Premiere Upgrade 5.1 to 6.5?
 

Hey folks,

My primary editing system is AvidXpress DV, but I just acquired and old system from a buddy that has Premiere 5.1 on it. Can i do the upgrade to 6.5 for the $150 upgrade pack? Anyone do this yet?

Not in the studio right now, but I think it's an old Pentium 2. I might throw in another media drive, just want to know if I will be throwing good money after bad. My son wants to take it away to school.

Bill

I'm pretty sure you can upgrade straight from 5.1 to 6.5 but you will need the 5.1 license to do the upgrade.

And i don't think a pentium 2 will be powerful enough.

Whether or not it's powerful enough depends on what you do. I
have it running on a Celeron with not too much troubles. Don't
try to do too many wild things though....

If Rob says it could work then I believe him.

But I don't consider what I do very wild stuff and thinking about trying this stuff on a P2 makes me cringe a little seeing how hard my P4 works.

Premiere capture problem
 

OK.. this doesnt make sense to me...


through my XL-1's viewfinde and on tv (hooked to the XL-1), the movie looks fine but when i go to capture the footage into premiere, in the movie capture screen i see the corners of my wideangle lens..................... as well as a solid black line at the bottom of the screen?


is there something I can do to fix this?

TIA

My experience is that most comes down to fast harddisks and
a clean system... more than CPU... Ofcourse that is my personal
observation / taste. Yours might differ. But hey, give it a try
and see.

What you are seeing is the TV safe area. You do not see it on a
TV because it will not show this area, and when they build the
XL1 viewfinder they decided you shouldn't see it either (stupid).

You see it on the computer because the computer shows
EVERYTHING in the signal. If your output is for TV only you need
not bother about it. If you are also going down computer or
web you need to crop it out.

scanning picture into Premiere
 

Hello All,

I am trying to scan a picture into Premiere that is 5" wide x 6.75" high. But when I import it into Premiere it come out wider than high making it appear stretched out. What did I forget to do?

Thanks!

-SL

find the optiong to turn off 'maintain aspect ratio', should fix your problem.


kermie

upgrade to 6.5
 

I did this recently and was glad to see the improved tools, faster editing, better titling that 6.5 provides. I'm not in front of my video library, but I think you may need a fairly fast CPU as a minimum for 6.5. -maybe check the literature at videoguys,com. Mike

thank u!
guess I'll hafta crop :(

Captures in Premiere look too bright/washed out??
 

Today I noticed that all of my footage captured in premiere 6.5 is too bright. Much brighter than when the miniDV tape is viewed on TV played throug my XL1s

Is this a common problem? Should I just darken everything?

TIA1 =-)

Are you viewing this video on a computer monitor, or an external video monitor/television set? If you're just looking at it on a computer monitor, that's probably where the discrepancy lies. Always port the video out to an external video monitor, even if it's just a cheap television set, as it'll show you what the video really looks like.

Right click the picture on the timeline> go to video options>> then select maintain aspect ratio.

You can also select what could you would like to be in the 'spaces'

Right click picture on the timeline> goto video options>> then select aspect fill colour>>> choose your colour>>>> select OK

Hope this helps,

Ed Smith

Thanks guys, it's a P3...

I was mostly worried if it would upgrade from 5.1 The buddy I bought the system from, is still "looking" for all his paperwork. I got the whole thing from him for 200 bucks, to send off with the kid. I am thinking it won't go up to 6.5. No sweat, I just didn't want to throw good money after bad... (Well, not bad really... pretty good for an old system.)

Like Rob said, it mainly comes down to fast harddrives. Even a PII will play video smoothly in Premiere if you have a fast disk. Render times will be long but you will have no trouble playing video smoothly

new problem
 

Thanks guys, worked beautifully! Here is the next problem the pictures are still coming out fuzzy. I scanned them in at the highest reolution Premiere could handle and then used Photoshop to resize them down to the size I needed. When I open them up in the bin they look great but when I export my timeline to video they look all fuzzy. Any thoughts from anyone?
Thanks!

-SL

Might be a square vs rectangular pixel issue.

