When producing videos for YouTube from Adobe Premiere, I often use the WMV format of export to get clear compressed video.

Unfortunately, sometimes the video and audio go out of synch. If you’re not using screen-capture software like Camtasia or screenshots, you can often solve this problem simply by producing in MPEG-4 format instead.

My issue with MPEG-4 is it goes pixelated for screen recordings. But for regular video footage it works perfectly. The file size is a little bigger and it takes longer to produce, but still manageable.

Here’s how:

If you prefer the older Mino flipcam which uses square pixels (instead of wide screen format) but want your videos to appear in YouTube without the wide-screen black bars, this method is the best configuration I’ve found. Your video will fill the entire YouTube viewing area.

This tutorial is not the only way to do this. It’s just what has worked best for me.

1. Create a new project in Adobe Premier

Keep the settings default. I use, for example, the DV format. It’s not so important because we’ll be changing this soon.

2. Download a Copy of Kingdia Video Converter

You can get your copy from the Kingdia Video Converter website. This is an excellent program that quickly converts videos for you from one format to another. We need to do this step because the default format saved by the flipcam actually comes out upside down in Adobe Premier. It also, for one reason or other, fails to preview properly.

3. Use the following settings to convert your video:

Choose: To WMV/ASF
Bitrate: 2500 kbps
Width/Height: 720 x 567
Aspect: 1:1

4. Import your converted video file

In Adobe Premier, you should import the new video file. Hopefully, if you’ve done everything right, it’s a lot smaller than the original. Test it out before inserting it into your timeline.

5. Change the way Adobe Premiere Interprets Your Video

Before adding the converted video to your timeline, right-click the file in the assets pane and choose “Interpret Footage”.

Then choose your Aspect Ratio as “square pixels” if it’s not selected already. This would obviously need to match your converted video format.

My method is mostly unconventional because it uses square pixels instead of the typical wide-screen ones to get the right look. However, I don’t understand that much about video and I just like to keep things simple.

If you know a better way, I’d love to hear about it, ok?

6. Insert The Video Into Your Sequence’s Timeline

I usually drag the video file from the assets pane and position it in Video channel 1. The particular channel isn’t important, just make sure to click it and activate it for all future operations so that they apply to your channel.

Also, make sure that the audio track that accompanies the video is also inserted into an Audio channel. The video and audio are linked and any cutting or editing you do will affect both channels. You can change this if you like by right-clicking the video or audio channel and choosing “Unlink”.

7. Transform Your Video

Make sure your player head is positioned somewhere on the timeline where the video is playing. Then while the video is stopped, click it once. Click again and a transform box will show up around the video.

This step is critical, because what we’re going to need to do is to scale UP the video and crop it. This is done in the same step by first increasing the size using the little transform handles in the corners of the box and then positioning the video by moving it from the center.

Since we’re dealing with square pixels and positioning them on a widescreen canvas, we’re going to have to lose some of the top and bottom of the video when you reposition it. The top and bottom are going to be cropped.

Scaling up, on the other hand, increases the size of the video with proportional dimensions so that it’s not stretched widthwise but still occupies the entire wide-screen canvas space.

8. Edit your video

At this point, you can edit your video as normal and add any screenshots you need to. You will be allowed to edit like normal. Ensure all the important parts havent been cropped off in your scale operation. If they have, you might want to move the video up or down to include these things.

9. Export Media

Now you’re ready to render your final video file. Click on the video channel you want to export in the timeline to activate it. Then click the “File” menu in Adobe Premier and choose “Export”. Choose “Media” in the sub-menu that appears.

10. Use These Media Export Settings

Format: MPEG

Preset: Custom

Export Video: Checked

Export Audio: Checked

Click The Video Tab. Then choose these settings:

Codec: MPEG-4/DivX

Unconstrain Size Ratio by unchecking the box next to the width/height setting

Width & Height: 640 x 360

Frame Rate: 25 fps

Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixel (1.0) **VERY IMPORTANT**

11. Accept the Export Settings

Check the output looks good in the Output tab above the video preview. Use the down arrow below the video to scroll back and forth to check specific frames. If it looks good, accept the settings you chose and a new program will open called Adobe Media Encoder. Click the button “Start Queue” in the left of the window and your conversion should start.

12. Upload Your New AVI file To YouTube

The resulting file is a AVI file. It should also be relatively small for you to upload it compared to using a proper wide-screen video format.

If you’re like me and you’re working with a slow internet connection, you’ll appreciate the need to keep your YouTube videos as small as possible without losing quality. Especially if you’re including some screencasts with your recorded flipcam video. This is where I have struggled to find the perfect settings that still keep the text readable and unpixelated.

In addition, if you prefer the older flipcam which uses square pixels (instead of wide screen format) but want your videos to appear in YouTube without the wide-screen black bars, this method is the best configuration I’ve found. Your video will fill the entire YouTube viewing area.

This tutorial is not the only way to do this. It’s just what has worked best for me.

1. Create a new project in Adobe Premier

Keep the settings default. I use, for example, the DV format. It’s not so important because we’ll be changing this soon.

2. Download a Copy of Kingdia Video Converter

You can get your copy from the Kingdia Video Converter website. This is an excellent program that quickly converts videos for you from one format to another. We need to do this step because the default format saved by the flipcam actually comes out upside down in Adobe Premier. It also, for one reason or other, fails to preview properly.

