Hello, new to PowerDirector and video editing in general, so please forgive my ignorance. I'm attemping to stitch together 6 video files into 1 single video file with transitions inbetween. That was pretty easy to figure out. The issue I'm having is that the final product is 3x the size of the original source files. I have hundreds of videos to create, so I want to make sure I'm doing this right before I start doing these in bulk.

The source files (recorded on an iPhone) have the following attributes:

• File Format: MP4


• Video Format: H.264 AVC


• Bitrate: 3.41 Mbps


• Resolution: 1280x720


• Framerate: 30 fps


• Aspect Ratio: 16:9


• Profile: High Profile


• Frame type: Progressive
  
  


• Audio Format: AAC


• AudioSample Rate: 44kHz


• Audio Bitrate: 128Kbps


• Channel: Stereo

PowerDirector would encode them into H.265 HEVC. The "Produce" settings I'm currently using are MP4 1920x1080/30p (11 Mbps). If i were to venture a guess, I would guess the file size is tripling not because of H264 to H265 but because the bitrate is being increased from 3.4 Mbps to 11 Mbps.

Is there a best practice or recommended group of settings I should use to find a good balance of quality vs. file size? I understand some quality will be lost when I re-encode, but I don't know how else to merge these multiple files into a single video.