Need some advice on the whole process

[Haps13]

Ok I recently bought a D8 camcorder and wanted to tape some stuff, edit it and archive to CD.

So I recorded about 90mins of video. Finally figured out how to capture it properly into Premiere 6. I captured it at 720x480. I successfully edited it and exported it back to my camera(which worked except for a couple stutters).

Anyways the point I'm at now is how to convert to VCD/Svcd. My final edited avi is 32mins 19secs so I figured I would convert to SVCD because of quality.

I tried to open my avi in TMPGenc without any success. I tried to open my avi in Virtualdub without any success. I exported the avi from premiere as a DV avi. I have tried CCE 2.6 with limited success.

I did try to export from premiere using the CCE plugin. I did change the bitrate to 2496(what the bitrate calculator said I should use) and I specified the size of 480x480 which is the size I need for it to be SVCD. 3 hours later I ended up with an encoded file that was shrunk horizontally.

So then in my research everyone says use virtual dub to resize. Well virtual dub won't open my DVSD avi. So I create the text file video1.avs that points to my avi. I then open that up in virtual dub. Bingo bango it appears to work. However their doesn't appear to be any sound. When I follow the instructions to save wav I get "No input audio stream to extract" error.

So then I try a suggesstion from someone else on the forum to just frameserve the avi to an encoder. So I start up the framserve as per the instructions here. When I open CCE SP 2.6 I can not open the video.vdr.avi that I am frameserving. In fact I can't open anything in CCE. The open window only wants to open .ecl files. If I try top open anything else I get "c:\path\filename is not a ECL for CCE SP Trial Version" error.

So skip CCE. I'll try to use TMPGEnc. SO I start that and go through the wizard and select the settings for a SVCD(I think). I don't know how long it took but when I woke up this morning it was done but there was no sound.

I have also tried using the avisynth plugin for premiere to frameserve. However I run into the same problem with CCE when I try to open avisynth's frameserving file.

So that's what I have tried. I have a 7gb DV avi file in 720x480. I want to turn it into a svcd. Am I missing a big step here. I was sort of successful using the CCE plugin in premier to export. Except for the fact that it squished the image because of my size settings.

There are a lot of assumptions in my thinking because I don't know crap about this stuff. I keep searching the forums here and trying new things but seem to hit a dead end each time. Can someone point me in the right direction?

[neomaine]

haps13,

You may need to bring the sound in seperately from the video. I'm going out on a limb because you didn't mention what kind of capture card or your system config. Both would probably get you some more answers.

So here goes...I'd check to make sure that your audio is actually being captured. For me with an AIW Radeon, even though I connect my vid and aud cables (regardless of source) to the AIW, I still have to run a cable (provided by ATI) from the capture card to my audio in on the pc. Therefore, the video is captured by the AIW but the audio is actually captured by the pc's sound card.

Hope this helps...

[Haps13]

System is a P4 1.6 with 756mb of ram. Running Windows XP.

I capture directly from my Sony D8 camcorder over firewire through the firewire port on my Soundblaster audigy card. The captured file has sound and has been successfully edited in Premiere.

Oh and if I try to frameserve to tmpgenc using the premiere avisynth plugin then tmpgenc just locks up.

I did load up my edited avi in premiere and exported the audio as a wav file. I think it works. My next step would be to try and use virtualdub to framserve and the wav in TMPGenc. I'll try it later. Terminal services disables the sound card so I can't try it now.