[Zack Yoshyaro]

Ah, you are indeed correct! Thanks for the reply!

[Zack Yoshyaro]

Oh, sorry. I should have explained a little more..

I’m trying to arrange two or three videos so they play back next to each other.

For instance, if my ‘stage’ were 960×480, I’d like to resize one video to 800×600 and stick it on the left hand side. The other, I’d like to resize to 320×240 and stick in the top right hand corner.

I’m eye-balling it right now and it looks OK, but I’d like to be a little more precise.

[Zack Yoshyaro]

[Guy who looks kind of like Harvey Feirstein in his pic]“As I – and others – have already told you, if you start with a higher quality file, and use somewhat more forgiving settings, you’ll end up with higher quality output. Your bitrate settings are simply too low for decent quality. I think at this point it’s a management problem – as in, your management. From your description, they could use a bit of education on quality.

Sigh. I hear what your saying. I do. What I’m trying to communicate is that the quality of the file that AME is outputting at the client specified settings is simply shit. Using these same settings while going through camtasia’s encoder, OR even flash 8’s media encoder, the results are perfectly acceptable. My frustration and confusion stems from this.

[Guy who looks kind of like Harvey Feirstein in his pic] “If you’re then encoding from that to a Flash file what’s the difference?”

Well, we tend to do all day sessions. All day being 10+ hours in certain cases. All that uncompressed data quickly starts to add up. So really it’s just matter of convenience/laziness. Smaller files take less time to back up/move around.

Anyway, I’ll hopefully be able to run some uncompressed tests tomorrow. Hopefully that will solve the problem.

Thank you to everyone for their input!

[Zack Yoshyaro]

What frame size are you outputting too?
I assume the file is 640×480 square pixel capture?
Give us some more information and less hyperbole.

What more information do you need? I’m pretty sure I’ve outlined all of my settings previously (asside form pixels. You’re right on the square pixel guess). 640×480.

No hyperbole. I stand by my current description of AME’s amount of sucking.

I found that instead of the TSCC (the codec from Camtasia) you can use uncompressed full frames for the AVI file.

I just made a test and guess what? Works smootly.

Interesting. I’ll check this out. I’d hate to record slide transitions uncompressed and end up with a massive file.. but if that’s what has to be done.. I’ll test all of the available codecs and see if any of the others make a difference. Thanks for the tip!!

Likewise. I am not really a fan of Camtasia. It’s useful enough for what it does – sort of. The real problem is, better solutions cost more.

I’m not super opposed to spending more if it will make my life easier. Camtasia was just the first program we found that was actually semi-usable. Do you have any suggestions for other programs?

[Zack Yoshyaro]

You could get a copy or GSpot or Super to analyse the file and see how it was encoded as well.

Next is using h.264 instead.

Ah! These might shed some light. I’ll check them out.

Have you tried differing bitrates? (I might have missed that in your posts). Also, in CS3, there are 2 different FLV compressions: On2 and Sorenson. On2 has always worked better for me. I typically use a bitrate of 800 – 1600 Kbps, depending on the image size.

Yeah, I’ve tried various bitrates, and both sorenson and on2 codecs. They all produce similar results. Unless, of course, I slam the bitrate to the top, then yeah it looks fine.

One question would be: why are you using FLV video at all if most of the content is slides? Would it be possible to use FLV audio-only with cue points to trigger still-image slides?

FLV is the format that we’re asked to deliver in. I guess the clients site is set up with them in mind.

Why are you capturing 24 fps to begin with? Especially to go to 15 fps in your Flash encode?

There’s simply no reason to do 24 fps for something like this, first off.

You’re absolutely right. It’s normally set at 15 for frame grabs, the higher settings were from me trying to record an animation on-screen. My apologies.

I do regular 720 x 480 DV, encode it at 320 x 240/350K in AME, and it works just fine, with real people on camera. To tell me a screencap won’t work strains credulity. Then again, 13K is barely enough for tolerable audio, let alone video. Why this datarate? How are you delivering?

Man, I completely agree, it’s an awful data rate. But I’m a victim of employment. The client wants a specific size, fps, and data rate. They’re being delivered as online content and hard media.

If this is an unfixable issue, what is the best format to export out of premiere with so I can later convert it with camtasia?

[Zack Yoshyaro]

I set the key frame everywhere from 1, all the way to 2000+..

I guess I’m screwed…

[Zack Yoshyaro]

Here’s what it looks like after AME has touched it.

It doesn’t look as terrible as I’m describing in the picture, but all of those little distortions are pulsing around the image constantly. Which makes it look awful..

I feel like I’ve tweaked every setting possible, but I just cant get it be be even close to clear with out extreme setting which yield a giant file..

[Zack Yoshyaro]

I guess I should clear up exactly how I’m comparing the two. The camtasia outputs the AVI. I don’t do anything else to the file. I can import it into premiere, then export it with AME to flash video, and it suddenly looks like crap. Or I can do the same thing with camtasias encoder and it looks just fine.

Same file. Same motion. That’s what’s confusing. I mean, they only change slides every few minutes, so it’s mostly just a static image the whole time.

I’d like to use the h.264 codec, but these are all being delivered through a flash projector file that is set up to load FLVs..

[Zack Yoshyaro]

What sort of Camtasia output are you editing and Flash encoding? File format? Bitrate? Project settings? Encode settings?

If you don’t start with good material you won’t end up with it.

And your original post title has nothing to do with Premiere, it has to do with Adobe Media Encoder.

Camtasia capture settings: AVI, 24fps, Techsmith screen capture codec.

The recording from camtasia is great. Nice and crisp. I would describe this as decent source material.

Camtasia’s FLV encoding settings: 15fps, keyframe every 5 seconds, 13kbps. I have matched these exact settings with premiere and it looks absolutely like shit.

[Zack Yoshyaro]

I have no problems with crashing. I edit on a Dual-core, 2.53GHz, 4 GB ram, mid-level video card.

I’m not editing HD content. I’m not doing giant projects. I’m editing a 640×480 video from a frame grabber.

My post is about Adobe Media Encoder’s non-ability to export as a FLV. Crashing is not an issue.