodes go much higher. Further file size reductions can be achieved by decreasing the target bitrate settings, but picture quality will drop accordingly.

[Evan Thompson]

Great information. Thank you.
But what if I went over 20 Mbps, like say 100 Mbps to make it look it’s best for YouTube?

[Ryan Holmes]

[Evan Thompson] “But what if I went over 20 Mbps, like say 100 Mbps to make it look it’s best for YouTube?”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing this. You’re just going to have a file that’s about 3.8GB for a 5 minute video. If you have the bandwidth (both speed and cap size) to upload this then I don’t see anything wrong with it. As I said, YouTube will convert the file to its own spec upon upload.

If you really want to bypass your encoding then just upload a full-quality Quicktime movie straight out of the PPro. You could use ProRes (if your on a Mac). YouTube will take a ProRes .mov file and convert it.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost