Export settings, AE, Premiere, QuickTime Pro, BlackBoard and DVD settings

I am sharing my export settings as I know it gets quite tricky and I have had to resubmit to the BlackBoard twice.

So here are the settings for I used for compressing files and uploading across the multitude of different media types.

Premiere
Premiere CS 4 and CS3 may seem vastly different when it comes to exporting but mainly just on execution of the render, once you get past that the settings are still very similar. The big difference between the two is that in CS4 the Media Encoder opens as a separate App and in CS3 it appears to be a dialog box opening inside the main program rather than a separate App.

The settings I use are the same across the two so here goes.

Format: Quicktime
Range: Entire Sequence
Preset: Pal Source to Download 1024kbps
Export Video & Audio
768x576 25 fps Progressive ( I have an NTSC handycam unfortunately and this setting sorta matters about this for broadcast TV etc but not so much with Web distribution)
Audio: AAC 44Khz Stereo
Video Codec H.264
Quality: 50
Frame width: 768
Frame height: 576
Frame rate 25
Field order: none (progressive)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels

The rest can be left standard as I feel it does a fairly good job with presets for Bit Rate, but if you are trying to compress more for web distro at this point then you need to choose
a lower delivery preset than the one above.

Process is very similar in CS4 but when you select File, Export to Media in CS4 the Media Encoder opens up as a full size separate App.

This is the slowest of the two to Export and will take a while so sit back. The other trick I learnt is not to Export to DVD from Premiere. It must double the time frame if its a second. So I Export to Media and end up with a pretty large .mov file (my 2 min doco was 932MB) that you cant really use for web delivery but you can burn to disc. I hope this was acceptable from a Uni perspective but isnt as pretty as building a full fledge DVD with a nice menu etc but as that wasnt in the brief I took the fast option!

From here, if you want to compress for BlackBoard then import to QuickTime Pro and see below.

After Effects
In AE once your file is added to the Render queue, I go straight to Output To in the bottom right of the queue and select QuickTime movie. If you have got your compositions set right from the get go of each project you dont need to play with these settings to much. I do make sure that I know exactly where the files are being saved which I set in the Preferences section of AE at the beginning as well.

From AE I pretty much always recompress with QuickTime Pro. It sharpens things up and produces a nice compact file.


QuickTime Pro
As a video publisher this is one of the best tools I have purchased to date. No matter what you receive ie wmv, .mov, swf, mp4, mpv etc etc you can almost always open it in QT Pro and re-export it into something small and compacted at a high output that you can use. It is really worth the $79 to upgrade from the free version you get with iTunes.

My tips for this are simple. Always chose File, Export and not Export for Web.

This brings up the Save Export As dialog box and the important setting here is the Export drop down box in the bottom left corner. Select MPEG - 4 and then click on the Option button.

This is where I specify 640 x 480 or whatever size needed and just check that audio is being included if necessary and pretty much leave the other settings stock. They are very flexible if you do need them just don't forget how to find them again!

My 932MB file compressed through QuickTime ended up being only 22MB and quite reasonable quality mp4 file which uploaded quite quickly to BlackBoard and Cathie was able to quickly confirm that she could receive and view.

I hope some of this make sense and perhaps helps out.