I did search the threads, but found nothing. I am trying to scale down my 3 min video from AVI to MPEG-4 so I can upload nice clean video to my blog. How do I do this? I am using Premeire Pro 1.5.

I tried WMV and MPEG-2, but the quality sucks.

I did search the threads, but found nothing. I am trying to scale down my 3 min video from AVI to MPEG-4 so I can upload nice clean video to my blog. How do I do this? I am using Premeire Pro 1.5.

I tried WMV and MPEG-2, but the quality sucks.

I use Quicktime Pro ($30) to render MPEG-4.

TMPGenc is a great tool for conversion to low data rate formats. Very good rescaler and deinterlacer.

Flash is excellent so far as a format is concerned so long as you use the actual Flash Encoder.

Best recipe for me is to output from your timeline in the most robust file possible, at native framesize,... uncompressed AVI, Quicktime, whatever.

Load that piece into TMPGenc. Resize to the frame that you want online (320 x 240, etc), de-interlace and output to an uncompressed AVI.

Load that piece into Flash Encoder for final output.

TMPGenc has a trial download... try it for yourself and see.

Quicktime Pro is an excellent option as well. Output an uncompressed Quicktime from your edit timeline, load that into Quicktime Pro, set your parameters, and let it do the rest.

You are not alone in being unable to get satisfactory results directly from Premiere for low data rate clips.

Others may have better ideas... but I am very happy with the above workflow for both SD and HD materials.

Thanks. This is very helpful.

Output DV-AVI from Premiere, deinterlace and resize to 480x360 in VirtualDub, output either to uncompressed (overkill) or HuffYUV. Load that into Windows Media Encoder or Procoder and encode to wmv at 500 kbps. Blown up to full screen is near analog SD TV quality.

See http://www.dialogcuviata.com/video/08.html and go past the 30 seconds intro.

FWIW, PPro CS3 seems to now have an outstanding Adobe Media Encoder. The previous versions left a lot to be desired! But I'm having great luck now with straight FLV encodes from the timeline in CS3, even at very low data rates. Heck, even the mobile phone presets in Device Central look great on tiny screens. The On2 VP6 codec encoder is amazing. It even scales down from HDV now... it just doesn't care.

I use JW FLVPlayer for websites and have had great luck with it streaming the FLV files. It's soooo easy now. Encode from PPro to FLV. Put it in a xml playlist or as a single file on my blog (via a plug-in). FTP it. Done.

For low-bandwidth stuff, Flash is just too ubiquitous to mess around with WMV or Quicktime, IMHO.

Some examples of various data rates:
http://www.browncowvideo.com/EFN/all_files.html
http://www.browncowvideo.com/DWBS/1.htm
http://www.brownland.org/blog/2007/08/07/logans-magic-spot/

HTH,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions
http://www.browncowvideo.com

I use Video Mobile Converter for this job
http://www.videomobileconverter.com/Video_Mobile_Converter