General video help

[mu84]

Ok, bare with me, I'm new to premiere and video editing in general.


Basically, I have a bunch of DV tapes and I want to transfer them onto my computer, edit them in premiere, then burn them to DVD.

My first problem: I have a sony dcr-hc21 camera, and when i transfer the video from my camera to my computer using the sony capturing software that came with the camera and the USB 2.0 cable, the video isn't all the great. It's blocky (low-res) when viewed in windows media even though i capture it at the highest quality. However, if i stream the video from my camera onto a TV, the video looks fine. Is this because I'm capturing using a USB cable? Would it be better if i used firewire?

2nd problem: After I edit my video in Premiere, I go to export > timeline and i can't seem to export to mpeg 2, which is what i need the video to be in to burn to DVD, right? I can export to AVI and DV AVI, then a whole bunch of other stuff like animated gif or quicktime, etc. I was reading online that you have to get a plugin for premiere to compress to MPEG 2...is this true?

Well, I guess those are my only problems for now. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Akribie]

1. USB transfer uses a different file format (probably MPEG) to that required for editing. It also probably sets a low quality standard and small frame size that is intended for emailing rather than viewing on a TV.

You need to transfer using the FireWire connection between your camera and the PC.

2. You don't say which version of Premiere you have, which makes it impossible to give detailed advice on export. Have a look at the File/Export/ menu and follow likely leads from there. Depending on your version, you may well find that there is a DVD/MPEG2 option listed.

 

[mu84]

oh, sorry. i have 6.0.

all the options under file type (when i go export > timeline > movie) are:

micrsoft avi
avi
tiff sequence
targa sequence
quicktime
animate gif
filmstrip
fic/fli
windows bitmap sequence

thanks.

 

[Akribie]

Ah! I think you are one version too early for DVD export options. Adobe MPEG encoder is part of Premiere 6.5 but not, as far as I can tell, of 6.0.

Perhaps the easiest way out for you is to get a copy of Canopus ProCoder Express - not very expensive and very capable. I think that will let you frame serve off the timeline into your choice of target formats. Put 'Canopus ProCoder Express into Google and you'll get lots of useful hits.

Alternatively, you might be able to export the timeline as DV AVI and use Nero or similar to transcode, but I use the full version of ProCoder so ask for help from someone who uses Nero if you need help on that.

BTW, if you really are using Premiere 6.0, I suggest you get the 6.01 free update from the Adobe download area, which fixes a number of subtle bugs.

 

[LRSmith]

Akribie as usual is right on target with the solution.

Use firewire to import. Since you are using 6.0, I would suggest exporting to AVI and then use TMPGEnc (

http://www.tmpgenc.net)

to encode to MPEG for burning to DVD. You can use the output of TMPGEnc in your favorite DVD burning software, it merely encodes to MPEG format (one of the best available).

 

[cykopat]

I would recommend for ease of use Adobe Encore. Export your edits as AVi's and import them into Encore which uses Media Encoder to encode (I believe) for the DVD. It's a very simple program and allows menus, chapters and encoding for DVD. Automatic Encoding is set my default but you can choose your bitrates and encoding type as well.. Audio is PCM, MPEG or Dolby.

Patrick

 

[Akribie]

Encore is excellent and comprehensive, but far from cheap.

Nevertheless, in my experience, Encore's encoding, even at best quality, is nowhere near as good with difficult fast-action footage as ProCoder.

Getting it all just right can take lots of skill, time and money.

 

[mu84]

thank you all so much for your help. the firewire worked great and im about to use the TEMPenc for encoding.

cheers!