Capturing Video from camera with Premiere 5.5

[sanddrag]

I need a little bit of help. I need to get some video off a camera and into Premiere 5.5. I'm not sure yet if I will be using an analog video camera or a digital one. If I have to use the analog one, I have a Dazzle USB video capture device. Then I'll have to find a way to get the audio (line in on sound card?) If I use the digital one, I have a firewire port. Either way, I need to relearn how to capture in premiere. It has been a really long time since I have done it and I don't remember a thing. If someone could guide me through it that would be great! Thanks in advance.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Press F5
..or go to File> "Capture"

Then the capture window will come up. Go into the options to specify where and how you want to capture. Hit the record button, then the play button. Stop when wanted.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Make sure you're doing "movie capture", I think. Also - are you capturing off a camera or do you have a VHS tape? Most Sony cameras have a firewire port on them even if they aren't a purely digital video camera. If you run into something, and you probably will since Premiere is tricky and you have to get most of your options just right, post it here.

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

Make sure you're doing "movie capture", I think. Also - are you capturing off a camera or do you have a VHS tape? Most Sony cameras have a firewire port on them even if they aren't a purely digital video camera. If you run into something, and you probably will since Premiere is tricky and you have to get most of your options just right, post it here.

Actually, Sony Camcorders have what they call ILink, which is a small connector that can be on the other end of a USB 2.0 cable or a Firewire cable....all miniDV camcorders have an option similiar to this. That makes it really easy...

If you're using an analog camcorder, those dazzle devices are pretty nice....most of the time you can plug the audio from a composite cable into the dazzle device, but if not of if you choose otherwise, you can plug into the line in port of your sound card. I reccomend investing in the next up dazzle model too. Depending on the quality of your soundcard, that could effect the quality of sound picked up.


Digital Video Creator 80
Retails around $69.99.
I've known people to use that and are pretty happy with those results.

Anyway, I've played aroudn with a lot of video editing software in my lifetime, such as Ulead VideoStudio, Pinnacle Studio 8, Adobe Premiere 5 all the way to 6.5 and the Microsoft Movie maker....they're all pretty good and have their advantages and disadvantages.

Let me know if you need anymore help.

-D.J.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by D.J. Fluck

Actually, Sony Camcorders have what they call ILink, which is a small connector that can be on the other end of a USB 2.0 cable or a Firewire cable....all miniDV camcorders have an option similiar to this. That makes it really easy...

Yeah isn't is called like a 1334 port or something? I can't remember, but if your camera has one of these it's very easy to capture video.

[Clark Gilbert]

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux

Yeah isn't is called like a 1334 port or something? I can't remember, but if your camera has one of these it's very easy to capture video.

IEEE-1394 <---Firewire

Any digital format (MiniDV, MicroDV, SDcards, some Digital8) camcorder should come with this connection, making it easy to download video to your computer.

[JAH]

Originally Posted by D.J. Fluck

Actually, Sony Camcorders have what they call ILink, which is a small connector that can be on the other end of a USB 2.0 cable or a Firewire cable....all miniDV camcorders have an option similiar to this.

The smaller port is just a 4 pin firewire cable. Most desktops with firewire have 6 pin firewire, whereas most laptops have 4 pin firewire. You can get super cheap firewire cables off of ebay.

Originally Posted by JAH

The smaller port is just a 4 pin firewire cable.

Not quite, its called a 4pin mini-b connector. Originally it was just used with firewire, but once USB 2.0 cameout, they renamed it to prevent confusion and show that you can find both USB 2.0 and Firewire cables, but the speeds are basically the same.

[sanddrag]

I learned a bit about compression today. The 2 mintue 34 second (640x480 res) video was 4 gigs uncompressed. With Intel Indeo R32 compression and quality turned down to 85%, the file is now only 165 mb. I can fit it on my flash drive.

[Max Lobovsky]

If you are gonna be editing it further, and you need to compress it for space reasons, mjpeg is the way to go. For final version, mpeg2 for really high quality or divx/mpeg4/xvid/3ivx......... for anything less.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I learned a bit about compression today. The 2 mintue 34 second (640x480 res) video was 4 gigs uncompressed. With Intel Indeo R32 compression and quality turned down to 85%, the file is now only 165 mb. I can fit it on my flash drive.

Yeah you'll find all kinds of file types and compressions make the file size much smaller. The best for retaining quality but being a small size would be DivX, but then again not everyone has that. The next best is mpeg I think, or wmv. Cinepak is what we used to compress this years animation and it worked pretty well.

Also, nice time length on your video

[Kyle Fenton]

Originally Posted by D.J. Fluck

Not quite, its called a 4pin mini-b connector. Originally it was just used with firewire, but once USB 2.0 cameout, they renamed it to prevent confusion and show that you can find both USB 2.0 and Firewire cables, but the speeds are basically the same.

Can you site a source? I am just curious.
A 4 pin mini-b connector is a USB cable that is used in digital cameras. I have never seen it used in digital camcorders. Usually a camera only uses firewire for transferring because USB uses too many CPU cycles to handle full DV quality video.

Edit:
I have seen those 4 pin mini-b connector on camcorders, but to transfer pictures from a SD/MCC or CF card not video.

[Duck11]

Hi there!! i've recently found screen capture tool that is an easy and fastest way to take video screen captures from Windows screen.Its quite nice tool, i have checked!!! http://www.geovid.com/Screen_VidShot/

[Max Lobovsky]

Analog:

Make sure you are using a USB 2.0 device otherwise you are limited to something like 320x240 and 15 fps because of USB 1.1's low bandwidth.

If you really want to do it right, get a PCI card.

Use www.virtualdub.com for the capturing. It does a better job than any other tool (less frame loss, better quality, etc). There are some tutorials on how to use it to capture.

Digital:

just do it in Premiere.

[sanddrag]

Thanks everyone for your help. It turns out, I was able to use my Mom's Canon PowerShot digital camera which can take video clips at 640x480 and make them AVIs right on the SD card. I know it isn't the most ideal way of shooting a short movie but it was the easiest and quality and professional look isn't the main point of this video I'm making.

But I'm saving this thread for next time I do have to actually capture video. Thanks for the help!