Movie Export settings

Question

I’ve recorded some HDV 1080i on a Sony HDR-HC1 and want to export and compress this in Elements to post on YouTube and Facebook.  The Export Movie Settings are dizzying and only the basic mechanics are documented.
The first General settings consist of File Types Microsoft AVI, Uncompressed Microsoft AVI, Microsoft DV AVI, and QuickTime, along with a number of settings that don’t appear to have that much to do with exporting a movie:  Audio Interchange File Format, Windows Bitmap, Filmstrip, Animated GIF, GIF, JPEG, Targa(?), TIFF, and Windows Waveform.
With Microsoft AVI, the Video settings have a number of compressor settings, Cinepak Codec by Radius, 2 different Intel IYUV codecs, Microsoft RLE, Microsoft Video 1, Uncompressed UYVY 422 8bit, and None.
With QuickTime there are 27 Compressors, including DV/DVCPRO-NTSC, H.264, MPEG-4 Video, and Uncompressed YUV 8 bit 4:2:2.
Some of these compressors have their own configurations, for example, the Microsoft Video 1 compressor has a Temporal Quality Ratio which defaulted to 0.75.  Any idea what this is??
Depending on the compressor you can select 256 colors, Thousands of colors or Millions of colors.
The next settings are Frame Size, Frame Rate, Pixel Aspect Ratio, Quality and Data Rate.
The next settings are Keyframe and Rendering, including Use Project Setting, 8-bit and Maximum, then Fields including No Fields, Upper Field First, and Lower Field First, a checkbox for Deinterlace Video Footage and another checkbox for Optimize Stills.  Then a setting for Keyframe Every n frames.
The last settings are for Audio and include Compressor (most of which are Uncompressed), Sample Rate, Sample Type, Channels and Interleave.
If I want to compress this 4X from the original MPEG size to satisfy file size requirements and have it look as good as I can on the Internet which settings should I use?
I’ve been experimenting with Microsoft AVI and QuickTime because they seem to have the most flexibility, there’s not much flexibility with Microsoft DV AVI, I’m not sure I understand why.
Seems like my biggest lever would be with Frame Size, I’m going to do some experiments with 360 x 243 and a Pixel Aspect Ratio of 1.2 to reserve 16:9.
Another big lever would be Color Depth, but most of the compressors only allow Millions of colors, one of few that allows fewer colors is the Microsoft Video 1 compressor which allows Thousands of colors.
The Quality setting makes a big impact on file size, seems if I keep this above 85% it still looks reasonable.
I’m assuming I want to set the Deinterlace Video Footage checkbox.
Any other general insight?  Are there better choices for File Type, Compressor, or any of the settings?  I'm really struggling to get the filesize down and keep the quality viewable.
I would definitely appreciate any help with this!
paul

Answer 1

OK, for YouTube, then outputting an HD Timeline to 1920 x 1080 with the settings in this FAQ Entry, should be just fine: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2759311#2759311
For DVD-Video, an HD Project will need to be down-rezzed to SD and Encoded with the MPEG-2 DVD CODEC. There are several workflows for this, and the method chosen will depend on what program one is using to author the DVD-Video.
For exchange between a PC and a Mac, MPEG is a good choice, and the H.264 CODEC does a good job, yielding an MP4. If the PC-user has Apple's QT Player (latest version) installed, then the MOV wrapper should work fine, as will MP4.
Formats like WMV, most AVI's, and a few more, are platform-specific, and one would need to coordinate between the two platforms, to get them to work. I would stay away from those.
For streaming, the DivX CODEC is a good one, but one would need to have that installed on each computer, or use a player, that has its own CODEC's, like VLC Player, or MediaPlayer Classic HC. There are probably more, but those are the two that I use most often on my PC.
Good luck,
Hunt