No Device Control in Premiere 6.5 - new XP Laptop
 

I didn't expect to be back in this situation after four years of non-linear editing, but I'm stumped. I recently bought a Toshiba Satellite laptop with XP Media Centre. It has every connection known, including firewire, of course, and I can't get Premiere to recognize my camcorders (Sony VX2000 and a D-8). I can configure device control for the VX2000 but it stubbornly remains offline. Given the Media Centre is all about digital imaging, this is frustrating. Even MovieMaker doesn't see a camcorder connected. I've forgotten most of what I knew about troubleshooting this issue, it's been so long since I had it. Any suggestions welcome.

David Hurdon

Hi david,

I would not really use Win MCE as an NLE. I know that its built on the Win XP Pro platform, but for me its just far to risky, with the amout of bugs MS manged to put in the software. Any way saying that it should in theory work. To start trouble shooting:

1) When you connect your sony camera via firewire does Win MCE detect it? It normally says found new device as you connect it. It should also appear in My computer as a device.

2) Does the camera appear in device manager. I think it should appear under imaging devices. If not try and search in all catgorize for a Sony DV device.

3) Does the camera and cable work on another machine running Win XP Pro?

4) Are there any errors in event viewer relating to this?

5) What version of Premiere are you running?

6) Have you updated win MCE to the latest?

Cheers,

Thanks, Ed. I never had any concern about Media Centre as the O/S on this laptop, but I can't say I researched it either.
1. I hear a chime when I plug in the camera but no new hardware message.
2.No cam in device manager, anywhere, but for the unknown hardware entry.
3. No other XP system available. Has worked two years on win2kpro, two feet away.
4. No errors in event viewer.
5. Running 6.5
6. Update wouldn't run after download. I'm still trying to understand to what degree Toshiba customized Media Centre O/S on these Satellite laptops.
It is indeed frustrating to have the latest technology, slanted toward digital imaging work, and have it fail to perform as well as four-year old systems.

David Hurdon

Heavy editing and crashes in PP1.5
 

I've been editing 3 2-hour long shows using 3 angles. That's a total of 18 hours of footage to go through. I've naturally created one project for each show to make things more managable.

I use Premiere Pro 1.5 with a Matrox RTX100 card with the latest drivers. In the process of editing, I must have crashed, hanged, and corrupted my projects countless of times. Thank god for the various backups I made throughout the process. Anyway, my question is rather simple: Am I the only one that is cursed with crashes, or are most of you riddled with them too, regarless of the OS or NLE you are using?

I followed all the necessary hardware and software requirements required by both Matrox and Adobe. Still, since I have an ASUS based system, would a brand name computer such as a Dell, IBM or an HP workstation be as suceptible to these crashes? Or would they be more robust... and if they do crash - as I suspect most systems do - then it would be on rare occassions?

Anyway, all this to say that I am damned tired of crashing here and there. All I wish for is to edit my videos, as if I were editing a text in Microsoft Word... I mean, I've never crashed Word in my life!

Thanks all!

You could check to see if your Matrox card is sharing IRQs, which might lead to problems.

In winxp, go to start --> run --> msinfo32
Look under hardware resources --> IRQs
Is your Matrox card on its own IRQ?

I don't own any Premiere Pro hardware acceleration myself, but IRQ sharing/conflicts seemed to be a problem with the previous generation of acceleration hardware.

My system never crashes. But then again, I only use Premiere Pro with a simple firewire connection. My fancy capture card is in the PC, but I don't use it anymore.

Hi David,

Does a Sony device appear in my computer?
Does the same thing happen for both cameras?

Since no program is able to detect the camera when it is connected, then to me me it sounds as though its a windows problem or that the firewire port is not functioning correctly.

I have manged to connect my canon XL1 upto a friends MCE system, and it detects the camera fine via firewire. I can capture and edit footage in Movie Maker.

You say that you hear a chime when it is connected, but no messages appear. There should be a message that appears in a bubble above the clock that says found Sony AV/C device or something along those lines. Have you got a OHCI ieee1394 device control in device manager? Is it enabled does it show any problems?

Certainly in device manager there should be a device under Imaging devices, that says Sony DV camcorder. When the camera is connected.

