Photographer lost in HDV land.
 

Hi,
I was wondering if you would be so kind as to point a rather lost photographer in the direction of some information. I picked up a canon hv10 on my travels and I seem to have no issues getting hdv video onto my computer but I seem to have a few problems saving the output. Basically there seem to be two issues I have found.

1- I cant seem to make Premier Elements save output in HDV format at 1080i at anywhere near the same quality as original captured footage. I have set it to the same 25mbps but I would imagine there are plenty of other settings I have neglected to correctly set.

2- I have downloaded some apple qt h.264 (i think thats right) clips, they seem to be about 8mbps for 1080? Again, I don't seem to be doing too well at getting my own output settings to produce remotely similar results, they do however turn my PC into a gibbering idiot if I try and play back my own files (apples work fine). If it is relevant the pc is a fairly modest intel dual core 3.2 gig with 1gb ram and 7200 rpm ide ata 133 drives. (1 for the os and programs, one for swap \ page, and one each for input and output with external drives for archiving).

I believe the answer to both points is in my lack of knowledge of settings for the codecs so I would be very greatful if anybody could point me in the direction of some idiot proof tutorials or similar. I thought there would be some transferable skills from photography but so far its proving a steep learning curve.

One other point, Microsoft Movie Maker used to be wonderful for capturing DV and automatically cutting it into clips, making editting very easy. It would seem that Premier Elements doesn't do this and that MMM2 doesnt touch HDV in native format (apparently vista has a version of MM that does). I found it pretty idiot proof and excellent for outputting DV format as well.

Kind Regards
Richard

I am not sure if it the same in elements, but with Premiere Pro 2.0, when you select the video tab, at the very top, there should be a slider. For some reason it is set at 2 something in standard. When I slide that all the way right, quality is best.

I have been unable to do much with h.264 in Premiere Pro either. None of the Apple/Quicktime type renders seem to work out that well for me. I am sure I am missing a setting somewhere, too. If you find out, let me know.
As to Elements, I don't know if you should expect all the bells and whistles and the best codec settings....



Look for HDVSplit, a free HDV capture utility on the net. It gives you scene detection capability

Thanks for the heads up on the hdvsplitter, doesn't seem to work with the hv10 but I havent tried it much.
I'll let you know about the h264, I guess its just a case of playing with all the buttons till I hit it. I have managed to get semi acceptable hdvesque files although the default deinterlacing in Premier elements seems to be dreadful.
Thanks again for the advice, it's much appreciated.

Richard:

Believe it or not, You can render some pretty nice HDV files to Window Media player file. Check out those options there too.