Video size too small in Adobe Premiere

[sadievladimir]

Hello,

I'm very new to all of this and I'm sorry if this is a really dumb question. I've been looking around this site and haven't found an answer to my question so I thought I'd ask.

I imported a .wmv file to Adobe Premiere pro C3 as well as some .jpeg stills. I noticed that the video in the display box was really small. If I adjusted it and made it bigger, the picture quality got bad. I exported the video just to see how it would look once I was done and it was still really small. I'm afraid to go ahead and finish this project because my video will be unwatchable at that size. Is this fixable?

Thanks

[poisondeathray]

If the specifications of the original .wmv file you imported were low or poor quality (i.e. low bitrate, small size) there is not much you can do. (garbage in = garbage out). If they are are adequate, you should be able to resize (just change the encoder settings)

Run mediainfo or gspot on your .wmv to determine the dimensions and video bitrate

[sadievladimir]

My raw footage was an .mpg that I converted to .wmv using Windows Movie Maker. Was there a better way to do this that would maintain/improve quality? I'm using a crappy video camera so I wouldn't be surprised if my original file is crap.

Thank you for the response

[sadievladimir]

Also,

If my file isn't garbage, how does one change the encoder settings?

Thanks

[poisondeathray]

You generally want to avoid conversions with a lossy codec because of quality loss at each step. Having said that I think premiere still has problems importing .mpg?

I only have CS2, and not on this computer, but I think from memory is:

file => export => adobe media encoder => format windows media (now change the "preset" drop down menu)

If you don't find it in the size preset, you can manually do it by selecting "broadband or cable modem" in the left pane and the right pane should give you a width x height adjustment

[sadievladimir]

wow. Thank you. I went to the encoder, exported it and changed it to WMV and it looks fine. Its a really short clip but and took a weirdly long time to export it but I'll do it again when I'm actually done with the movie. Thanks again.

[edDV]

My raw footage was an .mpg that I converted to .wmv using Windows Movie Maker. Was there a better way to do this that would maintain/improve quality? I'm using a crappy video camera so I wouldn't be surprised if my original file is crap.

Thank you for the response

You have the option to exprot to 720x480 DV-AVI format in Windows Movie Maker 2 "Publish to". You would be better off importing your camcorder files to Premiere and skip WMM. WMV should be encoded only as a last step if needed but should be avoided entirely if DVD is the goal. DV to DVD MPeg2 is a simple conversion.

[sadievladimir]

I can't directly import to premiere because the file is .mpg. Unless there's a way to do it and I just don't know about it.

[edDV]

I can't directly import to premiere because the file is .mpg. Unless there's a way to do it and I just don't know about it.

Premiere Pro will import MPeg2 unless it is in a strange container. You will need to do a "render workspace" (yellow line) before you can preview the timeline real time.

[sadievladimir]

My .mpg file doesn't say .mpg2 so I don't think I have that. Could you go over the steps to render something? I'm really new and pretty much don't understand anything. Thanks.

[edDV]

Which camcorder generated this file?

Refs:
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/video/premiere/render/

[sadievladimir]

Crap. Whatever was working for me yesterday isn't today. I tried exporting again and the size is still small. Maybe it never worked and I just thought it did because I'm just confused with it all.

I'm using a Sony cyber-shot 6.0 mega pixel camera. Its not even a camcorder, just a camera that has the ability to record a few minutes of footage. I've made several "movies" with it in Windows Movie Maker, I just wanted to try Premiere. Any steps on rendering/exporting would be nice

thanks

[sadievladimir]

**Update**

I just exported clips to 720x480 DV-AVI format in Windows Movie Maker, imported them in Premiere and then exported again to check size and quality. Everything looked good and was normal size. I'm happy about that but now I have another size problem.

I need a few .jpeg stills (of celebrities) in my video. I got them online, saved as, and imported them. No matter if they're 220x300 or 1200x1100, they're still coming up tiny in the video. I tried adjusting them in photoshop but things got blurry. Do I need to find even larger pictures or is there something I can do that I don't know about?

Sorry for all the dumb questions