Capture From Video camera

[dixxy]

Hello,

I am fairlly new to the world of Premiere, I would like to know if it is possible to capture movies directly from my sony video camera?

I tried it with the sony software but it always stops after a while and tells me there is not enough disk space when in reality it has 10gigs.

Am I looking at the wrong software for capturing from the camera?

 

[LRSmith]

I have had success capturing directly to Premiere 6.5 from my Sony camcorder using a firewire interface.

Just some clarification. Do you mean you have 10 GB free HD space? What OS are you using? How long and what resolution is the clip you're importing?

I can think of a couple of potential culprits to your problem. If you have 10 GB free, some of that Premiere will use due to its architecture, in addition to any swap file size by the OS. If your clip is long enough, it won't take long to saturate 10 GB. On the other hand, your clip size may be surprassing your OS maximum filesize.

 

[Akribie]

I think dixxy is saying that he gets a disk full message with space still left on the drive. This will probably be because of the file size limit set by the OS/HD format. Under FAT32, maximum file size is 4gb, which is about 18 minutes of DV. If you want to capture more than this, better to use a separate capture program like Scenalyzer Live to break down the stream into manageable chunks 'on the fly'.

 

[dixxy]

Akribie,

What you describe is the actual situation I am having. My idea was to record until the tape is full, then copy the tape to my hard drive. This way I could edit all the parts that I what put in music and what not...burn this to a DVD for the family to whatch...(kids growing up...) and then reuse the tape again..

My file format is NTFS, that is why I don't understand why I was getting this messge with the Sony application.

I will try this application you mentioned..

Thanks

 

[Akribie]

Some people have reported that they have problems recording big files onto NTFS except in the root folder. If this is relevant to your case, you could try the root folder and see if that makes any difference on your system.

Huge files are very ponderous to handle in Premiere, even on a fast system with lots of disk space. I think you'll find it much easier to have Scenalyzer split it up for you during capture into more manageable chunks - either into camera shots or split by filesize depending on your choice in Options. Choosing the Scenalyzer option to tag the filenames with first-frame date/time gives a very good way to keep track of what is going on.

 

[dixxy]

Akribie

I have tried to use Scenalyzer but it tells me something about my camera not being DV or something like that...so I don't know where else to turn to...

 

[Akribie]

Scenalyzer will only capture through a FireWire port, but is capable of dealing with analogue source material if you can get it in via the FireWire. A converter, analogue/DV capture card, or suitable DV camera will provide this facility.

Have you tried capturing to the root folder?

 

[dixxy]

Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly is a FireWire? I have heard the term before, but not familiar with it...my camera is a Sony Digital8 format, and I connect it via usb port..not the same??

No I have not captured to the root..it just won't capture anything... :-(

 

[Akribie]

As far as I am aware, USB only allows capture of stills and low-quality MPEG-format video with small frame sizes that have been recorded onto the memory card in your camera.

To capture full-quality, full-frame video from tape, you need to connect an I-Link (FireWire) cable to a FireWire(IEEE1394) port on your computer. Otherwise, if you have an analogue capture card, you could capture that way.

FireWire or I-Link are trade names for a direct data transfer system conforming to the IEEE1394 protocol to pass (amongst other uses) DV material to and from a DV camera together with two-way camera-control information. This can be between computer and DV camera/deck, or between two DV cameras/decks.