need help getting footage from AVCHD sony hanycam into adobe premier

That 11 separate video clips were on the SD card isn't important. That simply means you started and stopped recording 11 various times. If all 11 videos have been copied to the hard drive already, open and play them one at a time in QuickTime. Once you see the correct one, you'll have its file name and can delete the rest, assuming you still have the others backed up on the chip if you still want some, or all of the others. Let's now assume you have just the one raw video on the hard drive.

The message you were getting from Premiere about a mismatch meant that the 11 videos weren't shot with the same settings. Meaning some were shot at 1080, others at 720, and maybe some as standard definition video, and it was alerting you to that fact just so you'd know.

The huge size you're getting on the export can only mean one thing. The raw video is compressed (I guarantee you it is). Whatever output method you're choosing is uncompressed, such as TIFF. So every 30 fps are being read from the original compressed file and written as uncompressed images. Remember, that's what a video is; a very large number of still images viewed in rapid succession. Since the output is uncompressed, it takes up far more space. It's also then not in a format that can be used on a final Blu-ray disk. And I don't just mean it won't fit.

iMovie is used to arrange all of the clips and sound tracks you bring in. Once you have the video in its final arrangement, you send the iMovie project into iDVD. iDVD is what you use to create the disk. If you set it on automatic, it will choose the highest bit rate it can for a video that will still fit on one disk. It will also be MPEG-2, which is the only encoding that can be used for a DVD, or the disk won't be recognized by any player as having content on it.

iDVD can't generate a Blu-ray disk if you want HD output.

I use the Premiere Pro suite, so that's what I know. I can't tell from your posts exactly what you have. You typically only say Premiere. So is that Premiere Pro, or Premiere Elements? If you have Premiere Pro, can I assume you have the rest of the suite, which includes After Effects, Encoder, Encore, etc.?

While you can use Premiere Pro to export your video, that's really what the Encoder is for. Although when you get right down to it, the same choices are in both apps for exporting a video. One of the purposes for having those tasks separated is production flow. If you export from Premiere Pro, you can't do any other editing until it's done, and that can take a looooong time. If you export the same Premiere Pro video sequence out of the Encoder, then you can go on to your next editing project in Premiere Pro while Encoder is working on the previous project in the background.

Create your video sequence in Premiere Pro and save it. You're done in Premiere Pro now. There really isn't much reason to have it running. Launch Media Encoder and drag/drop your saved video sequence into the larger open left pane. On the right are a bunch of prebuilt settings. Since YouTube is one of your objectives, expand the YouTube heading under presets. Choose the one you want to use. Here, since I built my little test as a full 1920x1080 HD sequence, I want to remain in an HD format. While there is a choice for 1920x1080, this is hardly necessary for YouTube. So instead, I'll choose 720p HD. Drag and drop the sequence you want at the right, onto whatever is currently showing in the left pane under the Preset column. It will change to that encoding option, and the far left column will change to the appropriate file format, as shown here:

In this case, if it wasn't already H.264 (MPEG-4), it will change to that automatically. This is what YouTube now uses for all of its videos. All older content is being converted from Flash or MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. All .mp4 files play in your web browser via HTML5, so no other type of browser plug-in is necessary to view them, as was long previously the case with Flash or Shockwave video.

If you want to see what the encoding values are, and change them if you wish, click on the preset name at the left. This window will overlay the work screen.

Notice that the bitrate is at the lowest HD setting of 16. Since you chose a video format for streaming via YouTube, the assumption is you want to keep the final size down. Click OK if you changed anything, or click Cancel. Click the little green arrow towards the top center to do the encoding. If you don't like the results (too choppy), increase the bitrate and try again until you get a good balance between quality and a size that isn't silly for uploading.

Since you have a two hour video, create a short test sequence using only about 10 minutes of the video. Then you won't be waiting for very long encoding times, only to find out you don't like how the bitrate affected the video. Once you've found your happy medium, then encode the full video sequence.

Here's some tips to help you get the best final results.

Adobe has their own pixel sizes they recommend for SD video, but I noticed their sizes always leave pretty noticeable unfilled edges to the left and right of the screen. So I spent quite a while experimenting to come up with my own values to use for SD.

4:3 (NTSC) — create and save square-pixel images at 726 x 534

16:9 (NTSC) — create and save square pixel images at 874 x 480

Note that these are for if you're creating a DVD in Premiere Pro. They do not apply to HD sizes. For HD, create your stills at the same pixel dimensions as the video you're creating.

Since your video is 1920x1080, sharpest results would be to create your still images to those exact dimensions so they don't have to scale up or down to the video size. I'm going to base everything below on 1920x1080 HD for Premiere Pro since that's the size of your video. The DVD part comes later.

