Capturing footage
 

Hi all, I've got Premiere Pro 2.0 and an A1.

Basically, I'm shooting in SD at the moment, and I'm wondering how to retain the highest possible image quality from camera to pc. Now, At the moment, it looks good, but it is nothing compared to plugging the camera into the TV and watching it on that.

So, my question is; is quality loss inevitable in transfer? Or is my set-up affecting it, i.e is PP2.0 bad for capturing video (would somthing like Avid or Vegas capture in higher quality?)

Or is it my firewire cable? Would a more expensive one make it better?

Any advice would be much appreciated...

Best all,

Giles B

If you are shooting DV, and capturing DV, then it should look the same as playing it back over composite cables to the TV, or even better.

Capturing is like a file transfer. No NLE captures better than any other. Tell us about your proiject settings. Perhaps you are capturing it fine but playing it back in the wrong project settings?

You are capturing 1's and zeros over firewire. There would be no quality loss in transfer.

When your are editing,in premeire though, you are seeing your stuff in the preview window of Premiere through computer graphics. If you want to see your finished product as it will actually look on TV, you could actually preview out to TV if your video cards supports it, or send it out to your camcorder, in turn sending signal to the the TV monitor. This may require full render before doing so. (This won't work with HDV, however.)

Ah OK, that's good info. Maybe it is my PC then. I am guessing it's somthing to do with the physical build of the screen compared to a television...

Cheers for the advice,

Regards,

Giles B

Have you tried watching the same footage via a media player software and not via PPRO? Computer screens actually give a very good picture... I am often watching DVDs on my laptop and get a picture that seems better than a regular TV.

Are you by chance capturing DV footage downconverted from HDV inside your camera?

My A1U has the option to downcovert inside the camera as it captures. SO, I shooting everything in HDV, capture it and work with it in DV in PPro2.