Capturing Problems - Newbie Help Needed with Premiere

[gschilling]

I am fumbling through trying to capture video, but not having much success. My equipment is:

Sony Hi8 camcorder with analog composite output
Avermedia capture card
Ulead Movie Factory
Adobe Premiere
VDub

From what I understand, AVI is the best format to work in Premiere. If I try capturing to AVI the file sizes seem to come out at 5MB per second, which seems pretty unreasonable. I have been playing with the compression settings, but I cannot get an AVI file down to 1MB/sec which I believe is average.

Secondly, I am having trouble with frame size. If I capture in Premiere, I can't seem to capture anything but 320x240, even if I try to make changes to the Video Format settings. It doesn't accept anything but 320x240. The same goes for VDub. If I capture in Ulead Movie Factory, I can capture at 640x480, but again the huge file size issues.

Considering my Hi8 source, what is the optimal AVI settings to get the best balance of picture quality and file size. What frame size should I be using. Why am I having trouble with changing settings in Premiere? Could there be driver conflicts with Ulead? Is it my AVermedia card?

I'm really lost.

Gene

[dcsos]

1 megabyte a second is to low a bit rate for quality..
are you compressing upon capture?
Don't
Do your compression in the render to the new format (are you making AVI's or DVD's?)

the premiere capture does 720x480 easily.
The is a bug in 6.0 that displays 720x480 as 320x240 as you capture, but look ath the capture in the list of files..It'll be 720x480 even if the prompt as you captured reported the smaller frame size..
and the capture window never represent the FRAME SIZE you are capturing (its always 320x240 here)

Also, never play back anything you make with premiere IN PREMIERE
and why would you use VDUB to denigrate the rendered result in PREMIERE? what purpose does VDUB fulfill?

get in the habit of using the MEdia Player to check what you've created, because not only will premiere give you a bad impression of you work, it'll keep the larger captures or renders in a tiny window

what version of windows do you use?
what version of premiere?
what capture codec are you using (DV or AVI or MPEG)?
are you going 29.97 or less?
have you installed sp1 if you're on XP?

who makes you computer/motherboard..do you have a high end video card with more than 32mb accel?

[gschilling]

Thanks for your reply "dcsos".

To answer some of your questions:

- I am using Win2K SP3.
- Adobe Premiere 6.5.
- Trying to capture to AVI.
- I only used VDub as an alternate capture program, with no success.
- I checked the frame size in both WinMediaPlayer and RealPlayer, and both say 320x240.

I seem to be able to capture in 640x480 in Ulead, but it just seems ridiculous to have a 150MB file for 30 seconds worth of footage. Is this normal?

As for Premiere, it seems to crash often. I'm thinking there is some driver conflict somewhere between my capture card and Premiere, but I have no idea.

I guess the question comes down to whether or not I am willing to live with 5MB/sec as an AVI file size.

Your further assistance is appreciated.

Gene

[lordsmurf]

I can't even get my Premiere to capture from my Aver card!!!
How'd you get yours to even work?

[dcsos]

150 MEGABYTES for 30 seconds
GOOD FOR YOU!

everything is working..this is good..hope you have a lot of space..
Just capture in ULEAD and swing the file into the timeline in premiere.
Make sure to go 720x480 (not 640x480) if youre going to DVD)

I notice AVER is not supported by PREMIERE
a phone call to ADOBE and a live person there told me the following:
ADOBE MAY WORK WITH NON_SUPPORTED CARD...BUT WHEN YOU SWING FILE ON TIMELINE, if you select to SHOW PICTURES along the time line (A RIGHT CLICK and consult TIMELINE WINDOW OPTIONS)it will show BLACK where the frame should be ...If the card is full supported..you'll see all the images conveted to thumbnails in the timeline.