To quote Josh Bass:

"Everything I've just written is probably wrong"

Adobe Premiere 6 & Kernel32.dll crash
 

Can't open Adobe Premiere 6.0. Getting "has caused error in Kernel32.dll, will now close". Anybody got common fixes for this?

Premiere for features?
 

I'm getting ready to put together a dedicated DV editing system (PC) and I was going to build with Avid XPressDV in mind, but I have read on this board that it has a very steep learning curve. So my question is: Does premiere have what it takes to edit and process a feature-length DV project and output it with minimal compression?

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks,
Shawn

What resolution did you scan them in and to what resolution
did you resize em? Did you use a high quality resample function?

Well, this doesn't look too good. What Windows version are you
running? Kernel32.dll is THE file for the Windows kernel (piece
of code that is the base of an operating system -> very critical!)
and it usually is not a good sign if you have problem with that.
However, most kernel32.dll errors I've seen where under a
Windows 9x (95,96,98,ME) which isn't suited for video work any-
ways. I suggest going with Windows 2000 Professional (XP
Prof. seems to be a bit unstable now and then with multimedia
stuff).

Other than that I suspect your system is full of garbage and
might need a reinstall. There is also a (free) update to Premiere
6.01 on the Adobe site that might fix the problem (but I doubt
that).

Hope this will help some.

Well, I think any editor will allow you to do this. Otherwise they
wouldn't be any good at all. The question really is what do you
prefer and what tools do you need along the way. I suggest you
try out as much demos of all the editors out there that you can
get your hands on. A list of a few editors:

- Adobe Premiere
- Avid DV XPress
- Pinnacle Edition
- Vegas Video

etc. etc.

Shawn,

I was the one who mentioned the "steep learning curve" about Avid. Yes, it's true if you are trained on Premiere already, it is kind of tough to "unlearn" your work flow. They just have a different approach. Don't let the potential to learn stop you from learning. Just go in with your eyes open.

Having said that, and not knowing your budget. Premiere SOFTWARE is going to be much cheaper than the avid software. But if you throw in the hardware to get it up and running at top speed, it's going to come in pretty close. (Look at the cost of turnkey editing systems such as DVLine sells. Compare the Premeire/Matrox solutions to the Avid XPressDV solutions.)

Voice-over in Premiere
 

I have a quirky problem that I know one of you great talents must have an answer for:

I am running Premiere 6.1, and have a short project assembled that I would like to do a voice-over while the project is playing.

I can't seem to get an audio capture while the project plays. Locks it up. (Maybe I'm doing something wrong... who knows)

I looked in the "no-help" help file.... nothing about voice-overs.

I searched this site... nothing here.

I have two options other than Premiere:

Digitally record on another system, then import it into Premiere; OR render the project and import it into Vegas Video (which I believe I can do voice-overs... not sure, though).

Any thoughts on how to keep this in Premiere?

Thanks!

I don't know if this helps or not - but I did a voice over for my first short film. I sat in my bedroom with my GL-1 and a good shotgun mic and taped myself. I then imported that tape into PREMIERE (6.0), unlocked the video/audio, deleted the video and had good quality voice over that I lined up in the desired position on the timeline.

Without access to a studio, that was what worked for me!

If I understand you correctly, you watched your project on your computer while you recorded your voiceover into the G-1, right?

That's a work-around.

I can record separately, though.

I just tried starting the audio capture before starting the playback, and the program didn't stop until I touched the capture recorder (all I did was maximize it, and the program stopped playing)

I'll go back and try again, but this may work.

Hi Rob,

Thanks for responding! Well, as far as resolution, I am not sure as my scanner's software does not display dpi. But the original 5 X 6.75 inch picture came out to be 40x52 inches or 2868 pixels x 3888 pixels. Then I took it into Photoshop and resized it down to 5 x 6.75 inches. I figured that would improve the quality, since I am taking allot of pixes and squeezing them closer together into a smaller area? Like I said before when I open the picture in Premiere it looks great but once I insert it into and output the timeline it looks lousy! As far as whether or not I used a high quality resample function, probably not as I do not know what that is, is that a function of a scanner or Premiere? Thanks so much for your help!

-SL

but does it look lousy when outputted to a tv?

or only in the crap timeline window?

kermie

Photoshop files into premiere
 

If I import a photoshop file (.psd) into premiere, the image quality should be at MAX correct?

