Premiere Pro CS4 - export to MKV?

[nitrous]

Hello everyone. I am working with raw AVCHD 1080i material which I need to convert to 1920x1080 (1080p/i) or 1280x720 (720p/i) with keeping the best possible quality, that's why I am looking for plugin which can help me exporting them to MKV files but I can't seem to find one. Can you please help me by pointing me the required plugin which exports those files? Thank you in advance.
Regards,
Jordan Petkov

[poisondeathray]

There is no direct mkv export plugin for Premiere

You can export then remux in mkvmerge to mkv. Note mkv is just a container and has no bearing on quality

[guns1inger]

MKV is not a commercial format. The only commercial encoder I know of that can output to MKV is Divx 7, and the quality is - average. You would better off outputting to either elementary streams, or MP4 or M2TS (if supported), the using one of the free tools to re-package as MKV.

[nitrous]

Now I understand what really MKV is. What format shall I use to keep the best possible quality for - let's say - 6GB file for 1.30h video as 720p and 12GB file for 1.30h video as 1080p? H.264 Blu-Ray? Blu-Ray MPEG2? Something else? Compression time doesn't matter. I guess I should do the MKV file that way - export to something, open it in vdubmod, save it as mkv, right? Should I do something else?

[poisondeathray]

What is your end goal? What are you playing this back on? e.g. 1080p30 is not supported by blu-ray specs, but ok for PC playback

If your input is 1080i30 , you shouldn't be doing any resizing vertically before deinterlacing or you will get very bad results

h.264 blu-ray will give you the best quality out of Premiere's internal encoding options. Some people prefer to use h.264 with external encoders by exporting a lossless format out of Premiere first

Don't use vdubmod for mkv, it is very outdated and doesn't support the newer spec. Use mkvmerge (mkvmergegui)

[lordsmurf]

MP4 is a commercial container available as export from the MainConcept-based Adobe Media Encoder, and AVC H.264 is an available export format.

[guns1inger]

Virtualdubmod's mkv support is very dated. Again, either use MKVMerge, or something like Xvid4PSP.

Size is dictated by bitrate. H264 will give you better quality at the same bitrate, or the same quality at lower bitrates, than mpeg-2. As you are already working with H264 material (AVCHD is H264), you may as well stay in that format.

[nitrous]

I want to export the project as playable video file on customer's computer. My input material is AVCHD 1080i50 from Panasonic HMC-151 camcorder. So what loseless format shall I use to get the project out of Premiere and which encoder should I use to compress the file and pack it into MKV container? Can MKVMerge do that? I've found that HD movie encoding groups are using AVC as video format. Here's an info from HD 1080p movie (quality is perfect):

Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 5 frames
Muxing mode                      : Container profile=Unknown@4.1
Codec ID                         : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                         : 1h 43mn
Bit rate                         : 12.1 Mbps
Nominal bit rate                 : 12.4 Mbps
Width                            : 1 920 pixels
Height                           : 816 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 2.35
Frame rate                       : 23.976 fps
Resolution                       : 24 bits
Colorimetry                      : 4:2:0
Scan type                        : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.322
Stream size                      : 8.73 GiB (86%)
Writing library                  : x264 core 67 r1139M 1024283
Encoding settings                : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:-3:-3 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy_rd=1.0:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=32 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=6 / nr=0 / decimate=0 / mbaff=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / rc=2pass / bitrate=12365 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=1:0.80

[guns1inger]

As LordSmurf has pointed out, you can out put to MP4 directly from Premiere, encoding to AVC H264 as you go. Any player that can play MKV will play MP4, and more players will play MP4 than will play MKV.

You are making this much harder than it needs to be.

[poisondeathray]

^That was done using x264 encoder and mkvmerge, which is what many people would use if they didn't want to use Premiere's h.264 encoder (based on Mainconcept's encoder)

If your end goal was some file playable on a PC, you first have to ensure their PC is fast enough. You have to decide what format too 1080p25 or bobbed to 1080p50. You probably want to deinterlace it if it's for PC playback.

I would deinterlace first, using avisynth filters. Premiere has an avisynth import plugin, but in my testing you undergo an extra colorspace conversion (which slightly degrades quality), so I usually use a lossless deinterlaced import into Premiere (I usually use UT lossless video codec, because it plays back faster than realtime which makes it useable for editing on my PC - it is well multithreaded for decoding). For exporting, I use the same, then use that as input into an x264 encoder. I use megui as a front end, but there many other choices e.g. xvid4psp, handbrake, ripbot264, dozens more...

At the bitrate you're planning on using ~18-19Mbps for 1080p25 (1h30min), you'd be hard pressed to find the differences between the h.264 encoders using input footage from a consumer/entry pro level camcorder , so it might be easier to use the bundled one.

[nitrous]

Thank you everyone. It wasn't that hard - I just exported it to H.264 with 1080p or 720p profile and everything is fine - no deinterlace or some kind of issues, after that I converted it to mkv using MKVMerge and voila