Adobe Premiere & Premiere Pro discussions from 2004

[Adam Beck]

but no success,

thanks

[Ed Smith]

In 6.5 when you opened a project and the files had been moved/ deleted, it would prompt you to find the new location for each file. Does this not happen in PP?

Remember the Premiere project file is basically a database which references the files and there locations. So by moving the location it will screw its references.

Thanks,

[Ed Smith]

If you don't have control of the deck from premiere then it sounds as though premiere might need a re-install or that the drivers for the pyro card might need to be re-installed.

However before doing that you might want to try/ answer a few of these questions:

1) Try setting the dv device to generic
2) Do you get a picture in the capture window if you press play on your camcorder?
3) Turn the deck on before opening premiere

Cheers,

[Adam Beck]

1. Have tried generic, no success either
2. No picture, it's just black
3. I have tried this also - no luck

What is odd is when I turn the camera on and then start premiere, I will go to capture and at the top of the capture window it reads "playing" and there is nothing playing.

I'll let you know how the re-install goes,
thanks for your help.

Adam & Wayne

[Matthew de Jongh]

i am not familar with the pyro card...

is this a standard 1394 card?

maybe you should spend $35 on an adaptec 1394 card?

matthew

[Ed Smith]

Are your speakers set an an exceptable level on your PC? If you are having to do it more often the you might want to try a re-install (If all else fails)?

[Roger Golub]

OK, I'm missing something easy as usual:

I capture some footage using into Premiere 6.5 using the Pinnacle AVI compressor.

I them chop a bit of the footage so as to export it to an .avi file so I can do some additional work later. I thus export the clip. If I use the same compressor (or in fact any compressor), the footage gets, well, compressed again.

Since the way I've thought of setting up my work flow involves taking essentially random clips (they're nature clips so I never really know what I'm going to see) and then storing only those that seem interesting or at least half decent, then using those in a later project to annoy my friends and family, it would seem that I'm going to be compressing the files and subsequently losing some information multiple times during the process.

So, I can just not compress anything at the cost of hard disk space (not very expensive these days, but those clips do add up) or deal with the multiply compressed data or change my workflow. I've tried using the Pinnacle DV tools program to just catalog the tapes but found that pretty inconvenient.

Any suggestions?

Thanks as always.

[Rob Lohman]

So what you are doing is cutting clips to see and then output
that to a new file? This should not loose you quality / resolution
because it should not re-compress. It should just split out the
frames you kept to the new file without re-compression.

This is how it is supposed to work. There might be some way
to test this with compression tough content (I'm not sure what
would be best to test this with, perhaps make a picture in a
paint program with a white background and sharp 1 pixel black
lines on it?). Compress it to 60 second file or something. Then
load this file again and cut some places and make a 40 second
file. Then load that file and so on and forth. If multiple compressions
happen it should start to look worse and worse.

[Roger Golub]

Of course I could do that, but it's work....

And your post hits at my confusion with Premiere - it would seem that since I'm just cutting the clip, no other wizardry or wierdness, I should just be able to "save" it clipped. But Premier 6.5 seems to insist that it gets rendered again into an .avi (or in fact, whatever I would like). Hence my confusion on the merits of compression and compressors etc.

I was hoping I was missing something obvious like I usually do.

RG

[Roger Golub]

You might try changing your settings away from Pinnacle to see if an interaction between the DV500 and XP and it's attendant drivers and layers is the problem.

Had a similar problem with win 2K that was solved by reinstalling Service Pack 4 after uninstalling DV500 and manually clearing the registry of all Pinnacle references, then reinstalling the DV500.

Many entertaining hours.... You might also check the Pinnacle DV500 forum. Not a lot of folks on it, but they were rather supportive and I got the tip for the above fix from them.

There do seem to be a number of XP related issues with the DV500.

[Roger Golub]

Just popped over to the Pinnacle forum. That reminded me of something - what version of the DV500 drivers are you using? It's pretty clear that the 4.5 version drivers is the only one that will work with Win2K or XP.

