Quality Problems PremierPro CS5

Hi Guys - Comments and help needed please.

Just getting myself tuned in to video with the 7D and Premiere Pro CS5.

I am making a few tutorial movies with screen capture prog CamStudio - the free version.

Now when the screen captures are played back as captured they are of very good quality - and you can read all the menus on the captured screen video. However; when I try to edit them in Premiere Pro and Encore - and save them to disk or computer they seem to lose one hell of lot of quality and the captured screen menu text is barely readable.
I hope it is just down to the settings I am using - Because - when I drag my screen captured videos into the bog standard Windows Movie Maker there is no noticeable degradation and the file sizes are also much reduced. Perhaps I should stick with Windows Movie Maker and not try to get too clever!

I should add that when I make 7D movies with Premier Pro they seem to be ok.

So, my friends - Please tell me - What am I doing wrong?

What is the resolution of the captured video and what are the sequence settings in Premiere?

Hi Terjay
Nice of you to get back to me - needless to say - I really don't know what I am doing with PremierePro yet but here goes -
My current Project setting (top left corner) is 1279x792 @25fps.
I can capture/record off either of 2 screens which I have reset as follows No1 1280x800 and No2 1920x1080 - I have set these as their native resolution as other resolutions seem to give distortion. Recording from either gives me the same problem.

1279x792 is a seriously messed up resolution as it doesn't fit natively in any video format in Premiere. Try making a 720p sequence then right click on a clip in a sequence -> scale to frame size. Then export it as 1280x720.

If your Encore is set up to make normal SD DVDs the resolutions are specced to 720x576 PAL or 720x480 NTSC and it won't look as sharp.

Terjay wrote in post #11347983
1279x792 is a seriously messed up resolution as it doesn't fit natively in any video format in Premiere. Try making a 720p sequence then right click on a clip in a sequence -> scale to frame size. Then export it as 1280x720.

If your Encore is set up to make normal SD DVDs the resolutions are specced to 720x576 PAL or 720x480 NTSC and it won't look as sharp.

Thanks Terjay - I was wondering along those lines. I will mess about with the resolution and see what I come up with. Do you know what I set Encore to to get the video to play at good resolution on the computer?

Encore is a Blu-ray and DVD authoring software so either it's DVD (standard definition) or BR (high definition). The disc formats are tightly specced so you can't improvise with that. If you are making a tutorial (I'm guessing this will be put on the internet?) and you want people to see what you're doing you probably should do the capturing and exporting at the same resolution as your screen.

Terjay wrote in post #11349140
Encore is a Blu-ray and DVD authoring software so either it's DVD (standard definition) or BR (high definition). The disc formats are tightly specced so you can't improvise with that. If you are making a tutorial (I'm guessing this will be put on the internet?) and you want people to see what you're doing you probably should do the capturing and exporting at the same resolution as your screen.

Yes Terjay - it is a tutorial for class use and it will play perfectly as a screen video on a computer but I wanted to make several of these captures menu-driven from the same DVD. Many thanks for your comments.

You can also export to Flash if you have a newer Encore. It will export the project as a flash site with all the functionality of a DVD (menus etc).