How to Capture 30p from DVX-100?
 

I am using Premiere Pro 1.5. I am trying to capture 30p directly to hard-drive (no tape). Is this possible using PPro 1.5?

I can live capture in PPro 1.5, but I think that it is interlaced footage. I have set up my project as "progressive", video for windows with the cinepac codec. Should I use another codec?

I have set the camera up on the 30p setting, but if nothing is recorded onto a tape, how does the DVX-100 pass frames or fields to the capture program?

After capture, what is the best way to see what type of footage was captured, 60i or 30p? PPro does not have much info, AE 6.5 displays as "separated" which leads me to believe that it thinks it is interlaced. AE6.5 has no pull-down to convert to 30p that I can see either.

If direct capture cannot be done, how does one capture from tape if recorded in 30p using Premiere Pro 1.5?

I know that there are several people who edit in 30p on the forum, so I hope someone can shed some light on this subject for me. Thanks in advance.

Mike,
The first thing that will help you to understand this is knowing the way that the DVX saves things to tape or a hard drive. The DV codec is interlaced inherintly, therefore anything that is saved from the dvx has to be interlaced. I won't go into the 24p Flags here, since you are looking at 30p footage. 30P footage is layed to tape the same as 60i footage, the differnce is that both fields of each frame were captured at the same time. So where 60i has field A and Field B captured at slightly different points in time, 30p has field A and field B captured at the exact same moment in time.
In premeire pro, when working with DV footage, always use the DV codec for best results. Start a Standard DV NTSC project and then go to the properties setting and change "lower filed first" to Progressive, don't change anything else. Start your project and go ahead and capture your footage. When you lay it in the timeline it will be 30p footage, that's just the way it is, in fact, it is impossible to convert 30p footage to anything else, ie 60i or 24p, so don't worry about it being interlaced, it simply cannot be. Hope this helps.

Stefan, thanks for the reply!

If I understand correctly,

1) In PPro, use DV codec and change the project to 30 Progressive and anything captured from the DVX-100, tape or direct to disk, that was set to 30 Progressive in camera will be 30p in PPro?

Now I just want to clarify how the "fields" are handled.

2) The DVX-100 must write or send 60 fields even though you are set to Progressive while recording. Does it take the P frame and divide it into two fields and send as 60i to comply with the DV spec? And if so, does PPro combine fields by "deinterlacing" in a 30P project? PPro must know that fields 1 and 2 make up Frame 1, 3+4 make up Frame 2, etc. And anytime you output from PPro into a true progressive format, it must combine the fields, correct?

3) What is the result if you have the DVX-100 set to 60i but you capture in PPro as 30P? And conversely, what if you have the DVX-100 set at 30p and capture as 60i? What will the resulting videos "look" like?

4) What are the traditional advantages and reasons that people are shooting 30p? I want to shoot 30p so that I can achieve proper frame grabs. I also have some plug-ins from "RE:VisionFX" that says that Progressive video works best with their plug-ins when you are changing the speed of clips, etc. But are their other reasons why people shoot 30P?

thanks again.