Premiere Pro CS3 capture low quality
 

Is it possible to capture at half DV res, for a rough edit? Then I can export the batch list, or replace low res clips with full quality clips when I'm ready to export the final film.

Most of my editing will be done on a laptop for the next project, the laptop belongs to work, and isn't really adequate but that's all they've got for me to use, hard drive space is not very much, so i could do with my files being as small as possible for the edit, then export a batch list, re-capture the clips at full res just the ones i need and build the film.

I know After Effects can create proxy clips but is this possible in Premiere?

Thanks!

Russ

Not really, I'm afraid. At least I was not able to figure any decent way to do it.

Russ, you can convert the clips to a low-res version outside PPro, say with QuickTime player. Store the lowres clips in a separate directory. Import them in Premiere, edit and then select them in the Project panel, right click and select "Make Offline". Choose the "Keep media" option. Keep the selection, right click and select "Link Media". Click on the first file of the normal resolution and you are done.

EDIT: POSTED AND MISSED PAOLO's INPUT. SORRY PAOLO!

So, if I capture in Premiere, export media as Quicktime, then re-import back into Premiere and delete my source files. Is this right, or can I capture actually in Quicktime?


Thanks Bart, I also searched the program for a way but to no avail.

I am referring to this, an excert from livedocs.adobe.com, on Offline Edit.

"In offline editing, you capture low‑quality clips for editing purposes, but recapture them at high resolution when it’s time to finish, render, and export your final product. Editing the low‑resolution clips allows standard computers to edit excessively large assets, such as HDV or HD footage, without losing performance speed or running out of storage. It also lets editors use laptop computers to edit—for example, while on location."

Is it not possible at all to capture low quality clips, even though it is in the Premiere Pro online manual?

Has anyone else done this?

The problem with Premiere sequences is that they store the clip resolution inherently. I might be wrong here with new versions, but I've been looking for a decent solution for off-line in CS2, and found none bar exporting EDL, and this was unacceptable for me.

You might do the ingest with high compression, and then do the on-line with the best quality, but I have not been able to use clips with higher resolution than specified in the starting sequence.

If you ingest by firewire (which you should) then you will necessarily get full resolution for the initial files.

But that's really not a problem - just chuck those files into any application that does batch encoding - for example Tmpgenc, Procoder or Squeeze (maybe Qucktime too? - never used it) and have a cup of coffee while it produces half-res versions. Edit with those, then relink to the full size version for final render.

I'm trying to understand Bart's post. I've never had problems relinking to higher-res clips - I used to do this at lot when I was editing 720p footage on a puny laptop. Remember that the resolution you export at is independent of timeline resolution in the Premiere project settings.