[Neil Gallagher]

Hello everyone

This is how to get the best HD results possible using Adobe Premiere “AP” CS4 and not lose anything to compression.

Normaly it would be better to use final cut pro and use apple intermediate codec’s as you can do all the stuff below in one hit.

So here we go.

1. Export a targa sequence from Adobe Premier.

2. Export the audio track.

3. Make a selection of folders holding around 1500 images each, so at 25FPS that’s a minutes worth of footage, any larger and AP will hang like a donkey as we are at around 4.7GB in HD 1280 by 720

4. Import image sequence into quicktime pro.

5. Export movie as above in the images or whatever setting you want.

6. Once they are all exported copy and paste them together in quick time, edit select all, edit copy back to the first movie and paste. Repeat this until all the clips are together then save the file under a new name and save it as self contained.

Now for overlaying the audio over the top

To add an audio track to a movie:

In QuickTime Player, choose File > Open File and select the audio file you want to import.

In the QuickTime Player window that opens, choose Edit > Select All to select the entire audio file, then choose Edit > Copy.

Open the movie to which you want to add the audio.

To add the audio to the whole movie, choose Edit > Add. To add the audio to a part of the movie, select a part and choose Edit > “Add to Selection and Scale”.

“Add to Selection and Scale” slows down or speeds up the audio track to fit the length of the selected part of the movie; the pitch remains the same (when you play the movie in QuickTime Player). You could add video to sound instead, and speed up or slow down the video to match the audio. You might have better results if you compare the timelines of the two tracks and cut from one or the other until they have the same duration.

And there you go, what a pain in the back side.
I managed to get this Quick Time example from 597mb down to 53mb without losing any detail.

My compression settings.

Compression: H.264
Quality: Medium
Key frame rate: 25
Frame reordering: yes
Encoding mode: multi-pass
Dimensions: 1280×720 (Current)

Sound
Format:AAC
Sample rate: 44.100kHz
Channels: Stereo (L R)
Bit rate: 128 kbps

Compression is a big subject but if you can get it down to a size that will play quite easily on USB, CD or DVD then you’re onto a winner.

You may want to go a little higher than my options I have just given you a guide line, the basic rule of thumb is if you cannot see or hear it chop it.

Any questions ?

Some images here.
https://3dhit.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=13662&st=0#entry213936

Best of luck from Digital Animation University of Hertfordshire