[Christopher Donald]

Another missing feature that I noticed is no more 1 click export to Adobe Encore & Burn. In CS4 when you export to encore, you still have to go through a tedious process of making a project.

Previous versions would actually burn the DVD for you.

[Christopher Donald]

Abhinav,

CS3 can render Quicktime movies (H264 compression) for streaming. Specifically the main advantage that I see when I use the “For Streaming Server” option in CS3 is that my videos do not exceed the bitrate that I set.

In CS4 the max bitrate setting does not work for H264, VBR content.

Furthermore, CS3 makes audio and video hinting tracks.

Here’s a note that I got from adobe:

Hello Chris,

Thank you for contacting Adobe® Web Support for assistance with Adobe
Premiere® Pro CS4

I understand that you want to know if Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 can export using H.264 as streaming media.

Windows Media is the only option for streaming media in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. This can be accessed in the Format box. There are no other options for streaming media. You may have to seek third party software to achieve these means.

[Christopher Donald]

I concur, I paid for CS4 and literally cannot use it because of the features that were removed (no more rendering h264 content optimized for streaming).

[Christopher Donald]

Tim,

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my posting.

I always found it strange that in CS3 you would have to select a streaming preset in order to see the streaming options (hinting tracks, etc). The problem with CS4 is that they took away every streaming option except for the presets with WMV files. Even encoding using Sorenson will not allow you to set the encoder to optimize for streaming (you can see this if you try encoding in Sorenson and then click the codec properties).

I was hoping that I could open the old presets from CS3, which at first glance it appears that you can with the new AME (it has an option to open CS3 preset files if you try loading a preset). When I try to open any of my old CS3 presets though, I just get a generic error message that my presets are invalid (most likely because they were all streaming presets).

To compound the problem, the max bitrate setting in CS4 doesn’t work for H264 content using VBR. Even when you set the max bitrate, the final file can almost double the max bitrate for extended periods of time (which this is a confirmed bug by Adobe).

After many contacts with their support department, I have given up and re-installed CS3. Although the new features in Premiere CS4 are fantastic, I literally cannot do my job without being able to render out for a streaming server.

I hope that for the amount that I spent on CS4 I can use it at some point in the future.