[Ed Smith]

Hi Roger,

If I understand you correctly this is what you do:

Capture say a 1 hour tape in 1 big chunk, then you place this on the timeline and export the bits you like into separate AVI files? Is that correct?

There are a number of things that you can do:

1) Only capture the bits you plan to use. All though it might take a little bit longer you will save on disk space and you will only get the shots that you want. You would review your tape before hand, note the in and outpoints and then create a batch list in Premiere.

2) Capture the whole 1 hour, double click it when it is in the bin to bring up its preview monitor. then fastforward rewind until you find the bits you like, Mark an in point and an out point and then insert it to the timeline. This is commonly known as 3 point editing. All though it will take up more space on your HD, it should be slightly quicker.

3) Place the 1 hour clip into the timeline, and use the virtural sub clip creation tool. You basically use the tool to mark an in point to an outpoint and then drag it to some space in the timeline. This will then create a virtural clip. However you can not apply lots of effects to the sub clip, and it can fill up the timeline pretty quickly.

4) Do what you have been doing already.

Hope I have not got the wrong end of the stick.

Thanks,

[Roger Golub]

Hi Ed:

Actually, what I'm doing is something like a cross between 1) and 2) - I scan the tape, look for things that I really don't want, capture the parts that I like then "clean them up" using scissors. In my mind's eye, all I am doing is creating a bunch of clips with reasonable start and end points so I can manipulate them further. For example, I have about 60 minutes of tape of a brown bear munching grass. Most of the time the bear is doing fantastically boring things (eating grass), some of the time the camera is bouncing around and I'm fiddling with things (it's shot at long range with a tripod for fairly obvious reasons). I would cut most of this out and have perhaps 5 minutes of a sequence that I would eventually work into a video. I do a lot of the rough cut at capture time but I don't spend an inordinate amount of time working on start / stop issues. Cutting the clip into smaller bits also allows me to name the clip in a useful fashion (eg Bear_rolling_on_grass_2.avi)

That works for me - but then I have to "export" them to another .avi clip using the standard Premiere tools. This creates the possibility of having the clip compressed at least twice. If I set Premiere up to use no compression, then the files are larger (duh...) and that's OK. I have lots of hard disk space. But it would seem that I could just cut the original .avi file and save it again.

What I'm beginning to think is that this concept is a bit too simplistic for Premiere since it really doesn't want to alter the original clip - for good reasons - and assumes that any changes would be done and then regenerated. The kind of "editing" I'm doing in this step is strictly limited to scissoring the original clip - much like you're first method. It just seems faster (and less wear and tear on the tape) to do it digitally. But maybe not.....

Thanks for your help.

RG

[Jimmy McKenzie]

You are working like most who have to be judicous with drive space while retaining only useable material; a strategy some ignore during the planning stages, but lucky for you, you have the presence of mind to do so.
Since you mentioned that you are using the pinnacle compression, it would follow that the onboard tools that are installed look convenient. They often are not. The Pinnacle type 2 dv avi file can be transferred many times without loss. If you are using the dv500 toolset, the scene cutter filter is perfect for this, assuming scene changes, or start stops when recording. Once you have these trimmed clips in the timeline, you can export them and name them accordingly, then delete the source file. Best to make a psq capture log file when capturing, so that retreival from the source tape later if needed will be painless.
Another method is to use the project trimmer tool in premiere that makes an non recompressed image of everything present in the timeline and when finished, the source file is deleted.

[Chad Solo]

I have Total Training Video and I'm trying to do the multi cam tutorial but I'm stuck on this one part. I need to change the timecode of this one clip on track 2 so I make sure it's highlighted and go to File and go down to Timecode and click on it. The problem is it's not highlighted so I can't click on it. I did everything perfect and I did it a few different times in the tutorial but still get to that same point and can't go further. Does anyone have any suggestions, I would very much appreciate it. There has to be something that I'm doing wrong.

Thank's
Chad