PPro 1.5 and capturing from V1
 

I've just tried to capture some rushes from my V1 onto a PC running Premiere Pro 1.5. Unfortunately the Device Control Panel in PPro is not seeing the V1 and despite altering settings (e.g. making it look like a PD150) there is no way that it will recognise my V1.

I have tried the 'Go online for Device info' option, but after filling in the details of the software, etc, it does not show the V1 on Adobe's list of supported cameras, even if I change things to indicate that I am using Premiere Pro 2 rather than 1.5

Now added to this problem is the fact that I also have a Matrox RTX.100 card installed in the same PC. I have created both a standard Premiere Pro project and a Matrox one, but neither projects can see the V1.

I'm about to get Adobe on the phone, but before I do has anyone here had this problem and resolved it?

Thanks,
Nigel.

Nigel, the first thing to start with should be: does Windows recognize your camera? If it does not, make sure you have SP2 installed (of course I'm assuming you'r eusing XP).

Once you have the V1 recognized by your OS, there should be no trouble capturing. If - for any reaosn I can't imagine - your PP 1.5 still cannot capture, download this freeware Polish piece of software:

http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdvsplit.htm

- and you'll be good to go!

My system recognised the camera when I first plugged it in via firewire. It came up with the normal XP driver installation wizard and I hit the standard 'recommended' option. It seemed to go all the way through and then tell me that my device was correctly installed. However I can't get Movie Maker to recognise the camera either at this stage.

I've been on the phone to Adobe and they say that I could try installing the HD plug-in (thought I'd done that a year ago, but I could be wrong) and then create a HD(V) project and then see if Premiere will recognise the camera.

Of course I can try that, and probably will, but eventually I need to edit in DV since a) I like the real time aspects of the RTX.100 and b) the project I am editing was shot on two cameras, the other being a PD170 and obviously I will need to edit that in a DV project.

The only other thing I can mention is that right now the V1 is set to 'squeeze' mode in terms of output. I assume that downconverts the 1080i rushes to DV? But I was wondering if this V1 problem hadn't come up before on forums if most people were taking 1080i HDV straight into Premiere without downconverting in camera?

I assume you have the PAL version; if so see pages 105/106 of the manual. Basically, when you have a HDV recording and want to downconvert to DV on capture, the VCR HDV/DV must be set to HDV, and the i.LINK CONV to ON.

If you want to capture HDV, the i.LINK CONV must be set to OFF.

Hope this helps

Update: Well I had installed the HD plugin (as suspected) and I just created a HDV project and now Prem Pro see's the camera and I can capture.

However does this mean I have to import the video file created (mpeg-4?) back into my DV project where my PD170 rushes will be in AVI or is there a better way of getting them both on one timeline?

I don't know about PP1.5, but in PP2 you can mix SD with HD on the timeline.

Thanks for this it has solved the problem, you have my sincere thanks.

As daft as it seems I've not managed to get this far in the manual 'yet' and this current project was thurst upon me with a quick deadline. So more fool me for not reading the manual.

Anyway the problem is that I hadn't changed the i.LINK CONV to 'ON'.

Now everything, including Movie Maker, sees the V1

As a word of warning to any Matrox users who still find they are having problems capturing into a Matrox project, don't forget to swap the Device control over to 'Matrox DV-1394 Device control'. It is not the default and this had me foxed for a while.

I'm glad I could help, Nigel. I could have done it even faster, should I have read you post more carefully and noticed that your computer does see the camera, and the Windows Movie Maker doesn't - this is an obvious result of the V1 feeding HDV, which Movie Maker doesn't handle! Cheers.