To convert your 4:3 footage to 16:9 you will need to start a new project in Premiere and choose 16:9 as the aspect ratio. Then, import your 4:3 footage and scale it up to fill the whole 16:9 frame. You will lose the some of the top and bottom of the 4:3 frame when you do this, so watch for things like people's heads getting lopped off at the top. You can move your video up and down to compensate for this.

I have a Canon Gl2, I want to shoot in 4:3 to have the best quality image and then somehow convert the image to 16:9.
Since you have to blow up the 4:3 footage to fit it inside a 16:9 frame, you are still losing quality. Sometime ago I read that Canon's camcorders were among the better ones shooting 16:9 video, even though they only had 4:3 CCDs (this was before Canon’s newest camcorder, the XL2, which does have 16:9 CCDs). If that is the case you may just be better off shooting 16:9 to begin with, since that is your final product anyway. You could easily perform an experiment to find out which shooting method gives you the best image quality.

Can somebody explain the purpose of breaking up a long project between multiple sequences? Is this so you won't have one long timeline to navigate through? How do you get the sequences to connect when your project is finished?

There are many uses for Premiere Pro's sequences. It all depends on the project and your editing preferences. Here are some that I can think of.

To take your example, if you're working on a particular project that is quite complex, it could simplify the timeline to break it up into separate sequences. To put all the separate sequences together you just drop them into another sequence. A sequence placed in another sequence behaves just like a video clip; you can edit it, and apply any transitions or effects you want to it.

For another example, let's say you're editing a conference. You could edit each session in it's own sequence. Then you could build the opening and closing titles/graphics in their own sequences, and drop them into each session’s sequence. Should you decide to make a change to the opening or closing, it will then be updated in every sequence it is used.

On longer, more complex projects I usually capture multiple tapes (on my current project I have at least ten tapes captured). Placing the contents of each tape on it's own sequence makes it much easier to scan through my footage to locate the shots I need. It also makes it easier to assemble certain scenes in one place (behind the scenes bloopers, etc).

Another use for multiple sequences would be to put together several different cuts for a certain section of your project. With each cut in it's own sequence you could then easily swap the different versions in and out of your main timeline.

Can somebody explain the purpose of breaking up a long project between multiple sequences? Is this so you won't have one long timeline to navigate through? How do you get the sequences to connect when your project is finished?

You pretty much nailed it. Obviously, your method of editing is purely your own choice, but some people (myself included) feel that breaking a long project up into sequences simplifies things by making it much easier to find things. The nice part about sequences in Premiere Pro is that you can nest them. That means that if you open a new sequence, you can drag and drop another sequence into that sequence. That way, all the clips and edits you have from one sequence just show up as one long clip in its parent sequence. Again, there is no right or wrong way to do things. It's simply a matter of personal preference.

Hope that all made sense.

EDIT: You beat me to it Christopher.

Brent,

Looks like we were both posting at the same time! The more information, the better.

OH! How fabulous is that? Make a title change in the original sequence holding the title and wherever else you dropped that title sequence the changes take effect.

You Go Boy!

Hugh,

Excellent advice here. One of my NLE manuals also noted that this is how many sitcoms and tv drama shows are done. You keep a sequence of the opening, the closing credits, and a sequence for each 'scene' in the script. I tend to look at the hierachy as Clips-->Sequences-->Project.

-gb-

I have a GeForce 6800 OC that I use dual displays with, it works really well and I haven't had a problem with it.

Hello
I have my GL2 set on widescreen and capture the video with PPro. The video look good in PPro but when I open it in AE 6.0 it is squished horizontally. Its not quite 16/9 but a little wider then 4/3. I have AE composite settings on Perset: NTSC DV widescreen 720x480 and Pixel aspect ratio: D1/DV NTSC widescreen 1.2 but it still doesnt look right. After I make the movie and open it back in PPro it looks fine. It just make it a little hard to do the effects in AE. Is there a way around this?

I'm at work so may not get the terminology quite right, but...

There is an option in AE's monitor window for showing, or not showing corrected aspect ratio. "Not" requires less processing power and so is helpful if the computer is struggling to keep up.

Square pixels at 720x480 gives an image with a width to height ratio 1.5. DV, of course, uses non-square pixels...narrow screen gets to 4:3 by using 0.9 pixel aspect ratio (PAR), whereas widescreen uses PAR 1.2. I'm guessing your monitor window is set to "not" which will then show the image at square pixels, or an image aspect ratio of 1.5. This is simply a display option; it doesn't affect rendering.

If that isn't the trouble, let us know!

i also am having quite a bit of trouble with the alpha glow effect...

The topic says it all...

How do cut parts and save them in PPro? Like if I have a 20 second clip and I only want to save the first five seconds as a file and delete the rest?

The only way to do this is to bring your 20-second clip into a timeline, do the necessary cutting, then re-export the file. Make sure, if you're using Premiere, to keep the export settings to Microsoft DV AVI in order to keep the same uncompressed quality as your original captured footage. After you do this, you can delete your original 20-second file.

