Epson P2000 - How to encode video revealed! Even from Premiere Elements & Pro

After much
pain and suffering - many hours of moaning about the complexities of
the multitude of video and audio codecs and the combinations said
specs, I have found a couple of piecies of information that may be
useful to the community as a whole. So here goes (and at least I can
remember how to do this later when I forget by reviewing this post).

NOTE: There are probably other ways to do this, but this works for me.

1. Quick time PRO. It has to be PRO and it is rather cheap - about 30$
or so.
You have two options.

Quicktime Option 1: (Slitely Large but good quality)
Photo Jpeg
Export your source video to 'Movie to Quick Time Movie'
under Options - select video settings.
You want to change the Compression Type to 'Photo-JPEG'
Use a frame rate upto 30fps, but adjust the quality slider down to keep
the bitrate from blowing out. I have found that 24 frames per second at
a quality of 90% works great!

In the Options box under compressor - make sure you uncheck optimize
for streaming.

Then in the Size box, make the size 640 x 480

And then in the Sound settings, pick something A-Law or u-Law at a good
rate - I like 24k to 44k but keep in mind, you have to watch the
overall bit rate.

Then let the encoder run and copy to P2000 - enjoy a good movie.

- Also - BEWARE that Garbage Video In = Garbage Video Out. Do not
expect sub quality video to look good in any encoding.

Quicktime Option 2. (Smaller, but Quality is ok)
MPEG-4 Simple Profile

Again select File - Export
Then Select 'Movie to MPEG-4'

On the MPEG-4 Export Settins - set the following
Video-
Video Format 'MPEG-4 Basic'
I limit my data rate to 2800 kbps/sec
Set the size to 640x480 VGA
Frame Rate is what ever you want as long as it is less than 30 - I like
24 - 29.97 (NTSC if you want to know)
I use keyframes at some rate of 4 per second.
Also, I use under video options - resync markers.

Audio-
Here you should use AAC at what ever rate your quality needs dictate. I
like 128.
Sample rate of 32 - 48 is fine.

Streaming -
Turn this off.

Then encode. Copy to P2000 and watch.

Note: you always have to watch the bitrate. For those that do not know
what this is - well, google.

******************
My favorite Option.
Using Adobe Premiere Elements 1 or Premier Pro 1.5 (havnt actually
tried pro, but should be same)

In Premiere, choose Export Move - (not export quicktime as the dialogs
are different.)
Then choose settings - General
Change the Filetype to Quicktime - Export video and Audio
Choose the Video option.
Compressor: Photo JPEG
Colors - millions
Frame size - again vga or 640 x480
Frame rate and quality are dependant - I get great results at 24 fps @
90% quality.
I use Aspect ratio of NTSC or 0.9 - as that is what most of our video
is here in the USA
I check Recompress and Maintain datarate - although I have not tried
altering this much.


Under KeyFrame and Rendering - Check Deinterlace and Optimize skills -
works for me.
Audio - ALaw 2:1 at what ever rate, type and channel you want. I leave
interleave alone at 1 Frame.

Then save it as Export to P2000 Photo JPEG and you will be able to
export quite good video.

NOTE: I have never been able to get MPEG-4 to work from Premiere
Elements 4.

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Hope that helps some of you - I know it will help me remember.