[Gareth Williams]

Thanks Tom, I’ve got one of those, it came with the camera. I’ll give it go before I use it again.

[Gareth Williams]

Thanks Tom, the footage on the tape was reordered on the same camera, it’s Panasonic MiniDv camera NV-GS280.

I think it’s a malfunction with the camera, every so often it goes to black stripes (thick and evenly spaced) across the picture too. This can be fixed by taking the tape out and putting a different tape in and then it plays Ok. Then when I put the other tape back in that works again.

When the screen stays black it starts working properly by itself eventually if you leave it playing for long enough. It usually happens if I run it to the end go the tape or a part of the tape where one clip ends and another starts.

[Gareth Williams]

Sounds like good advice! Thanks again 🙂

[Gareth Williams]

Thanks Jeff. I have exported a 5 minute section with “Format – H.264” and “Preset – PAL DV” and it’s file size is 131.4Mb, that’s not too bad for 5 minutes, that would make a whole 75 minute movie roughly 1.97GB. I think that should be alright.

This is a massive improvement on the default export settings and it looks and sounds fine. 75 minutes with these settings 1.97BG is a massive improvement on 16GB with the last ones I used. It took 2.40 to export which would mean the whole 75 minute film should take 40 minutes to export. That’s not too bad.

Like you said, the YouTube preset (480p) is coming out much bigger, more than double the size so I think I’ll go with the PAL DV preset and if I want to get it down even further I’ll try halving the screen size to 360×288 putting the audio sample rate down from 48kHz to 32 or 16 and maybe dropping the frame rate down to 12 from 25.

5 Minutes: H.264 – PAL DV =131.4Mb 75 Minutes =1971Mb
5 Minutes: H.264 – YouTube 480p SD=290Mb 75 Minutes =4350Mb

YouTube 480p SD preset is much bigger, more than double! Maybe it’s quicker to upload (to YouTube) with that preset, I don’t know, but it’s a no brainer for me to use the PAL DV preset, especially for my own website. Thanks again for your help.

[Gareth Williams]

Thanks for your help Jeff, I was just going to export a five minute section to test it out but …

I’ve run into a problem following your advice. If you select “Format – H.264” in “Preset” you can choose either PAL DV or YouTube 480p SD but you can’t have both, as in your earlier post you said do it H.264 and PAL DV I’m now wondering which is best for low file size and good image quality? My footage is PAL not NTSC and PAL is checked in the video options still when “Preset – YouTube 480p SD” is selected.

Thanks again,

[Gareth Williams]

Thanks for your help Jeff, I was just going to export a five minute section to test it out but …

I’ve run into a problem following your advice. If you select “Format – H.264” in “Preset” you can choose either PAL DV or YouTube 480p SD but you can’t have both, as in your earlier post you said do it H.264 and PAL DV I’m now wondering which is best for low file size and good image quality? My footage is PAL not NTSC and PAL is checked in the video options still when “Preset – YouTube 480p SD” is selected.

Thanks again,

[Gareth Williams]

Thanks again, that’s a massive help, I’ll export a five minute section with those settings tomorrow and see how that goes when I upload it. That all sounds good to me, I’ll post again if I have any more questions about the options when I come to do it, but I think I’ll be Ok. Thanks again.

[Gareth Williams]

Thanks for your help Jeff, I think I’ll try the YouTube/website file first because that sounds simpler. I’ll sort out the DVD version afterwards. When I have exported the H.264, PAL DV file, what file type will it be? or should it be? When I did my one minute example it was .mov but I’m not sure if it matters?

Also, if I do this (I think) I will have a massive 15GB file. Is this the best way of doing it? I’m sure I have video on my computer that’s about 50MB per minute with bigger screen size, 1080 I think, and it looks really sharp, mine is 720×576. I’m a bit worried if I’m going to be able to upload such a big file to YouTube or my website but I don’t know, maybe it will be no problem. What you you think?

[Gareth Williams]

Thanks guys, This sounds like much more of a operation than I thought when I started making the film! I might have misunderstood the replies, apologies if I’m being dim here, but let’s suppose I don’t have Encore (I haven’t checked yet) Can I export a DVD file (from Premiere) without a DVD burner, and play it on my computer’s DVD player? This would allow me to design the DVD menu and all that business without going out and buying a USB DVD burner. If I need to get it burned onto a DVD to hand out to friends etc. I would then get a USB DVD burner later.

The file for uploading to my website and YouTube is a separate question. What would you advise I do for that? From Premiere, sorry if you have answered that already and I’ve not understood it. I’m new to all this! So I’ve made the film in a Premiere file, then I need to get it into Media Encoder (I defiantly do have that), is that right? And export it from there?

[Gareth Williams]

Thanks Lee, I tried it and everything has worked perfectly. Thank goodness for that. This has saved me hours of farting about! Thanks again to everyone for your replies. 🙂