Premiere Pro 5.5 export for Broadcast TV

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Mike,

Ask the TV station to get you a screen grab of THEIR settings for the H.264 encodes so you can duplicate. There are countless variables affecting quality and file size (well actually I will be corrected that the DATA rate is all that affects file size, but you get the idea).

Countless possibilities if you combine all the possible combinations of sliders and such. A lot of good compression is art and voodoo (experience).

There is not a right or wrong way, just the way that works best for you (small file with high quality is what we all work towards).

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Mike Fa]

The difference with station is they are using cs6 and they have the hd 1080p 29.97 setting directly in their quicktime drop down. Where I’m using cs.5.5 and only have SD settings. I have to make a custom preset in order to export quicktime in HD. I’m not sure if that makes a difference or not. But the file size using the same video clips is 15x the size :).

[Chris Tompkins]

Most likely the .h264 with .mp4 file is what you’ll want.
You need to know the data rate.

Like others have mentioned, get the specs from the station.

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC

[Eric Barker]

First of all, number of effects isn’t going to directly influence the file size in the ways you might expect it. The largest thing to compress is full moving video. Graphics with effects is typically smaller, but these are big generalizations, it’s very complicated. What you need to know is: the file size will have NOTHING to do with how much processing power it took to create the video.

Secondly, 16MB for a 1080i file is ridiculous. If they’re truly outputting 1080i video at 16MB, the bitrate and quality must be extremely low. My guess is either, you’re comparing it to low-quality SD spots, or there’s a missing decimal point in there. 250-400MB for a 1080i file is pretty standard.

In my experience, the most common format I get from national providers is good ol’ MPEG2. I tend to see less support for H.264 in the industry, it’s a great commercial and web format, but less supported by airplay systems. And it’s an even less common transfer format. Not sure of “why”, probably mostly because it’s newer. It also doesn’t support intraframe encoding, the way MPEG2 can if necessary. At high bitrate, MPEG2s may be large, but they’re high quality and compatible with EVERYTHING, which in my experience is one of the most important things in selecting a delivery codec.

The second most common I see (but I really hate) is ProRes. We’re a Windows-based operation, and more and more houses are moving away from FCP, making ProRes a less ideal format. It works great in standard vanilla stereo mixdown, but do anything out of the ordinary, and Premiere or other non-FCP editors complete break, along with many airplay systems. I can’t tell you how much back & forth I’ve had with delivery services, trying to get the right ProRes settings that will work… it’s a great format (I wish Premiere had something of that quality out of the box) but please, keep it in house.

To be honest, Premiere’s handling of H.264 for industry delivery is downright bizarre. I’ve been playing around with it, and I can’t get it to work at all. The “MP4” family doesn’t give you any advanced settings, the “QuickTime” family is limited (though it can produce 1080i), and “H.264” while giving you all the settings, doesn’t let you create interlaced video at 1920×1080. H.264 was designed as a web and commercial media format, looks like television delivery isn’t really in it’s specs (though I don’t know why). That’s probably why I never see it.

Be prepared for large file sizes for HD video, no matter the circumstances. 10x-15x the size of SD is pretty much status quo. Our 30sec spots come out to just shy of 400MB. We render 1080i MPEG2 4:2:2 10bit at 100Mbps. This may be on the overkill end of things, but I say better safe then sorry. You should expect it, and the people you deliver to should expect it to. Lower file size = less quality. The HD world is a lot bigger and more complicated then the SD world.

I say do some research, get familiar with the different formats and their strengths/weaknesses/compatibility figure out what best suits your needs.

Also, I notice you’re shooting XDCAM, while I’m at it, I’ll give you a little tip, something that others will probably tell you not to do: there’s nothing wrong with taking the MP4 file directly out of the BAPV folder. I wrote a little script that goes through and extracts them all so I can name/organize them just like AVI files. Premiere/AfterEffects/VLC… nothing has any problem with them. I’ve been doing this for 18 months now, it’s been a godsend!

Producer Manager
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Mike Fa]

Thanks everyone for your input. All the comments have been really helpful and I appreciate it.