Video Import Previewing in Premeire

[Jason Balich]

Hello Everyone.

Im slowly getting into video editing with Premiere 6.5 and my GL2. The problem is that I like to visualize what im going ot do with assets on my computer. It is weird that you can't see the first frame of a video clip ( whatever format ) b4 importing it. I have many image viewing programs from still pics. Are there these things for video also? What is a solid one i can beleive in? Or are there techniques that i dont know about in premeire?

I appreciatte any suggestions.

[Adrian Douglas]

Scenalyzer is probably the best capture app on the market. It gives you the option of optical scene detection, capture preview, and the frame shots you were refering to. For the cost, US$33, it's an app you can't afford to be without.

[K. Forman]

Windows Explorer has a preview feature that shows most still images, allows you to preview video, and listen to some audio formats. It is a feature of the file windows, and is to the left of the files. My explanation may be confusing, but I'm doing the best that I can... It is an option that may be turned off in your system setup.

[David Hurdon]

You mention both seeing a still before importing the clip and image viewers that would only work with files already on the HDD. For the latter, the newest version of ACDSee (5) shows thumbnails of video as well, naturally, as of stills. It also plays videos in the same preview window as stills. I just checked one folder where I have avi's and asf's and wmv's - and all of them produce a thumbnail, and play through when "asked" to. What's particularly amazing to me is that you see a thumbnail even when the clip opens from black - the app finds an image to display rather than just the first frame of black.

David Hurdon

[Nigel Moore]

Extensis Portfolio does the same thing...at least the current version for windows (v6 I think) does. Portfolio is a complete media management application. It will not capture, but it allows you to group images/movies, and to show the first frame of each movie. I think a demo version is available from the Extensis website.

Also, bear in mind that in Premiere, you can set the image associated with each clip in the bin to be something other than the first frame. Very useful if there is a more representative frame, such as in the case of setting the in point of a clip capture before the scene on interest. But you probably knew that already.

[Jason Balich]

I still find it strange that Premeire wont let u see what your about to import b4 u get it into your bins. Any way to make this a bettter situation?

[David Hurdon]

Jason, you can certainly see what's there if you set up to batch capture (in Movie Capture). You also save drive space if you end up using less than a full tape's worth of clips, and it's much easier to work with shorter clips in editing than to scrub an hour looking for the good stuff.

David Hurdon

[Rob Lohman]

Adrian: scenalyzer is nice indeed. We don't need OPTICAL scene
detection because it can do it DIGITALLY. I use scenalyzer free
for this myself. What it does is detect date/time (don't confuse
it with timecode) breaks and split the scene there. If you stop
recording and shoot the next scene 5 minutes later your time
will be change between the last frame of the previous scene
and the first frame of the new scene. Since the DV format stores
things like date, time, timecode & camera settings these things
can be used for such features. It works FLAWLESS here!

As far as I know Premiere doesn't indeed show you the first
frame. Vegas does though (if you hit the spacebar or press
play when you are in the media explorer).

What I usually do is this:

1. capture long segment from the tape

2. run them through scenalyzer free (if you have the full
scenalyzer it can do this step automatically while capturing)
to break each scene into an individual file

3. i then create a new directory for each scene under my project
directory, so I get something like:

Garden shoot\scene 01 - planting
Garden shoot\scene 02 - rooting
Garden shoot\scene 03 - waterring

etc. Each take for each scene goes under that directory like this:

c1 t01 g.avi
c2 t14 b.avi

where Cx is the camera number (if you shoot mulitple camera's)
and Txx is the take. The G and B stands for GOOD and BAD (you
can think of more if you want).

4. I add ALL my footage in premiere that I have shot but create
a new BIN for each scene so that you don't get overwhelmed.
Now I can simply double-click each take in the bin (scene) and
preview it.

Why do I add all my footage? Because I might want to add a
piece from that take or from another etc. Doesn't take a lot of
memory etc. to have it in your project as long as you don't add
it to your timeline.

Also if you start to work on a project save the project with a
NEW filename EACH DAY at least. Premiere sometimes has a
nasty habbit of corrupting a scene file. So with this setup you
can always easily go back if something breaks and you can always
see a different cut you had a couple of weeks back.

I name them like this and save it in my root project folder just
under my scenes directories:

Garden shoot\Garden 20030526.ppj
Garden shoot\Garden 20030523.ppj

etc.

Hope this has helped some!