Exporting AVI from Premiere in exactly the same format as imported AVI?

[JulieCat]

Hello,

I don't know anything about video editing and need some help.

I have a Canon Powershot camera that takes movies which it exports as AVI files. If I right-click on the file and look at the Properties this is what it says:

640 x 480

Video: Frame rate: 15 frames/sec
Data rate: 914 kbps

Audio: Bit rate: 88 kbps
Audio sample size: 8 bit
Audio format: PCM

What I am trying to do is add subtitles to the movies. I am using Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0.

All I want to do is add subtitles (text) and maybe crop it a little, then save the file out in the same format and at the same quality.

I have been unsuccessful as this.

I realized that the Elements version of Premiere does not allow me to change the settings of how videos are imported into the program, so they always import at the default setting of DV-NTSC which has the following properties:

Timeline: 29.97 fps

VIDEO SETTINGS
Frame size: 720 x 480
Frame rate: 29.97 fps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: D1/DV NTSC
Fields: Lower field first

AUDIO SETTINGS
Sample rate: 48000 samples/sec

CAPTURE FORMAT
DV Capture

VIDEO RENDERING
Maximum bit depth: Off
Preview File Format: DV NTSC
Compressor: DV NTSC
Color depth: Millions of colors

I have fiddled with exporting my final subtitled movie with various settings for the AVI export but none of them seem to be right. They are all either huge files or the quality is poor. I have tried to copy the settings of the original file into the export settings but the quality was poor and it was clearly not the same as the original file. I don't know anything about codecs, and very little about what the different settings mean.

The movies (which are just our family home movies) will be kept on the computer but eventually I would like to make them into a DVD to play on the TV.

As a side note, I tried exporting the movie as a WMV file and for some reason I can get a WMV file which is 600 kb (when the original AVI file is 36 MB) which looks fantastic. This is baffling to me, as clearly there is a large loss of data (36 MB to 600 kb), yet this WMV file seems superior to the 100 MB AVI file it tries to export. Why is that?

I am not sure I can even accomplish what I would like to accomplish using Premiere Elements. I would appreciate any help.

Thank you,
JulieCat

[filmboss80]

The tiny AVI movies you make with a Canon Powershot run at half the frame rate of the standard video that you see on DVDs, TVs, etc. With a data rate of 914 kbps, the images will always look blocky when expanded to a large screen size. Premiere Elements is designed to make movies that can be seen on TV screens. Powershot AVIs are merely mini-movies to watch on a PC video player, like Windows media player. The bigger you make the image, the better to see the compression flaws of the little movies. These types of AVI files do not edit easily. Perhaps someone in this forum can recommend ways to cut and link your AVIs, but do not expect much in terms of picture quality.

[JulieCat]

Thanks for your response. I realize what I'm starting with isn't of super quality anyway, and that's ok, but I thought it would be possible to edit the movies and save them in the same quality that they started in. Hopefully that's possible.

[filmboss80]

You may just want to use Windows Movie Maker and save as an AVI instead of a WMV. Experiment with that, and see what you can get.

[JulieCat]

I tried using that and it didn't work for me. If I recall, it didn't let me put any text on.