It's kind of a tedious process for such a seemingly simple request, but I'm not aware of a better way.

If you specifically want the 5 seconds as a separate file, I think export as Brent said is probably the only way to do it.

But, if all you want to do is be able to come back to that 5 seconds at a later time for editing, just save your project, and the IN and OUT points will be preserved within the project (without actually affecting the source file), which you can even import into another project.

It should lol

How do blur faces like in the TV show COPS in Premiere Pro 1.5 or in After Effects? Which would be the easiest way?

Now I understand this happens when you apply a transition to two clips with no tail or head room, but why does this matter. If I captured two clips just the way I wanted them and just placed them on the timeline, why can't I just dissolve between the two. Why must I trim them for head and tail room. Or do I? Seems like Premiere adds diagonal lines to the transition. Even though I get this warning, the dissolve looks good. Can I just leave it as is?

To those who also had the question...

http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotutorial/tutdes_ppro_blurface.htm

i've got a radeon 8000pro and a matrox dv card...works fine but i want dual screen now!

It is just a warning Ed. The software is letting you know that it will have to create frames to add to your video for the transition and that it may not look the way you want it to as a result. If it looks good to you this way, then I wouldn't fret over it much.

-gb-

Like Greg said, if it looks good to you, there's no reason to change it. Ultimately when you're editing, you just want to create a good looking film. Regardless of any weird anomalies or errors you get, if you like the way it looks... keep it!

You don't neccesarily have to crop the footage and lose some of your image for this. There are photo uprez programs like Photozoom Pro that you can use to make your footage 16:9 without resolution loss. In fact it's uprez so I think it even ends up looking better. There is the whole entire process description on one of the www.dvxuser.com threads by a guy named Disjecta.

Good luck,
I have a GL2 as well by the way and it works beautifully.

Dmitry,

Interesting. I found the post (http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?t=6844.)
You don't neccesarily have to crop the footage and lose some of your image for this.
If you want to make anamorphic 16:9 footage from a 4:3 source and keep the aspect ratio correct, part of the frame has to be cropped off. There's no way around this.

Yeah sorry I meant you don't have to crop as much as you would and lose like half a persons head :) Otherwise you're right my mistake (just trying to help) hehe.

Peace

I will try Prozoom. One question, what are TIFF frames?
Thanks a bunch guys

Yeah sorry I meant you don't have to crop as much as you would and lose like half a persons head :)
Whether cropping in Premiere or Photozoom Pro the same amount of image would have to be taken off to make the 16:9 footage. I don't know exactly how the process would work in Photozoom Pro, but in Premiere the footage could be shifted up or down to prevent vital parts of the footage from being cropped off.
Otherwise you're right my mistake (just trying to help) hehe.
No problem. Thanks for sharing the program.

I will try Prozoom. One question, what are TIFF frames?
TIFF is a still image format.

My machine has an old-ish Matrox video card which works ok, but if I increase the size of the monitor window by too much the playback gets really jerky. Ideally I'd like to display a large size monitor window on the second monitor rather than have to output via firewire to a tv - has anyone achieved this?

My machine has an old-ish Matrox video card which works ok, but if I increase the size of the monitor window by too much the playback gets really jerky. Ideally I'd like to display a large size monitor window on the second monitor rather than have to output via firewire to a tv - has anyone achieved this?

I'm pretty sure there's a way to do it in Premier Pro 1.5, by default with my video card if I play an .avi (or any other video extensions) it automatically displays on the secondary display in full screen. It sucks if you have anything behind it, but I have it setup so that everything is on one screen and the video is on the other.

Can anybody tell me the command or shortcut enabling me to be able to drop a clip between two other clips making the clips to the right automatically move down the timeline?

If you are using Premiere Pro:
Press Ctrl or Ctrl+Alt while dragging the clip to the timeline.

/Roger

Pressing CTRL or CTR+Alt will make the clips to the right of the clip I drop on the timeline move down automatically? I will try that. May I ask another question?

Why does moving a larger clip over top of a smaller clip make the smaller clip completely disappear?

Dear Hugh,

"Drag and Drop Editing
The Premiere Pro interface has been redesigned to reduce the need to switch between different tools. Trimming is as easy as dragging the edges of a clip, or you can use the separate Trim window for more precise editing. You can perform basic operations with drag and drop editing by using keyboard modifiers:

- To delete or move a clip, just click and drag to Lift a clip: Delete it and leave a gap on the timeline, without affecting the adjacent clips. Or hold down the Ctrl key as you click to Extract the clip: Ripple Delete it and close the gap by sliding down the rest of the timeline contents.

- To overlay or insert a clip, again just drag and drop to perform the basic operation: Overlay it on top of the current contents of the timeline. Or hold down Ctrl as you drop to Insert the clip, and shift over the rest of the timeline contents.