Since no program is able to detect the camera when it is connected, then to me me it sounds as though its a windows problem or that the firewire port is not functioning correctly. Maybe send it back to the place you brought it and ask them to check it out if you can't figure it out.

cheers,

Hi Frederic,

Getting the correct hardware is just 1 step. You will then need to configure Windows, Premiere and Matrox to make it work correctly. Setting these up should be explained in the Matrox Manual.

A few things to look into:

Paging files
Setting windowos to background services
The correctly display resolution
Making sure DMa is enabled
Making sure that no programs/applications are not running in the backgound while editing

Just a few things to look into...

Odd skip/sync problem
 

I have a 30 min clip that I captured from the DVX100A, and when playing/editing in Premiere after about 3 sec of playing, the video skips about a second, and the audio stays, so it total out of sync. If I stop and play again it will be in sync for another 3 sec befor doing it again. I have chcked the AVI file in WMP and it plays just fine no skiping or out of sync audio. It's very odd.. anyone have any ideas? I'm kind of new at this but it's a new install on a 2.8Ghz/1Gig box.

New Dell XPS / Premiere Pro
 

Dimension XPS
Pentium® 4 Processor w/ HT Tech Extreme Edition (3.40GHz, 800 FSB), Microsoft® Windows® XP

Does any one have any sugestions about using this P.C. with Premiere Pro ???

1- Isn't that computer ridiculously, ridiculously expensive? Did you buy/have this computer already?

2- What exactly are you looking for? Tips on how to get the performance? Tips on how to make your system more stable? Tips on how to get started with Premiere Pro?

3- You might want to try the Premiere forum here. A moderator here might move this thread...

Premiere Pro 1.5 Help choosing capture card???
 

Could someone give me some advice on choosing a card for PP... I'm looking at the Matrox RT.X100 would that be my best bet... looking to spend no more than around 1,500...

Chris (or other Wranglers), I hope this is allowed.

There is a good XP Tweaks page that discusses all the things you can/should do to XP in order to maximize performance for video editing. So is easy, so is advanced.

http://www.videoguys.com/WinXP.html

Another site that discusses XP processes and which may be turned off to optimize performance is blackviper.com. Use with care...your mileage may vary.

A lot of those tweaks don't make a noticeable (i.e. meaningful) impact on performance. Of the service tweaks at blackviper, only a few are useful:
A- System restore and file indexing take up meaningful resources. You could disable these things for better performance (I'd prefer leaving system restore on, especially if installing Avid).
B- If your computer is low on RAM, then disabling unnecessary services will free up RAM. You should get more than enough RAM in the first place though (512 or 1gb).
C- The messenger service lets other people spam you. You should have a firewall up to take care of this though.

2- A useful tweak is to keep your computer clear of other programs that take up resources. In particular, go to msconfig and get rid of "realshed" and "qttask" (doing this gives a few % improvement, which actually ain't much). Also get rid of distributed computing applications unless you aren't running hyperthreading.

AV usually slows your system down. Set it scan in the mornings and such, but don't let them scan every file and program you open. Automatic updates are a very good idea.

3- Overclocking is one tweak that does make a major difference.

4- Also make sure your system is clear of bottlenecks. This can do a lot more than the tweaks outlined above. In particular, make sure your hard drives are using DMA mode (not PIO).

5- If you are setting up a new system, you could partition it so that it is setup well for Norton Ghost. Ask if you want details.

Norton Ghost allows you to clone partitions. By putting an old working partition back in place, you can recover from almost anything within ~10 minutes. You can also make a backup of your current partition and use Ghost Explorer in case you are unsure about getting rid of useful files. If you setup Ghost properly, you won't have anything useful saved on your windows partition.

My guess is that Ghost takes ~1hour to set up.

6- Keep an "installs" and "drivers" folder around for all your installers and drivers. This is handy if you want to setup another computer, or if you wish to reinstall your computer. With Dells these folders aren't as useful but it's a good habit to get into.

Deinterlacing is used to convert interlaced material to progressive. Your friend should avoid doing that.

When encoding a MPEG2 for DVD, your friend will need to tell the encoder that the material is progressive and not interlaced. Also, make sure the encoder is not trying to deinterlace the footage (slight drop in quality).