How can I join clips in the Project Window of Premier??

[mikewg]

I captured a video with VirtualDub, and it gave me 19 seperate 1.9 Gig AVI files. I loaded them into the project window of Adobe Premier, but the problem is that it's keeping them as seperate files. It'd be a lot easier for me to work with the files if they were all together as one clip in the Project Window. But I can't seem to figure out a way to put them together. I tried to put them together and save as a project, then import the project into a new Premier file, but it still kept them as 19 seperate files. Can anyone give me advice on joining them together? Thanks in advance!

[Karate Media]

Premiere is what they call a "non-destructive" editor: it never actually affects your original files. What you need to do is lay out all the separate files into the timeline, one after another, and then go to File->Export Timeline->Movie and export as one big .avi file (set the compression as needed - from uncompressed to whatever).

But...I don't know what sort of system you are running. If you are running Windows 9x, with the FAT32 file system, then you cannot have a file bigger than 4 GB. If you have 2000/XP w/ NTFS, then you have (basically) unlimited file size options.

What is your final plan for the .avi file(s)? I ask, because if you want to make a VCD/DVD, if you have Premiere 6.5 you can export the timeline as an .mpg file, which would reduce its size and make it VCD/DVD/SVCD complient (depending on your settings)

I hope this helps

[mikewg]

I apologize, I should have clarified. Resaving as a giant AVI file isn't an option because that would require another 40 Gigs of hard drive space, which isn't an option. And converting to MPG isn't an option yet because I want to rearrange the video and then convert... and I don't want to run it through conversion twice.

Rather, here's my issue. I have the 19 individual AVI files that connect into one big 2 hour video. I've used VirtualDub to do the timings of the video... so my timings range from 0:00:00:00 to essentially 2:00:00:00. Problem is, Premier is seeing 19 individual 0:06:30:00 files... thus my timings are completely messed up.

What I want to do is, instead of having 19 different clips each starting at 0:00:00:00, I want to put them together seemlessly so that I can edit out my sections according to the timings of the entire video, not the segments. So I don't want to actually create a 2 hour AVI file... but rather have Premier put together them in memory so that it gives me one large clip to work with instead of 19 individual ones... anyone else have any Premier advice for me? Thanks!

[Karate Media]

I'm confused -- that's what the Timeline is for. If you put al the files in the Timeline, then the Timeline and Monitor "timecodes" (so to speak) will coincide with the original footage. You won't need to export as a giant file then, just do your cutting on the time line, then slide all the little pieces together and export that final edit as a file. The timecode as represented in the Timeline or the Monitor should match up to your original times (prior to your editing, that is).

I'm sorry if I'm missing something, but if you want to edit avi footage, you must do it in the Timeline (more or less). Is there any reason why you cannot drop all the files into the timeline and edit them there?