Best export settings for Premiere and After Effects?

[ted-m]

Hi, I have adobe master collection cs3 and I was wondering what method of outputting is best for each, I need the highest quality export from premiere, and one that is compatible with after effects, and also the highest quality export from after effects, if you only know one then that helps too, thanks

[zuluclayman]

The answer to your questions depends on what you want to do with the final output - is it to be burnt to DVD? is it for web streaming? is it to be posted to a file sharing site such as Youtube? is it for viewing on your computer or a data projector?
All of these have different needs and limitations.
If you are going to do some post-editing in After Effects and you want to retain high video quality then don't use high compression settings in Premiere - the thing to remember is that each time you compress you lose quality and image data. Problem is file size - if you don't compress at all the file sizes can be gigantic out of Premiere, meaning your system may struggle when doing post-editing in AE with such large file sizes.
Post back with some further info on what you want the final output suited for.

[ted-m]

Actually could you please post which export setting I need for each of the ones listed?
And on my computer, yes I know from experimenting that the best quality takes up WAAY too much, so I need the next best quality like a little bit of quality loss, to export to after effects, I know about the file compression and quality loss, but give me specific details, in video audio, format, etc... bitrate and such, please and thank u.
the reason I need high quality eport is because I intend to export it back into premiere one more time so i can't have quality loss, I need to export it about 3-4 times in total inbetween after effects and premiere and final export, also when exporting to AE I need high quality so that they keying out is much more clear.
The output I need this video to be:
1.DVD for my class, this is a school project, and as a portfolio disc
2.Web Streaming/file sharing (youtube/veoh) for friends and family to see
I need these all to be the best possible quality without going over the file size limit
please and thank you for all your help

[zuluclayman]

If you are going to be going back and forth between Premiere and AE make sure you set the project settings to be the same in both. This way you can just copy and paste segments between Premiere and AE, taking the original DV footage that Premiere is using and thereby eliminating any compression worries. In AE when you go to the Export command in File menu it will give you the option of exporting as a Premiere Pro project, again eliminating the need to compress multiple times.
As for final export settings:
export for DVD and/or computer use - either use the presets available within Premiere (PAL, NTSC, menus etc.) to burn your DVD or use the presets to make an .avi file that you can then use a dedicated DVD authoring tool (Nero, DVD-Flick etc) to make your DVD from and also use as a file to be played on your computer.
For the .avi file when you go to Export it will give you choices of settings (settings button)
General - Microsoft avi
Compressor - this will depend on which codecs you have installed on your computer - if you want good quality with minimal compression choose a lossless codec such as Huffyuv v2.1.1 (this will result in large file sizes) or use the default Cinepack, Indeo video 5.10 etc for smaller file size. For even smaller file sizes use Xvid or h.264 codecs - these give way smaller file sizes with minimal loss of quality - many youtube videos are compressed with these. Auto Gordian Knot (link in my sig) is a freeware video compressor that uses Xvid or DivX to compress video files.
If it is just for your computer you could use an mpeg2 file and set the video quality to its highest on quality slider, bitrate encoding to VBR 2 pass, bitrate slider to maximum rate of 9.
Audio settings (for all uses) should be at either "same as source" or to stereo 48KHz @ 192kbps (at least) - audio takes up very little space compared to video so always use it uncompressed and at highest settings (if your original audio is poor don't expect improvement by higher settings - it can only work with what information it has)
Premiere or the DVD authoring tool will compress the video and audio to fit a standard DVD disc using their own preset settings.
For web use look on the Help pages of the sites you are using - both Youtube and Veoh have information there for their preferred file format, resolution etc.

hope this helps