Mpeg encoding question

I've had some problems with some videos I've made from my digital camcorder after I changed some of the settings on the mpeg encoding in the video editing program I have. For instance, videos just jump every 1 or 2 seconds if I try to play them in Windows Media Player with the current settings. Stupid as I am I didn't write down the default settings for mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 before I tried to change them, so now I need help to get back to the default. Can anyone help me out here with default bitrates, fps, etc? Thanks.

Typically you want to encode for a 320x240 pixel window, at 29.97fps, using about 700mbps (that's bits, not bytes) for MPEG4 (WMV, Quicktime, DivX, and other versions of MPEG4) transmission online... or about 1.5mbps in MPEG1, higher in MPEG2.

The best MPEG1 and MPEG2 encoder out there is called Tsunami MPEG Encoder, or TMpegEnc for short. Google it -- it's free in a trial version and you can legitimately reload the trial version every 30 days to keep it free. It takes longer but the quality is way WAY worth dumping any other encoder (other than, say, the most expensive Adobe or Vegas encoding plug-ins) to use TMpeg instead.

I actually don't let my video editing program do my encoding any more for quality reasons. I use the editing program (Premiere) just to get the story chopped and welded together and a soundtrack bolted on. I then output the whole deal as an uncompressed AVI, then run that through Windows Media Encoder to make WMV (mpeg4) versions, or through TMpeg to make mpeg-1 or mpeg-2 versions for burning to videoCD or DVD.

Follow-up questions?

Can you reinstall the Software? That might reset the defaults.

Not sure if this will help, but the default settings when I select mpeg1/mpeg2 are:
Audio: 224 Kbps, 44,100 Hz, Layer 2
Video: 29.970 fps, 720x480

Telegasm, thanks for that info too.

Great Telegasm, that was just the info I needed, and some more. I'll try your suggestion on letting the editing program put everything together uncompressed and then use the other programs for the mpeg encoding.