Best output for sharing quality H.264, Adobe Premiere?

[Closecall]

Hello,
I have been taking my AVI.Huffyuv VHS captures and putting them into Adobe Premiere to clean up, and export a final version that I can share with my family. I know to use H.264 to get good quality and compression but I am wondering if anyone has found a "BEST" preset for exporting.

I tried leaving it at "Match Source - High Bitrate" and got a 4.3GB file for a 56min video.
Then I tried setting it to "High Quality 480p SD" and got a 1.4GB file for the same video.

There doesn't appear to be a major difference between the quality of the actual video. I noticed that the "High Quality" render is a little bit smaller in the player which is strange as they are both being rendered out at 720x480.

Anyone have any recommendations for settings to get the best possible quality which getting some really good compression? I am delivering these videos both via Flash Drive and cloud services like Pcloud.

Thank you

[lordsmurf]

What, exactly do you mean by "clean up".

In general, NLEs (Adobe, etc) do a poor job of output encoding SD video, especially deinterlace. The freeware Hybrid, however, is far better at this. Payware isn't always better, it just costs more money.

Adobe Premiere is a great editor. But I'd almost never encode in it. Export the lossless edit to encode in something else.

[Closecall]

Thank you for the reply.

First, by "clean up" I am trimming the beginning and end of the capture to get rid of the blank spots and just add a nice fade in and out to make the video look nice.

I am assuming the program "hybrid" keeps more quality when encoding into an MP4?

[lollo2]

Quote:

I am assuming the program "hybrid" keeps more quality when encoding into an MP4?

Hybrid is just a (excellent) GUI to make easier the tasks related to video "editing".

Obtain the quality you want by using ffmpeg in a command shell once you have your final file ready for encoding, exported form the NLE as lordsmurf suggested. For example this is very close to quality of original video:

ffmpeg.exe -i <input_file> -c:v libx264 -crf 17 -preset slow -aspect 4:3 -c:a aac -b:a 128k <output_file>.mp4

[lordsmurf]

I would trim in VirtualDub2, never Premiere, stream copy output.

Add fades with Avisynth in Hybrid.

You're making it take longer, and lose quality, by using Premiere here.

[RobustReviews]

We generally deliver adaptive high bitrate for 'viewing' files, with full high bitrate files available to customers by web interface for further editing or other duty as well as other formats as the jobsheet entails.

We've never found Adobe Media Encoder especially good or bad, it's easy to live with though, it's quick-ish and it doesn't require a lot of operator skill to manipulate. LordSmurf is right, the Adobe suite is pretty dreadful when it comes to deinterlacing.

There are a load of high-quality encoders out there; experimentation is probably the key.

That said, we've taken some domestic videos tapes down to 'naff all' bit rate and some look fantastic, some fall apart. Horses and courses as the saying goes.

Premiere is required in our workflow, there's nothing especially wrong with it in my opinion, it works fine with SD footage in my opinion, but some seem to believe it's poor with SD video files. Draw your own conclusion there.

[lordsmurf]

Since at least CS5, Premiere has been tuned to progressive HD video. It's always had chronic issues with SD video, unless DV. And all the processing, such as deinterlace, was just awful.

I've been using Premiere since the 90s. But I had to learn most NLEs during my studio days. Not a fan of Avid (complex, buggy), still like FCP a lot, Vegas is fine (neutral). I had to learn Pro Tools (also Avid) as well, not a fan there either. If DaVinci worked well with lossless codecs in/out, I'd probably quit using Premiere entirely.

What matters here, however, is simple no-loss edits, and output to quality. That's just not Premiere. Never has been, probably never will be. It's a full NLE. These days, use it for HD video from cameras, the end. It's simply not the best tool for SD interlaced consumer videotape format video.

Premiere is just a tool for a task. Sometimes it's the wrong tool. Like it is here.

[Closecall]

I understand. Thank you for the replies.

If I am leaving the videos interlaced and not deinterlacing them would you still say to stay away from Premiere and use VirtualDub 2?

Also RobustReviews what do you use Premiere for in your workflow?