DV-Premiere-DV quality loss?

[jdfrey1]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to put this message in. I have searched and read many other posts and I still have this question that hopefully someone can answer.

I have a lot of video that I transferred from my Digital8 Sony camera over Firewire to my PC using Premiere 6. I then edited the clips and added title screens, etc. I have made DVD compliant MPEGs with CCE that I plan to later burn to DVD. I also exported the project from Premiere back to the Tape thinking that I would still have a good quality backup of my edited file. When playing from the video camera to the TV it looks great, but if I re-capture the video from the camera it looks terrible compared to my originals captured AVIs.

My question: Is there a good way to save the Premiere project such that you lose the least amount of quality and can put it back on the tape? I realize if I didn't edit the file at all it 'should' be digital and not be any different when exporting it back to tape, but all I did was add title screens. Would a different DV Codec give me much better results?

I know that I can save the original files, but they are too big. I'm just afraid that I'm going to end up wanting to re-encode in the future and not having a good "original". I could always save the Premiere project but I would never get the same exact entry points on my clips if I did re-capture them from the master tapes.

[Xesdeeni]

Premiere has its own DV codec built in, so you cannot replace it when working with Premiere.

Also, Premiere does not decode and re-encode video in DV format, unless you process the image. Instead, it simple copies the compressed data. "Processing" includes, adding titles, transitions, etc.

When you export DV back to tape, you are getting the best quality that you can expect to archive, based on the above.

However, if you frameserve from Premiere to your MPEG encoder (or use an MPEG plugin), you will have a better quality source than a DV archive, because the (processed) video is not re-compressed before being exported.

Xesdeeni

[jdfrey1]

Bear with me here, I'm just trying to understand this better.

Does this re-encoding process include clips that have been razored and rearranged? For example, I have 3 clips and I switch between the 3 clips in my project. I don't have any transitions except for a fade in at the beginning and a fade out at the end of the project. I also added a title screen that is a Photoshop image. If there were some clips in my project that were not modified at all would Premiere output the unprocessed video for that part and processed for all the other parts or is everything re-processed if there is even one modification.

What I'm getting at is, after editing all my clips and get the timeline the way I want it can I put it back to the camera before I add the fade transitions and the title screen and not have Premiere re-encode it? This would be a good alternative to saving the timeline the way I want it.

Thanks for the info!

[Xesdeeni]

As long as you don't actually modify the video frames themselves, the data is simply copied from the source to the destination. The decision about whether to modify the video or not is made on a frame-by-frame basis, so some sections are re-rendered, and others are not.

The most obvious way to decide if any processing is taking place is to keep an eye on the (sorry, forgot the name) bars above the editing line. If they have a red or green bar, then they have been modified in a way that requires Premiere to process them (the red means that the actual rendering hasn't been done yet; the green means that it has). Wherever there is no bar, the video is not touched, only copied.

For your example, the title, the fade in at the beginning, and the fade out at the end will be the only things that are re-rendered. Everything else is just copied.

And yes, if you remove the fades and save the video without them, you will get just a cut edit version of your video, with no re-encoding.

Xesdeeni

[jdfrey1]

Thanks for the info!

[jdfrey1]

Just a follow-up. I checked out Scenalyzer last night and re-captured from the camera what I had previously exported to tape. When I originally re-captured with Adobe the file looked terribly blocky but with Scenalyzer it looked great! I don't know what the difference would be because when I used Adobe to grab the original files it did fine. Oh well, I think I'll be using Scenalyzer from now on!