Canon HDV and Adobe Premiere

[Panagiotis Raris]

Originally Posted by D.W. Lewis

I am having ongoing problems capturing with the XH-A1. When I plug it in via firewire, Windows detects it (usually) as a Canon DV Camcorder listed under "Imaging Devices" in device manager. Sometimes though, it is detected as an AV/C subunit listed as Canon XH-A1 under "Sound, Video & Game Controllers". Premiere will only talk to the camera as an imaging device, and only in DV capture mode (HDV gives me 'Device offline', Cineform HD gives me 'Can't Activate Recorder'). HDVSplit and Cineform HDLink will only recognize the camera as an AV/C subunit. With enough plugging, unplugging, and resetting the camera I can usually get it recognized the way a particular program wants it.

I'm working on a batch script which will force Windows to load the drivers I want, if it works I'll post it.

please do; what version Premiere Pro are you using? for me PP captures fine but On Location CS5 is choppy and doesnt work at ALL; if i have to i use CS4. i have lossless alternatives but i would prefer to capture to CS5. my system is Win7 x64 CS5.

i use a cheap CF recorder now to capture from tape, but it would be much easier on ad shoots to capture to laptop HD (7200RPM) via CS5 On Location for cam2 while cam1 captures to CF card instead of screwing with recapturing from tape later.

thanks!

[Terry Wall]

Hi gang! Yesterday I shot a wedding with my xh-a1 in HDV. This was my first HD shoot (usually shot in SD with my xl2 in tandem) so today I was trying to capture the footage and got the "blue screen of death" with all the different languages saying "playing on video hardware." I don't have any trouble with SD footage...what is this error screen telling me? Attached is a screen shot.

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

Terry Wall

[Pete Bauer]

Can you clarify: do you mean you got a BSOD at some point after starting capture? For reasons known only to Adobe, they do not display HDV video as its captured. You have to look at the source device's display (your camera's LCD) and the screenshot you posted is normal during HDV capture.

[Terry Wall]

Pete, you are correct! I went back into capture mode and save a sample clip of the HDV footage, and sure enough, it captured and I was then able to preview the clip on my source monitor. So would someone please explain to me why Adobe would do something so boneheaded as to NOT allow captured footage to play on the CAPTURE MONITOR??!!?? Is there anything in Adobe's (alledged) Knowledge Base that explains this? Call me crazy...this is just dumb! Are these folks arrogant enough to think that we PC users just might try out some other NLE?? Or do they have such a large user base that they just don't care?

Thanks, Pete!

Terry

[Pete Bauer]

When HDV first came out, the general presumption (and I don't recall if Adobe did or did not say so) was that they wanted to reduce the chance of dropped frames if system resources got maxxed out. Nowadays, with much faster computers being the norm I doubt anyone would accept that rationale, but for whatever reason capture window display of HDV has never gotten into PPro.

Every time I do an HDV capture, I also wonder why they haven't bothered to fix this. But, to me it is a minor nuisance that doesn't really slow anything down (any more than tape capture inherently does, anyway!)

Glad your captures are actually ok.

[Terry Wall]

One last question, Pete: Did Adobe correct this "issue" with CS4 or 5? I use CS3. Believe it or not, I've actually been using a trial version of Vegas Pro and it seems quite intuitive. Short of chucking all my PC gear and programs, it might be the closest to shifting completely over to the Mac platform. Can't do that, though...just a little too rich for the pocketbook, since this isn't my full time gig.

Thx again!
Terry

[Pete Bauer]

No, in CS5 you still need to view the video on your camcorder during capture. But as I mentioned, I consider it a quirky mystery and not anything that really affects workflow. If you want to switch to Vegas or a Mac, that's entirely a personal choice. I can't compare because I've never used Vegas or FCP, but I'm extremely happy with CS5; it is the best version by far of PPro to date.

[Adam Gold]

I think one reason it wasn't "fixed" is that Adobe doesn't consider it to be 'broken;" it simply isn't a real issue. Sure, it's a surprise -- it was to me -- to not have the monitor playback during capture if you're used to seeing it in DV mode, but the monitor window is too small and low-res for it to be of any real use anyway. If you're capturing from tape, you should have your capture device hooked up -- preferably via HDMI -- to a proper full size TV monitor so you can accurately judge sharpness, color, exposure, etc. while capturing to know whether the take is good or not. And it works fine for marking in and out points prior to the actual capture, so I'm not sure what advantage there is to seeing the tape while the capture process is underway.

But I'm guessing that everyone perceives HDV tape to be on the downward slope of its life bell curve anyway, so I'm not surprised Adobe decided to not put too many resources into tackling what is not more than an annoyance which doesn't truly affect functionality.

(And it's not a secret that HDV doesn't display during capture -- it's in all the documentation.)

As people move to tapeless the whole capture process seems like an ancient relic. And I say this as a longtime tape guy.

[Benjamin Maas]

I'm using PP CS5 to capture video from a borrowed XH-A1S. The tapes were recorded HDV (1080i) but I'm having a heck of a time getting them to capture properly.

The capture seemingly went without a hitch- no reported dropped frames or anything. However, once I placed the files into the Sequence, I had major drift issues compared to the 2 other cameras I was using (both Sony- NX5U and an MC50U) The two sonys were a frame or two off over 20 min- not horrible, but not great. However, the Canon was off by at least a second over 10 min or so.

Any idea what is causing this? Am I missing a setting somewhere?

This is really far out obviously and I need things in sync for 20 min or so at a time (I'm working with classical music so the pieces can be long). I know my NX5U can maintain sync over an hour or more compared to the audio I record at the same time.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

--Ben

[Ann Bens]

Use scene detect for the hdv camera, that will get rid of your out of sync.

[Tim Plummer]

Utterly Confused. I have a Xh A1s and premiere cs5.5 and can t get Cs5.5 to recognize the camera in HDV mode. If I switch 5.5 to DV mode it picks it up and I am able to capture in DV. Do I have to have a capture device like Black Magic for this to capture in HDV?

[Brian Brown]

Wow, now THAT'S an old thread.

I can still capture with my XH-A1 in PP 5.5, but you'll have a lot better luck with the freeware HDV Split (you can Google it), because it will capture AND break up your scenes into discrete clips. Something PP 5.5 has never been able to accomplish.

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Tim Plummer

Utterly Confused. I have a Xh A1s and premiere cs5.5 and can t get Cs5.5 to recognize the camera in HDV mode. If I switch 5.5 to DV mode it picks it up and I am able to capture in DV. Do I have to have a capture device like Black Magic for this to capture in HDV?

Make sure your HDV camera is not set to outputting DV.