Encoding so H.264 .MOV is playable by Nikon D5100

Question

I want to be able to create a .MOV file in the trial version of Premiere Elements 9 that will playback on my Nikon D5100.  It is my understanding that the D5100 creates H.264 format with Long-GOP (Group of Pictures) using B frames (bi-directional differencing between frames).  It gets very good compression and quality.  However, no matter what encoding choices I make, the PE9 movies I make end up 10x the size of the D5100 source .MOV.  As a simple test, I take a D5100 sourced .MOV (1080p 30fps normal quality), put it on the timeline, then try to Share it as a Quicktime .MOV configured to be similar to the source material.  No matter what video encoding choices I make, the end result it about 10x the size of the source AND the Nikon D5100 doesn't like the format and won't play it back.  Any guidance as to how to get the .MOV I'm creating to be the same size and quality as the source AND have the D5100 recognize it and play it back?  I think I'm missing something obvious, or are there undocumented limitations of PE or the trial version that are thwarting my efforts, or is high compression/high quality H.264 abilities thwarted by technology licensing issues.  By-the-way, the point of this is to be able to show my daily movie segments to my travel partners while in-the-field/on trips.  If I can get this to work, I think that D5100 will show a better/smoother video out its HDMI port than my laptop will with a Nvidia Geforce G105M.  Be gentle with me as I'm a tad new to video.

Answer 1

Like many video formats, there are dozens of different flavors and compression settings for H.264/MP4s, including AVC (which itself has a number of flavors). It's going to be pretty tough to figure out exactly that camera is producing.
You can try opening the video in G Spot (http://www.headbands.com/gspot/) and seeing if that gives you specs you need. But even then it's hard to say if you'll get something that gives you the EXACT size file that camera produces.