Are there any pros n cons to doing this? I hear so many people importing TIFFS and TARGA files... why not just leave them as PSD photoshop files?

thanks! ;-)

I'm not sure how Premiere's image processing algorithms work, but it could be that it doesn't antialias effectively when resizing images to fit the screen. The most sensible thing to do is to resize the still images to the appropriate size for your format (e.g. 640 x 480 or 720 x 480) with correct antialiasing; or, if motion effects are needed, use After Effects with antialiasing turned on.

It might also be that Premiere has excellent antialiasing. But if you aren't satisfied with the still image results you get, this might be one thing to take into consideration.

I think it would be better to go down this route:

1. just play your movie with something like Mediaplayer
(as long as it isn't Premiere), mute the sound !
2. Fire up an audio program and record line in.

It might also be possible to use premiere in step 1 if you use
a different audio recording program in step 2 (like cool edit,
wavelab etc.).

Sammy,

When working with digital clips/photos etc. in your computer
do it in PIXELS.. .not inches or DPI... An NTSC signal is 720x480,
PAL is 720x576. So 2868x3888 is way too much. When you lower
the resolution you are resampling your image. The quality is
very dependent on which resampling function you are using.
I'm not a Photoshop user (I use some smaller apps for my
graphics work) but most Graphics packages tend to go for the
better quality. But, resample your picture to 720x480 or 720x576
and e-mail it to me as an jpeg at visuar@iname.com and I'll
take a look at it for you.

Good luck.

All this work-around makes me appreciate the "Audio Punch-In" tool on Avid XpressDV. I did a film-noir short, shot in Super 8 film. Brought it into the system, did the vidual editing. Then laid in the music. Came time for the voice-overs, "Voila" easy-peasy. Also worked great for some "foley" work. Even if the sound effect was off a bit, I just moved it over on the time-line. Same with a piece of ADR.

Vegas would do a fine job of this. Drop in the video (and audio track if you have one), add a new audio track, arm it for record, and record. The video and any non-muted audio tracks will play back while you record the new audio track. If you do have an existing audio track that you want to hear during narration, use headphones to avoid recording back a second copy of the existing track.

This is one advantage to Vegas' legacy as a multi-track sound editor, very good audio tool support. You could even do this with Vegas LE, which supports 2 video tracks and 3 audio tracks.

Thank you, all:

After all considerations, finishing the video portion of the project in Premiere and bringing it into Vegas for the voice-over seems to make the most sense. (Thanks, Brian)

I could try to mess with Premiere (starting the audio recording first, then playing back the video for visual cues), but since I will not get the voice-over done in one single pass (more like several small chunks)... it seems to be a little too much hassle.

Next time, I'll probably do the whole thing in Vegas... I just haven't had the chance to learn the program, yet.

Thanks again for the input. You guys are great.

I'm sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, but it looks like you figured something out.

I don't have an 'audio input' into my computer (that I know of), so I did not record a voice over directly into Premiere or directly into my computer.

What I did was to take a blank tape, my GL-1, go to a nice quiet room, hook up a shotgun mic, turn on the camera and record - me reading the voice over. It was only about four minutes or so.

I then took the footage and imported into Premiere, just as I would any other video footage, placed the footage on the timeline, unlinked the video from the audio and lay the audio track in the approrpriate place in the timeline. That way, using the same microphone as I used to record the short, I also used for the voice-over (though not recorded at the same time or in the same location).

It is a "poor-man's" voice over, but it worked beautifully for me.

Good luck.

Thanks, Mark:

I rendered to project out and brought it into Vegas Video.

I looked in the "no-help help" section, but got no help. I added an audio track, and armed it to record, set a destination... and voila! Real-time voice-over.

I knew there was a reason I bought both Premiere and Vegas!

I haven't been too thrilled with Premiere's Help menu (I like that 'no help-help'!) either. I just thought it was lack of experience that made it difficult for me to use.

if i remember correctly .. when you bring in a STILL into a video editor the video editor must then get a outside READER to view the still which then slows down previews ... some editors have a built in jpeg or targa or tiff reader ... PSD files tend to be very large plus requires a outside reader = takes up processing time while editing ....