(My first post). I have finished editing a sports highlight video using Premiere Pro 2.0. I shot the video using a Sony HDR FX-1. My goal is to conclude with a video that has the best resolution and clarity possible. From the PP2 timeline, I encoded with PP2 MPEG2, 1440 x 1080, VBR 2 pass, highest quality, deinterlaced, no frames dropped. I have tried numerous encoding combinations and have found that as I increase the biterate/sec setting, quality of the video image increases. However, when I increase the target bitrate setting over about 8-10 mb/sec, the audio becomes fouled. For awhile, I thought I would have to settle for low-quality video, if I wanted audio to sound good.

Recently, I was told that I should encode the video stream separately from the audio (so the audio isn’t ruined) and then join the two back together again. Obviously, as a beginner, I didn't know that was possible. I could do that in PP2, but it seems that this would require encoding again from the timeline, and the final encode would have to be at a low bitrate setting to preserve the audio, which would drop the quality of the video.

After hours of "homework," I downloaded free Virtualdub MPEG2, but the video analysis indicated that my video stream is not compatible. It seems that what I need is to encode video and audio separately (which I have done), and then when they are joined back together again, NOT re-encode the video, just let it pass "untouched." I thought the Virtualdub direct stream would allow this...

What are my options? I'm willing to purchase another product. What products do you recommend to accomplish this? That is, to take separate video (mpeg2, 1440 x 1080 [m2t]) and audio streams (wav or could use other) and join them together into one file that will play synchronized on my PC, without reducing the quality of either? If so, what is the final file, mpeg2, avi, ?

Thanks so much for the advise.

Tucker99