I usually use raw DV/AVI captures from my miniDV camcorder or even from VHS tapes (passing
through my camcorder). Of course, an hour long DV capture of a VHS tape can end up being
about 15gb, so it gets a bit unwieldy, especially for archviving the files.

A friend suggested that I try capturing as compressed MPEG2, to get smaller files. In the
case of the VHS tapes (my current projects), I'm sure the quality of an MPEG2 capture versus
a DV capture would not be that much different...the files sizes would be much different,
though. I tried using a couple different Dazzle capture boxes to capture the video from the
VCR, but all I can say about those Dazzle products is that they were crap, so I switched back
to DV captures (thank goodness for large hard drives!)

When I did get some form of a successful capture from the Dazzle stuff (.mpg, I think), I
tried to edit the file using Premiere 6.5 (I needed to make some parts brighter), and it was
painfully slow at scrubbing and even watching the timeline in the Program monitor
window...many many jumps and hitches and stutters...no effects or transitions at all. The
same VHS tape captured as a raw DV/AVI using Premiere's Movie Capture utility scrubbed and
edited beautifully, and the file size was much bigger than the Dazzle capture.

I also recently tried to bring a MPEG file (compressed by Cleaner 5) into Premiere to see how
that works on the timeline...once again, jumps and stutters throughout the entire timeline.

Should I just stick with DV captures, or is there some trick to using MPEG or MOV files
successfully? Why does Premiere choke on the non-DV files?

Thanks!
Gary

MPG files are not good for editing video. They are good for the final
compression step when you finish editing the video and want a compact computer
file. In addition, you shouldn't be "archiving" video to your computer. You
either edit the video and output back to DV tape, or VHS. Or you output to DVD
video (or video CD or SVCD.) Or if you want computer files, you output to MPG or
something else when you finally finish editing the video.

If you use premiere to edit MPG files, you risk, and probably will get, serious
degradation in your final video. It will probably look like garbage. I suggest
you keep in DV codec every step of the way until you are finished editing. Then
output the finished movie to DV tape and if you have a DVD burner, output to
DVD. When this is done, you can delete the source DV files on your computer. If
you really want to "archive" stuff, I highly recommend editing and outputting to
both mini-DV tape and DVD.


"GS" <bobogsemel@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.19838158a2786f63989680@netnews.comcast.ne t...

Thanks for the info. When I mentioned archiving, I meant saving the source capture files
to dvd (along with the premiere project file(s)) in case I want to edit parts of the movie at
some point in the future. This is a bit impractical at 15+gb per file (raw DV)...4 dvds for
one file. :-) This is an issue that I've been wishy washy with...What to do with the
captures once the final video is done and rendered? I suppose I should just be happy with
the final product and delete the source capture files, but the pessimist in me doesn't want
to do that...I guess I think the final movie can always get better (a bit more brightness
here, better sound quality there, etc.).


What I've done with my smaller movies, which are bits and pieces of a set of larger captures
(instead of the entire 15gb capture on the timeline), is render a 100% quality, uncompressed
DV codec AVI from the premiere timeline, and archive that file to dvd...it's usually much
smaller than the source captures, but full, uncompressed quality, so I can mess with it in
the future if I want to.

Thanks again.
Gary

In article <nViSa.87336$GL4.24122@rwcrnsc53>, simmike@comcast.net says...