Also, save your still images as uncompressed TIFFs. Do not at any point use JPEG, which is a compressed, lossy format. You'll already be losing enough detail with MPEG-2 for a DVD, and MPEG-4 / H.264 for HD for the encoded final video without compounding the detail loss by using JPEG stills in your video sequence.

Another very important thing to do with all of your still images is to prep them for video. Most people use either Adobe RGB or sRGB as their default working space in Photoshop. Neither of these works worth a darn in video work. The color on the final disk won't display color you would expect to see on your HD or standard tube TV when played back. It will either be anywhere from oddly desaturated to wildly over saturated color. So when you have all of your still image prepped as far as size and crop, run them all through an Action in Photoshop so they're video ready.

Highlights are particularly susceptible to weird translations when the embedded profile is not a video color space. Worse if there's no embedded profile at all. So the first step in the action you create is to actually darken the full on white highlights. As dumb as it sounds to flatten the specular highlights some, believe me, this works and produces a better final output. Create a curve like this in your action:

Apply the curve. Note that I have my curves based on Pigment rather than Light. If you use the default setting of Light, then your highlight move would be from the upper right corner for the same effect:

Also note that I added an extra point to lock the shadow end some so it isn't a straight line adjustment.

The next step in your action is to convert the image to a video color space. For HD, use these settings:

Save your Action. Then use the File > Automate > Batch function in Photoshop to apply the same two step Photoshop Action to all or your still images.

You don't have to size your images ahead of time, but then make sure "Default scale to frame size is on in Premiere Pro's preferences before creating a sequence:

Otherwise, oversized images will come in centered to the frame size, chopping off the extra, and undersized images will be centered, but surrounded by black space to fill the area where you don't have enough pixel dimension in the still images or video footage for the chosen video sequence frame size. With it on, anything placed in the sequence will be scaled to fit as best as possible.

If everything is at 1920x1080 beforehand, then there's no need to have this check box on and nothing will be scaled, which eliminates another point where you would soften the image quality.

Okay, you're ready to create your video. Create a new video project and select your HD sequence preference as shown:

Click OK. The main work screen will appear. This is when you go into the preferences and turn the check box on for "Default scale to frame size" if your images and video are not already all already at that pixel size of 1920x1080. For the stills you create, resolution means absolutely nothing in video work. Doesn't matter if they're 72 dpi, 300 dpi or any other number. The only thing that counts in video is their actual size in pixel height and width.

Create a sequence and build your video, apply transitions where you want them, extra sound tracks, etc. Save your Premiere Pro project.

On to Media Encoder. Open that and add the Premiere Pro project you just finished. Since what you actually want is a DVD, you can create one from your HD sequence. All DVD video is squashed (scaled) in the height, so you're going to lose image quality no matter what you start with, which will be compound by the bitrate you use, and the MPEG-2 encoding. Since the final encoding needs to be for DVD, chose that in the left column. Make sure you specifically choose MPEG-2 DVD, or Encore will encode the video sequence again.

I use these settings for best quality DVD video, though you may need to adjust the bitrate down to fit the final video and audio on one 4.7 GB DVD:

Extra screen shot of the Video settings since you can't all of it at once:

Under the Audio tab, make sure to use Dolby Digital, or Encore will re-encode that, too.

Now, just to add to the confusion. 🙂 You can skip Media Encoder entirely and drop your finished Premiere Pro sequence into Encore. Then apply the encoding options you want there. It's up to you, but you have to sit through the encoding either before building the DVD in Encore, or after.

Sorry, showed the wrong video sequence. I don't use the standard HDV options for my HD projects. I have no idea why anyone would use the anamorphic choices when all HD is square pixel video. I use the AVCHD choices:

I never used iMovie, so can't judge it in any real way, other than to note the app, in and of itself, isn't the cause of your very large output files. iMovie is a video editor, just like Premiere Pro. Where the mistake is happening is the encoding settings you're using. But it sounds very much like the settings are extremely simplified, giving you little control other than Best, High, Medium, Low. That doesn't give you a clue what it's doing as far as bitrate or other settings. Any output that results in a larger file than what a single layer DVD can even hold are not the correct settings.

I would strongly suggest forgetting iMovie and rebuild your video in Premiere Pro. Then you can experiment to your heart's content with the Adobe Media Encoder to get an encoded final that results in a reasonable size. Also remember, you say your initial goal is a DVD, so make sure all of your testing is using the MPEG2-DVD encoding option.

Also, your encoded video will also have a separate Dolby audio file. Add to that, a single layer DVD can't actually hold 4.7 worth of data. There's the lead-in and lead-out space, and other space that gets used just to produce a working disk. Keep the combined space of the video and audio files so they total no more than 4 GB in size.

You're quite welcome! 🙂