jcloudm
Dec-25-2008, 08:40 PM
Hi all,
I'm really new to video editing and I can't find any recommendations on the best video settings for Smugmug. I'm not yet a power or pro user, but I'm considering making the change.
My original source is 1920x1080 30p AVCHD from a Canon HF100. Obviously, I would like to keep it at the same frame rate. There doesn't appear to be a way in Premiere Elements 7 to output 1280x720 30 into an MPEG container with H.264 encoding. When I go into the advanced properties of a preset like "H.264 1920x1080i 30" or "MPEG2 1920x1080i 30" and choose 1280x720, I no longer have an option for 29.97 fps - the only options are 23.976 or 24 fps. It seems bad to change this, right?
I see the preset for "HD 720p 30" which appears to be MPEG encoding of the video stream instead of H.264. This seemed to work OK, but I wasn't sure about it, because when I choose it I see in the description a line that says TV Standard: NTSC. A number of web sites indicate that H.264 is preferred, but I don't really understand why. File size, maybe?
I also found a way to do H.264 in a Quicktime container in Premiere Elements 7. This seemed a little suboptimal because you can't do variable bitrate. When I unselected the "select bitrate" checkbox, it seemed like a quality of 50 yielded a .mov file with a bit rate of 2.87Mb/s, and a quality of 100 yielded a .mov file with a bit rate of 26Mb/s. It is confusing to me how the quality setting affects the bitrate on the quicktime containers.
So, basically, I'm confused and a little overwhelmed. I think I have a solution in the Quicktime container that work, but it's hard to tell. What does the greater community think? Thanks.
I'm really new to video editing and I can't find any recommendations on the best video settings for Smugmug. I'm not yet a power or pro user, but I'm considering making the change.
My original source is 1920x1080 30p AVCHD from a Canon HF100. Obviously, I would like to keep it at the same frame rate. There doesn't appear to be a way in Premiere Elements 7 to output 1280x720 30 into an MPEG container with H.264 encoding. When I go into the advanced properties of a preset like "H.264 1920x1080i 30" or "MPEG2 1920x1080i 30" and choose 1280x720, I no longer have an option for 29.97 fps - the only options are 23.976 or 24 fps. It seems bad to change this, right?
I see the preset for "HD 720p 30" which appears to be MPEG encoding of the video stream instead of H.264. This seemed to work OK, but I wasn't sure about it, because when I choose it I see in the description a line that says TV Standard: NTSC. A number of web sites indicate that H.264 is preferred, but I don't really understand why. File size, maybe?
I also found a way to do H.264 in a Quicktime container in Premiere Elements 7. This seemed a little suboptimal because you can't do variable bitrate. When I unselected the "select bitrate" checkbox, it seemed like a quality of 50 yielded a .mov file with a bit rate of 2.87Mb/s, and a quality of 100 yielded a .mov file with a bit rate of 26Mb/s. It is confusing to me how the quality setting affects the bitrate on the quicktime containers.
So, basically, I'm confused and a little overwhelmed. I think I have a solution in the Quicktime container that work, but it's hard to tell. What does the greater community think? Thanks.