Making file smaller in Adobe Premiere Pro

JustinBaker · Member Joined: 17 Sep 2007 Location: United States

hey everyone!

I edited two home movies that were one hour each into a 20 minute video in Adobe Premiere Pro. The original files were 2.4 gigs each. When all is said and done, and I export the movie, it's 4.8 gigs... for a 20 minute video. I used the microsoft AVI dv codec at first. when this made the file huge, I tried another and it was almost the same size, and the quality sucks. How do I make my file smaller? I want to put it on a dvd (possibly with other videos, if I can reduce the size). Any help would be awesome.

Also, there is a small blue bar on the bottom of the video. Can I crop this out? Can I make the video smoother and less "jumpy"?

Thanks again!

-Justin

Cornucopia · Posted: Sep 17, 2007 22:13

Just an educated guess:

DV files (AVI, MOV or other) are 13GB/Hour. This is the same as 4.8GB/20min. That's what you made the 1st time.

Why?
Because, that's what Premiere defaults to (as well it should). This is the same rate you should expect.

You probably started with a (low bitrate?) DivX or Xvid, etc. If you export the edited timeline to one of those again, you'll be re-encoding to a low bitrate. This is a bad thing to do as it is almost guaranteed to give you crappy video--ESPECIALLY when using Premiere Pro which often doesn't allow you access to many of the features that might allow you to save some of the quality.

You can't have it both ways.

You must either:
1. Live with High quality and high filesizes as your master.
or
2. Live with Low quality and low filesizes

You'd have a better time with it if you:
1. Had better quality source material to begin with
AND
2. Used better tools with which to ENCODE your final distribution files (read small, but not your master files which SHOULD still be larger).

Scott
_________________
"You don't know what you got, until you lose it".--John Lennon

JustinBaker · Member Joined: 17 Sep 2007 Location: United States

the original files were over 1 hour and 2.4 gigs each. i believe they are just straight from d.v. camera, but I'm not sure. total of over 2 hours and almost 5 gigs. the final product was 20 minutes and 4.8 gigs.

I could probably live with low quality, but when I used a different codec and reduced the quality by about 60%, the file was almost the same size, and was so crappy i couldn't even watch it. It's a fishing video, so most of it is on a boat... hence the movement.

Which export method would work best? I at least want it around 4 gigs so it can go on a dvd. But smaller would work best. I can put it through gspot, maybe someone can tell me how to make my specific file smaller without too much loss of quality? Which codecs are better than others? Thanks a bunch for all the help.