Camcorder -> Premiere 6.5

[sirace]

Hey everyone,

I'm using Adobe Premiere 6.5 and am having problems importing video from my Camcorder (not digital) into Premiere. I bought a TV capture card (ATI TV Wonder). I have the camera set up properly. I can record video/sound perfectly with ATI's software, however Premiere doesn't seem to like the imported video (which is 1hr45min). I need to import to Premiere so I can add titles and captions to the video. I've tried using the capture function in Premiere but I run into two problems:

#1 - I use the general setting of Video for Windows 720x480 (since I don't have a DV cam). The video will come in great, however it will not record sound. I believe this is because it doesn't know that sound should be recorded from line-in on my sound card. And I don't see an option to change where source audio is from.

#2 - Videos cut off at 4GB exactly. I'm running WinXP Pro with an NTFS partition. And the DV videos I've done in the past have never had this problem (they could sometimes be 1-=20GB in size).

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I fix either of these problems?

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

Can you ordinarily record sound using your Line-In jack? For example, using Windows Sound Recorder? You might simply have that channel muted in your mixer settings.

When did your videos start cutting off on capture? What changed?

Cheers,


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[sirace]

The only thing that changed is that I'm using an analog camera through a TV capture card instead of the DV Camera. As for the stopping, it always stops at 4GB. And yes, I can record sound when using the software that came with the TV Tuner/Capture card.

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

For ATI, the software control should let you modify the audio source. There will be a drop-down of devices. Can you find this? ATI has probably installed a "console" of some sort along the edge of your screen, including a button for TV viewing . Somewhere on that application is a control for "VCR Settings".

Are you saying that you can ordinarily play-back the captured video and that said playback includes audio. BUT, when you import those exact same files into Premiere, the audio is gone?

Cheers,


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[sirace]

Oh no, I'm just saying that when I use Premiere's Capture video options, I can get video, but no sound, because it doesn't ask me where I want the sound to come from. The only reason I would choose to use the Premiere capture capability over the ATI software is because ATI's software won't let me go aove 720x240 unless you had bought their pro version of the card. Premiere lets me do 720x480. It also adds an audio track, but the track is just silence, which tells me it wants to record but it's using the wrong source.

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

Oh.

I use an ATI All-in-Wonder card, but I've pretty much given up on getting Premiere to control it. I use ATI's software to capture my video (640 x 480) as AVI files and then import the files into Premiere.

720 x 240? Is that a typo? It's such a weird ratio!

It is almost certain that your capture card can use the proprietary ATI software to capture 640 x 480 (including sound) such that Premiere can edit it.

What do you mean when you say Premiere doesn't like the ATI-captured video (in the initial post)?

In the recording settings of the ATI software, you can choose a variety of options for AVI format. ATI has two AVI fomats handy: AVI1 and AVI2 (if I recall correctly). The easy way to tell them apart: One works great in Premiere and the other doesn't . Take some tiny samples and find out which one you should use.

Cheers,


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[sirace]

The video stutters in premiere slightly. Also, I'm using 320x240 for my res as I don't have an option for 640x480 because i didn't spend the extra money on their "pro" card so the software limits your viable resolutions. Also, once I import into Premiere, my transitions that I add don't work at all. Any ideas about that? They render fine, but after rendering is done, the transition doesnt work.

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

Ack! You have the ATI TV-WONDER card? That only captures in mpeg format, doesn't it?

Okay, this will help tremendously:

Please right-click on the clip and copy what Premiere claims are the clip's properties

Please tell me the properties of the Project.

Cheers,


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[robmcl]

Did you resolve your problems sirace ? Just curious

 

[sirace]

Well, I was trying to import MPG video at first, so I went back and imported it using ATI's software (albeit at 352x240 (or the closest variant)). I then took that and imported it into Premiere. It was still a little difficult to work with and the syncing was nearly completely off. So after manually adjusting the audio to match lip movement, I had my finished timeline which took 15 hours to export to movie (MS DV AVI). This was on an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ w/ 512MB DDR SDRAM. But finally it was done.

I've done all sorts of DV editing on my other machine and it's so much easier than dealing with Hi8 and VHS importing.

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

Premiere will be nothing but trouble if you're importing MPEG files. It would be easier for you to build your entire movie using toast. And by "toast", I mean slightly charred bread. It's just not a good idea.

This is why I asked you the properties of your clip.

It might be that your ATI card is just not really suited to video capture for Premiere. Near as I can tell, the TV-WONDER is the lowest end card they have and I already know that ATI uses a propritary video capture codec.

I use an old All-in-Wonder 128, which is comparably priced, but produces files that I can read using Premire 5.1c.

Cheers,


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[sirace]

Indeed. Either way, many many thanks for all your suggestions and tips. Just glad that movie project is behind me. No more last minute favors for friends, lol.