I haven't been able to find anything under the Adobe Media Encoder that will render a movie in a quality I'm happy with. The closest I've come is beautiful Quicktime video with horrible audio. Can anyone suggest settings that would reflect the quality found on Apple's trailer site? (even if it requires exporting an uncompressed movie and using something else to encode)

It's captured DV from a Sony VX2000.

Thanks,
Jim

Hey Jim, Media Encoder is one of the best around. I have done videos as long as 1 hour 45 minutes that fit on one DVD with 93% quality by exporting to DV AVI from PPro, bring the video into Encore, creating the DVD and letting Encore do all the encoding. The only trick is to make sure that you tell Encore to use a custom size disk of 4.5 Gb rather than the 4.7 Gb preset. No need to change anything else unless you really really know what you are doing.

I failed to clarify something in my original post, the final goal is nice looking video that will be downloaded from the web, like the non-HD "high" ones at Apple's trailer site. I'm not married to Quicktime if there's something better out there that most people can watch without downloading any special players.

That is a great tip for Encore though, thank you!

It depends on the bitrate you want to use. For the largest possible audience Windows Media is the best solution, and 512 kbps at 320x240 pixels image size should give you an excellent picture. Try Sorensen Sqeeze - send me a personal message if you would like some samples.

Yes, Windows Media is great for the web, I would suggest it too. I made a custom preset with 512 at a higher res than 320x240 for my site and the quality is very nice for it's small size. Not too sure about the quicktime ones yet, I haven't really tried them out.