Just running out the door to work and I need some help here with HDV workflow for the HV20. Any Premiere Pro 2 and After Effects 7 users here? Anyone done any direct recording to their PC? Any PC users share their workflow with this camera. I wasted 6 hours yesterday fighting with the footage I shot and can't afford to wasted anymore time. I will be ordering Cineform soon but it's not an option with this project.

My set up: Core 2 Duo 6600/2 gig Ram
1. I had the camera set to 24F and cine color mode.
2. I didn't record to tape. I captured direct to PP2 timeline with HDV 1080i settings.
3. The mpeg footage I got works fine in PP2 but when I try to bring it into AE7 I get an error that says:
After Effects Error: an unspecified AVI or DirectShow error occurred. (1)
(53 :: 33)
4. So I tried converting the footage using PP2 from mpeg to a better codec. I want to keep the footage as pristine as possible but when I export as an 'uncompressed' or 'animation file' I PP2 gives me an 'Unknown Error" popup right when it's finished encoding.

Any suggestions? Thanks guys.

Hmm, not sure. If your time is valuable to you, consider going the Blackmagic Intensity route for direct-to-PC capture. That might also give you pulldown removal (yaay) if used with something like Cineform? Maybe even DVRack / the new Adobe CS3 suite? I'm not sure if the Intensity is working with the HV20 yet but it should be soon.

I have had problems too with HDV / other MPEG2 files and After Effects. Once I updated Windows or Media Player or something and then found that suddenly none of the MPEG2 files I was using in a project would load! So yes, the workflow there is not too hot.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com