Should I export from Premiere using DV or HuffyUV?

[miamicanes]

I just finished cutting & pasting a captured video together using Premiere Elements 3.0. It was captured using a Pyro to DV-AVI (I had to do the cutting & pasting because really bad tape problems seem to cause the Pyro or Windows to get completely derailed mid-capture & force me to pause & restart capture to recover).

Now that I have a coherent video again, I need to export it to AVI so I can denoise it using AviSynth, then launch a batch of overnight conversions to H.264 and MPEG-2 using x264 and HCencode to see what I end up with in the morning. It looks like I basically have three export choices:

Microsoft AVI, HuffyUV codec

Microsoft AVI, PanasonicDV codec

MicrosoftDV

Any particular recommendations before I blindly try one and hope for the best?

Also... is encoding the audio from PCM to AC3 or MP3 something that I should try doing at this stage, or should I just dump the audio as 16-bit uncompressed PCM stereo (interleaved at 1-second?) when I do the export from Premiere Elements 3.0?

[redwudz]

I would probably use DV for output myself. HuffyUV is lossless, but you may end up with a huge file, depending on the length of your video. I prefer the Cedocida DV Codec myself, but if all you can use is the Panasonic DV Codec, it will work also.

It's up to you when to encode the audio to a different format. I usually do that separately from the video anyway. You could use Aften or ffmpeggui for the AC3 conversion. Audacity can do the MP3 and it's helpful if you need to tweak the audio a little. You need the Lame MP3 ACM codec for Audacity.

[miamicanes]

Ok, one more question... after I've exported from Premiere to DV-AVI and used HCenc and/or x264 to create the .m2v and/or .mp4 file, and eventually create the AC3 or MP3 audio file, how do I interleave the audio back into the .mp4 or .m2v file to create a single file that contains video + audio?

[redwudz]

For the X264 you could use VirtualDub or VD Mod and add the audio back in after opening the video. I prefer VDM for that. Then just save both in 'Direct stream copy' to create the muxed video and audio file. There are other programs that can do this also.

For MPEG, it depends what your plans are. If it's to a DVD, add the separate video and audio files to your authoring program and let it combine them when it authors. Or for just MPEGs, you could use the muxing feature in TMPGEnc encoder 'MPEG Tools'.

Other muxing programs: https://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/video-de-multiplexers They are demuxers but some of them can also mux the files together.

[edDV]

I suggest you try a short clip to test your process. The Panasonic DV codec will chop whites for camcorder video. This may not be a problem if you don't have white peaks above digital 235.

I usually only export short scenes for external filtering (Virtualdub or Avisynth) but when I do I get best results with fully uncompressed avi or if necessary Huffyuv. I've been able to export, filter and then import back into the DV project without level shifts or clipping.

A test will determine if you have a problem before you waste hours.