I just got off the phone with Adobe Premiere Tech Support and they tell me that Premiere doesn't support the I-Pod movies and can't export to either H.264 or Mpeg4. Does anyone know anything about this and is there a workaround? (Besides "Get FCP")
J

If you have Premiere Pro and the free QuickTime 7 player installed you can indeed export to H.264 QuickTime movies. I've done it.

Please do tell. Not only do I have the player, I just spent $29 for Quicktime Pro 7!!! Your help is gretly appreciated. And the folks at NLE agree with you but don't know beyond the fact that it can be done. See, this is what happens when people in television get involbved in the internet...everything turns fuzzy just before it turns completely upside down ;-) Maybe I should stick to bigger screens!!!
J

I thought you needed Quicktime Pro, but it is a simple matter of exporting a DV-AVI and then following these instructions.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/creatingvideo.html

I thought you needed Quicktime Pro, but it is a simple matter of exporting a DV-AVI and then following these instructions.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/creatingvideo.html
Uh, that tutorial does require QuickTime Pro. See Step 2.

Jonathan, sorry to tempt you by saying it could be done but neglecting to include instructions. My mind must have been taking a vacation at the time.

In a way, technically Adobe support was right when saying you can't export to MPEG-4/H.264, because you can't export a plain vanilla .mp4 file. You must choose QuickTime and then choose an MPEG-4 codec.

You have two choices for exporting a QuickTime H.264 file from Premiere Pro. You can use either the Export Movie option (File > Export > Movie...) or the Adobe Media Encoder (File > Export > Adobe Media Encoder...). Either way, you must choose QuickTime as the format. Then you will have a drop-down box of codec options. As long as you have the free QuickTime 7 player (the free version is sufficient; all we need is the QuickTime H.264 codec that is bundled with it. QuickTime Pro is not required), the H.264 codec will be listed as an option.

If you are using the Adobe Media Encoder, I must warn you that the bit rate slider is extremely inaccurate when encoding to the QuickTime format. I think I had to use a bit rate of somewhere around 23 kbps to get a 300 kbps file.

If you want to export an iPod compatible video, make sure it conforms to the following specs (stolen shamelessly from the gray fine print at the bottom of the Apple tutorial Steven linked to previously):

iPod can play the following video formats:

* H.264 video
File formats: .m4v, .mp4 and .mov
Video: Up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3
Audio: AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 KHz, stereo audio
* MPEG-4 video
File formats: .m4v, .mp4 and .mov
Video: Up to 2.5 Mbps, 480 x 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile
Audio: AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 KHz, stereo audio

I'm not sure if the QuickTime H.264 Premiere Pro exported video can be made to completely conform to these specs. My advice would be to run some tests and try the videos on an iPod. I don't have one so I can't test it myself.