Video Output Settings Problem - VSDC/PowerDirector

[Cilver]

I'm creating MP4 videos that are made from OBS screen recordings of PowerPoint Presentations that have been trimmed and combined with a separate voice-over file. This process is somewhat convoluted, but it is exactly what I need to be doing for various reasons, so solutions that attempt to bypass this process are not what I'm looking for.

Originally I was importing the screen recordings and audio files into VSDC video editor (free) with settings that are displayed on the attached image. This output small size, high quality files, however, I have since run into way too many problems with VDSC including not being able to view files at all to failing every time I try to output new ones. So I purchased PowerDirector16 (I put PD15 in the image, but it's 16, I just checked, sorry) and put the same files/simple trim edits into it, then used what I thought were comparable output settings (noting that I am a complete amateur with video editing and have no idea what most of them mean). Unlike VDSC, I'm not running into any bugs, but the output is either a huge file or terrible quality.

If PowerDirector Kbps bitrate is set to the allowable MP4 range of 3000+, the file looks okay, but it's huge (over 4 gigs for a 50 min file for midrange Kbps settings). In VSDC I had around a 600Kbps rate and ended up with great looking files that were over an hour long, so I set the PowerDirector output to comparably low bitrates by editing the custom profile.ini file directly. However, when I set a 700 Kbps rate I still ended up with a much larger file that looked like blocky crap (see attached image). All of this leads me to believe that there is some other setting in the PowerDirector output choices that will help me make the simple PowerPoint animation with static background look good with a low file size.

Can someone who is knowledgeable about output settings and the type of video I am trying to output help me figure out a way to adjust the PowerDirector output settings to produce a comparable file to the VSDC files I used to make (but can no longer get to work due to VSDC bugs? It would be annoying if I paid for PowerDirector and had to get something else because of output option limitations, so ideally I can use PowerDirector options for this fix.

Please view the attached image for the output settings in each case. Thanks in advance for reviewing this post.

[Cilver]

I have since gotten my video recordings to work on VSDC again. It's just a bit finicky and I have to use single continuous video files and cut them up making sure to cut past the last frame instead of exactly on it (it seems to be one of many problems that causes failure to export). I tried numerous solution to produce comparably small and good looking files with other free files and services, but nothing except OBS's original recording and the VSDC output I have shown have worked for that. I think if it's possible to produce those same encoder settings in another program, but this one is free and I didn't have to change almost anything to get what I wanted.

I don't really need anymore replies to this post for solutions, but I think the settings I show in the photo might stand as a good reference point for anyone trying to produce a small size, high quality video when the imagery is mostly static backgrounds and simple shape changes. Though most of the credit goes to OBS for producing a pretty nice file to start with for that type of screen recording. Though I should note that with OBS, there's still a bit of 'ringing artifacts' in the crisp edged, brighter colors--particularly bright greens and reds--but I think this is the almost unavoidable result of the best rendered video going through Chroma subsampling of 4:2:0 to meet various standards, either through a television or computer monitor, through youtube or web standards, or through any other simplification point between the video creator and the viewer. In other words I gave up on the color ringing, but I'm pretty happy otherwise.