Capturing from a camera and retaining quality.

[Greyson Orlando]

Hi. I'm having trouble capturing video from a digital camera. I use Adobe Premire Pro 1.5 and a sony DCR-TRV140 camera. Here's the deal: When I open the video capture dialouge, and start recording my video (through DV hookup), I notice the video that's playing straight from the camera is of very high quality, high framerate, and is the right resolution. But the video actually captured to my hard drive diffrent. It has a visible loss in quality, noticable framerate loss, and the resolution is wrong. I know the resolution is wrong because I prnt scrned the capture dialouge and found that the video playing straight from the camera is 648x475 (at least I think it was 475, it's been awhile), but the video ends up being the default dv resolution (720x480). I've tried messing with the project settings as well as the capture settings. I eventually got to a list of sony cameras and I have no idea what it effects. Anyways, the DCR-TRV140 wasn't on there though on the adobe web site it says the program fully supports it. I've tried alot of settings and I still can't figure it out. I'm in pre-production of a pretty big project, so expect to hear from me again in the future. Thanks!

[Chris Barcellos]

What preset are you using when you start a capture ?

I cannot recall, but I believe PP 1.51 captures everything in DV. If there is another setting in the capture, it might be to capture in mpg2 (the same format as is on a DVD). If that is the case, you should change it to capture DV. In that way, you are capturing every 1 and 0 off the tape, and merely transferring it to your computer.

What the video looks like on you computer after that can depend on a lot of things, including your video card, the program you are using to play it back, and the settings. For anyone to answer your question, you need to provide detail on what you are using and what settings you have PP 1.51 in.

[Greyson Orlando]

Actually, I think i've figured it out. It had something to do with the program I was using to play it back.

But anyways, if you don't mind, please answer another question. I'm planning to continually export the videos for this project with lossless compressors, and then put it straight to DVD, would that be a smart way to retain quality, and would simply putting it to DVD ruin the quality and all my efforts to retain it?

[Chris Barcellos]

You can store you lossless video files, assuming they are small enough, on DVD. (about 4.5 gig max for a single layer DVD). However, that won't mean you can play them on a DVD player.

If you want to play on a DVD players, you are going to convert to mpg2 or vob files in the process of compiling you DVD. Even at the highest grade for DVD playing, you will be compressing your video significantly. While many people like DVD quality video, it still has some of the origninal digital video stripped from it during the process.

[Greyson Orlando]

Ok, well is there a way to view how a particular video would look as an mpg2 file?

[Chris Barcellos]

Render it in your editing software as an .mpg2 file, and play it on your computer. Or you can make a DVD on you your DVD burning software and burn to a rewritable DVD to play on a DVD player, to see how it looks.