3. Use the following settings to convert your video:

Choose: To WMV/ASF
Bitrate: 2500 kbps
Width/Height: 720 x 567
Aspect: 1:1

4. Import your converted video file

In Adobe Premier, you should import the new video file. Hopefully, if you’ve done everything right, it’s a lot smaller than the original. Test it out before inserting it into your timeline.

5. Change the way Adobe Premiere Interprets Your Video

Before adding the converted video to your timeline, right-click the file in the assets pane and choose “Interpret Footage”.

Then choose your Aspect Ratio as “square pixels” if it’s not selected already. This would obviously need to match your converted video format.

My method is mostly unconventional because it uses square pixels instead of the typical wide-screen ones to get the right look. However, I don’t understand that much about video and I just like to keep things simple.

If you know a better way, I’d love to hear about it, ok?

6. Insert The Video Into Your Sequence’s Timeline

I usually drag the video file from the assets pane and position it in Video channel 1. The particular channel isn’t important, just make sure to click it and activate it for all future operations so that they apply to your channel.

Also, make sure that the audio track that accompanies the video is also inserted into an Audio channel. The video and audio are linked and any cutting or editing you do will affect both channels. You can change this if you like by right-clicking the video or audio channel and choosing “Unlink”.

7. Transform Your Video

Make sure your player head is positioned somewhere on the timeline where the video is playing. Then while the video is stopped, click it once. Click again and a transform box will show up around the video.

This step is critical, because what we’re going to need to do is to scale UP the video and crop it. This is done in the same step by first increasing the size using the little transform handles in the corners of the box and then positioning the video by moving it from the center.

Since we’re dealing with square pixels and positioning them on a widescreen canvas, we’re going to have to lose some of the top and bottom of the video when you reposition it. The top and bottom are going to be cropped.

Scaling up, on the other hand, increases the size of the video with proportional dimensions so that it’s not stretched widthwise but still occupies the entire wide-screen canvas space.

8. Edit your video

At this point, you can edit your video as normal and add any screenshots you need to. You will be allowed to edit like normal. Ensure all the important parts havent been cropped off in your scale operation. If they have, you might want to move the video up or down to include these things.

9. Export Media

Now you’re ready to render your final video file. Click on the video channel you want to export in the timeline to activate it. Then click the “File” menu in Adobe Premier and choose “Export”. Choose “Media” in the sub-menu that appears.

10. Use These Media Export Settings

Format: Windows Media

Preset: Custom

Export Video: Checked

Export Audio: Checked

Click The Video Tab. Then choose these settings:

Codec: Windows Media Video 9

Allow interlaced processing: NOT checked

Encoding Passes: One

Bitrate Mode: Constant

Unconstrain Size Ratio by unchecking the box next to the width/height setting

Width & Height: 640 x 360

Frame Rate: 25 fps

Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixel (1.0) **VERY IMPORTANT**

Maximum Bitrate: 2,500 or thereabouts (this determines the video quality)

Image Quality: 50 or thereabouts (this determines the individual frame quality)

Decoder Complexity: Auto

Keyframe Interval: 5 (this determines how quickly the video updates. For high motion video you may need a higher setting here)

11. Accept the Export Settings

Check the output looks good in the Output tab above the video preview. Use the down arrow below the video to scroll back and forth to check specific frames. If it looks good, accept the settings you chose and a new program will open called Adobe Media Encoder. Click the button “Start Queue” in the left of the window and your conversion should start.

12. Upload Your New WMV file To YouTube

The resulting file is a small WMV file that your viewers will appreciate. It should also be relatively small for you to upload it compared to using a proper wide-screen video format.

I hope you enjoyed this! If you have better settings you’d like to suggest that result in small output files that have good quality video (especially of screenshots) then I’d love to hear it in the comments below!

I’ve been a little absent from the blogging and social scene the past few days and for good reason! I’ve been tinkering with recording some new videos on Keyword Research for PPC.

Unfortunately, this tends to take me a LOT of time because I’m not that fluent with video. But I’ve finally figured out how to record videos in Camtasia and get them the right size and quality to fit in the YouTube wide screen format. And I’ve managed to do this in such a way that doesn’t leave me with a massive file that will take all year to upload on my 3rd world aDSL.

Here goes:

1. Set your screen resolution (or recording area) to 1280 x 720 pixels.

2. Record your video normally at this resolution.

3. First time around you’re going to need to add the video to the timeline with any settings, and then choose “Produce Video as”

4. In the production wizard window, choose from the menu Add/Edit Preset

5. Click New…

6. Give the preset a name like YouTube HD

7. Choose WMV as the file format

8. On the next screen choose from the Profiles menu “Camtasia Best Quality and File Size (Recommended)”

9. Click Next

10. Choose “Custom Size”

11. Type 640 for the Width and 360 for the Height

12. Click Next

13. Untick Embed Video into HTML

14. Click Finish

15. Click Close

16. Click Cancel

17. Start a New Project

18. Import your recording again

19. Now when you add the recording to the timeline and Camtasia asks for the Project Settings, choose your new profile from the drop-down menu “YouTube HD” or whatever

20. When you produce your video, you can simply choose the same profile for output as well

 

Typically videos produced like this come out of reasonable and readable quality. Video size for 10 mins of recording should be between 10 and 20 MB which is pretty cool considering all the guides i saw showed you how to make 1 GB files. That’s totally unnecessary!

That’s it girls and boys. Seriously, if you already know all this don’t laugh. It took me ages to figure it out and I’m sure not EVERYONE knows. So at least now that I shared this, those people technically challenged like me can save themselves hours of frustration.