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gbanks_medecision
Participant
January 10, 2017
Answered

MP4 file exported is much larger than the original MP4 file imported

  • January 10, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 26330 views

Hi!

I'm a new user to Premiere Pro, and my boss has tasked me with doing some minor edit to some .mp4 video files. These files are recordings of online training programs conducted via WebEx. The original videos range from 25MB to 75MB. After making edits (such as cropping the video, and deleting a few minutes of film time) the file size is much larger. In some cases the file size has doubled. I have played around with the export settings (found below) and researched the best setting to used to be played online via our Learning Management System.

Ideally, I would like to keep the video size as close to the original as possible. Is there a way to make the edits and use export the videos at a file size that is close to the original video (without sacrificing quality).

Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated!

Export Settings

      This topic has been closed for replies.
      Correct answer David Arbor

      Thanks. These screenshots give most of the information you need to answer your question. The WebEx video is encoded at a paltry bit rate of 9 Kbps or .09 Mbps. You're encoding at 1 Mbps or 1000 Kbps. The audio bit rate is also very low. Neither one of these screenshots show what codec was used to compress the video (I'd guess H.264 or VP9), but either way the bit rate is biggest part of the answer.

       

      The lowest bit rate you can set in AME and Premiere for H.264 is .19 Mbps, or 190 Kbps, still larger than your source. Go ahead and try that, change your audio from stereo to mono, drop the bit rate to 16 Kbps, change the audio quality to medium, and change the sample rate to 8000 Hz. Your resulting file will still be larger than your source, but it will be considerably smaller than what you were getting before. See if the resulting quality is compromised too much. If you really need a smaller file size I'd recommend checking out HandBrake for more options: https://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

      2 replies

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      David Arbor
      Inspiring
      January 10, 2017

      Can you post a screenshot of the info (codec, bit rate, audio info) from Windows Media Player, VLC (or whatever you use) from the WebEx recording? You can also choose a bit rate of less than 1Mbps by using a decimal. .5Mbps will be 500 kbps. Your audio is Stereo

      at 192kbps, I'm sure the WebEx recording is Mono at a much lower bit rate.

      What's the size of the original video?

      As for keeping quality, yeah, it'll probably look decent enough, but keep in mind that you're taking a heavily compressed video and then heavily compressing it again. You're not going to retain the exact quality.

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      gbanks_medecisionAuthor
      Participant
      January 10, 2017

      Thanks for this information!

      The information for the video is below:

      D
      David ArborCorrect answer
      Inspiring
      January 10, 2017

      Thanks. These screenshots give most of the information you need to answer your question. The WebEx video is encoded at a paltry bit rate of 9 Kbps or .09 Mbps. You're encoding at 1 Mbps or 1000 Kbps. The audio bit rate is also very low. Neither one of these screenshots show what codec was used to compress the video (I'd guess H.264 or VP9), but either way the bit rate is biggest part of the answer.

       

      The lowest bit rate you can set in AME and Premiere for H.264 is .19 Mbps, or 190 Kbps, still larger than your source. Go ahead and try that, change your audio from stereo to mono, drop the bit rate to 16 Kbps, change the audio quality to medium, and change the sample rate to 8000 Hz. Your resulting file will still be larger than your source, but it will be considerably smaller than what you were getting before. See if the resulting quality is compromised too much. If you really need a smaller file size I'd recommend checking out HandBrake for more options: https://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

        E
        excited_Genie16B8
        Legend
        January 10, 2017

        The formula here is pretty straightforward.

        File size = bitrate x duration.  To get a smaller file, you need a lower bitrate or a shorter program (or both).

          R
          Rahul__S
          Participant
          April 13, 2020

          I see your post on almost every issue relating to output size but the thing is reducing bitrate makes the quality so much worse than the original that It becomes useless. Tweaking other settings has not worked for me so far I even manged to get file size almost equal to the original but quality is unwatchable not to mention the time it takes to process the video which makes it impractical for small video projects.

          It's very expensive for such results What really helped was using handbrake a FREE Software for compressing my videos after getting the massive file from premiere. Setting bitrate lower with same settings as preimere as in output MP4 H264 etc etc with bitrate around 1200-5000 the results are way way better in terms of size and almost no visible quality loss. Getting as low as 20-35% size of premiere pro's output file.

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