AME CS6 still poorer than Handrake

[x2x3x2]

I just purchased Adobe Premiere CS6, tried exporting video using one of the mobile export presets of Adobe Media Encoder CS6. In this case I tried the iPhone 4, 720p 29.970 preset.

The exported footage is horrible! Well maybe not horrible, but bad. Especially considering the cost of the software.
It can't even match Handbrake which has been around for years.

The main issue for me is that even though AME CS6 encodes at higher bit rates (resulting in bigger files) as compared to Handbrake, video files from AME CS6 shows ugly artifacting about once a second. I'm assuming this is related to the iframes. Handbrake on the other hand, suffers no such issue.

I need some help with obtaining better low bit rate videos from AME CS6.
Does anyone know if/what encoding parameters which can be set in AME CS6 to make it close to Handbrake?
Or is there a way to get Premiere Pro CS6 to export through Handbrake?

[Baldrick]

You could try the debugmode frameserver, http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/usage.htm and then open the signpost file in handbrake.

[turk690]

Even the latest versions of Premiere Pro come out second-best in up- and downscaling, which has given me much grief so I posted previous threads about the same here before. So far the best method I've used to escape the meh results of AME is to frameserve with debugmode, then use the resulting *.avi in either the hd2sd (for downscaling) or sd2HD (for upscaling) avisynth scripts of Dan Isaac. x264 (and the GUIs written for it, like simple x264 launcher which I use) accept these *.avs scripts. The superior scaling techniques of the avisynth scripts coupled with the second-to-none encoding quality of x264 create videos that show why some commercial blu-rays were encoded with it.

[x2x3x2]

Great, these were very helpful!

Btw turk690, what is your experience with 1080p60 using your workflow with the tools mentioned above?

[turk690]

Presently I only capture and use 30p. 60p is great-looking and all that but the chain is not complete: some blu-ray players may not support it. And don't forget that, even in typical highest AVCHD bitrates 25mb/s, greater compression is obviously undertaken to record 60p as opposed to just 30p. sd2hd scripts with debugmode signpost file fed into simple x264 launcher couldn't be simpler, with fantastic results to match. Your desktop will just have many open windows (including AME, while feeding the debugmode file). For hd2sd (used to create DVD elementary streams from HD material) the *.avs script is fed to either HCEnc or an old (but still superb) CCE-basic.
I have used Premiere since 5c, and remain at CS5.0.3. The disappointing scaling capabilities on exporting only with AME are much-talked about, and has made me not update to CS6. Advice in Adobe forums like to say that hardware acceleration will improve results, but as you've noted, it's still dismal. That, and the over-rated MainConcept encoding engine sometimes make me miss last decade DV AVI...