That's not too hard to remember: just drag and drop to affect just the clip, or hold the Ctrl key to ripple the edit along the timeline. This trick even works when you are doing a drag and drop to perform two actions in one operation: you have the option to hold or release Ctrl both when dragging, and then when dropping, so you can lift or extract and then overlay or insert all in one smooth operation.

To make this process even easier to learn, Premiere Pro changes the cursor icon at each point in an edit operation, and also provides a dynamic text message hint in the status area at the bottom of the screen.

For more fun, you can hold the Alt key at the same time to have the operation only affect the selected target tracks, instead of the entire timeline. You also can select multiple clips and apply edits to all of them at once."

from your Vegas-using pal,

Is there a current or soon to be released plugin that allows 6.5 to capture/edit HDV?

Why does moving a larger clip over top of a smaller clip make the smaller clip completely disappear?
What you describe is a overlay edit and thats what PPro do by default when adding any media to the timeline, thats why the clips seems to disappear.

/Roger

I understand the overlay edit but what I mean is, I cannot find the covered clip at all! It's like the clip covering it had erased it. When I move the clip covering it, the clip I covered is no longer underneath where I placed it. Does that make sense?

...I cannot find the covered clip at all! It's like the clip covering it had erased it.
Read about Trimming with the Trim pointer in the PPro Help. You can trim out the material that has been overlayed very easily, so the clip is not actually erased. :)

To avoid those situations in the future, always be careful when you drag media into the timeline so that you dont by mistake overlay material, use more video tracks, and never forget Ctrl+Z. Another way to avoid it is to lock video tracks. Lock tracks are not the best solution always though...

/Roger

Hi,

I've been tryin to preview the video from my timeline in premiere pro 1.5 through a tv but it dosen't seem to be working. When i captured the video it showed up fine on the tv but it won't show the video from the timeline. I've got the camera connected to the firewire card, and from the camera to the tv with um... the red yellow and white cord. I've also had a look under project-project settings-genral and tried to change it but i don't know, it dosen't want to work

Hi Dylan,

Your camera has to be able to support dv to analogue pass-thru. If your camera does not then it won't work.

If it does then you need to make sure you have DV Playback Settings set correctly.

Go Project menu > Project settings> General
Select Playback Settings
Make sure that 'Play Video on DV Hardware' is ticked
Make sure that in Real-Time Playback settings, 'Playback on DV hardware and Desktop' is selected

That should be it!

Hope this helps,

my camera has a av-dv out mode which can be turned on and off. its a canon mv630i (pal)

Hey, I used to use all of the old school adobes and ever since I've started with adobe pro I noticed a huge thing missing. the volume control band thingies. Whats the deal with that? Fading and controlling audio levels used to be as easy as a few click and moving the rubber bands around - and now all there is is audio gain which causes terrible static whenever you use it to turn the volume up. Not only that, but the audio transitions are limited to two fairly garbage choices: constant power and constant gain [ if i'm not mistaken] am I missing something here? Is there something equivalent to the rubber band tools in older versions that I can use? please help!

Nic,

You can still adjust the audio volume in the timeline. However, the procedure is different in Premiere Pro, as the new pen tool is used to add and adjust keyframes.

From the Premiere Pro help file:

To edit a clip or track's audio levels in the Timeline window:

1. In the Timeline window, expand a track's view, if necessary, by clicking the expansion triangle next to the track name.
2. Click the Show Keyframes button, and choose Show Clip Volume or Show Track Volume from the menu that appears.
3. Use the pen tool to adjust the level uniformly (if keyframes have not been added) or to add or edit keyframes.

PP has a great audio controls. The audio mixer allows you to follow through your timeline and use tools such as the write, read, latch and touch tools. With these all you need to do is adjust the volume control and it will do the same thing as the pen tool and keyframes. I never used any older versions of Premiere but for what I understand the audio in 1.5 surpasses all previous versions.

is there any way you can export your entire project to dvd within premier? i know you can export directly to dvd but as far as i know you can only export one sequence. i need to be able to export 3 sequences to dvd without another program...is this possible?

Things have slightly changed for my project. I am now doing a 30p DVD using Final Cut Studio- I have 60i footage and am thinking of shooting interview footage at 30p, and have several VHS cassettes to capture as well...

This may need to be moved over to the Final Cut thread since I'm no longer in Premiere... I needed the multi-cam editor, and Final Cut Studio just rocked my world- so I went all out and bought powermac g5 with FCS...

Any pointers for workflow/problems with different footage qualities/progressive-interlaced problems etc...??

Thanks.
~jeff

Is there any reason you need these sequences seperate? If not than just drop all of your sequences into one final sequence and export that.

Hi Dylan,

Make sure you are in VTR mode with AV pass-through set to DVin>Analogue(out). Provided you have told Premiere you wish to preview via firewire that really should be it.

If it don't work then I suggest you borrow a friends camera to see if it does the same....

Cheers,

well i was hoping to have chapters.

Has anybody else noticed that after he/she downloaded the Adobe HD Cineform upgrade (1.5.1 I think) from the Adobe website, the program takes longer to load non-HD projects?