Help with PE2019 how to save loss of quality issues

[gilly b]

HELP!  I've edited a holiday video which is just over 1hr in length and comprises HD camcorder and Go Pro footage.  I've also added some music.  I usually save my movies to a flash drive to watch via a Blu Ray player connected to the TV.  Prior to adding music I saved the movie on the flash drive and the quality was great.  I subsequently made some minor editing adjustments  and added music before saving it to the same flash drive.  This time the quality was poor, definitely not HD.  I am not computer savvy and can not find a way to save the movie retaining the original quality.  The file extension (if that's what it is??) originally is a MPG file.  I didn't knowingly change any settings and have now tried MP4 and WMV etc and they are poor quality.  What am I doing wrong?  Why doesn't the subsequent copy with music save as the same type of file with great quality?  Can anyone offer an easy to follow solution, I've ran out of ideas?!

[Steve Grisetti]

"Quality" means different things to different people. Are you talking about resolution, color reproduction, clarity, etc? Can you post a screen shot comparing what it was to what it is?

If "quality" can be described as how closely your finished video resembles the original, quality is based on two things:

1) How closely your project settings match your source footage. Since your first output looked great and I assume you were simply re-editing your original project (rather than feeding your finished movie back into the program), I assume this isn't hwere things have broken down.

2) The Export & Share settings you used to output your movie. In both case, did you use the same output settings?

[gilly b]

Thank you for your reply.  Here are the screenshots, 1 was the original edited movie and 2 is the edited with soundtrack etc.  This was a re-edit of the original projet and I didn't knowlingly change any settings when exporting 2.  I've just checked and both 1 and 2 are MP4 files.  I'm totally lost!!

[Steve Grisetti]

You are saying that you're working in the same project, with the same source files, with each video? If so, I don't have any idea why there would be a difference if you use the same Export & Share settings for both.

But it looks like you might have taken the output from the first project and used it as source video for second. From what you've said, that's not the case. But that's what it looks like. Strange.