What DV codec?
 

In order to speed up standard definition DV editing in Premiere Pro, I would like to "prepare" footage received in other formats in order for it to be in the native DV format for Premiere Pro (or in fact any other NLE), so that it would be ingested just as fast as footage captured from a DV camcorder. What codec should I use?

Let me elaborate. Occasionally I receive video in weird formats (mpeg, divx, xvid, etc), to be incorporated into standard definition DV projects. Now, Premiere Pro will eventually ingest pretty much anything (as long as the codec is installed), but it's not too terribly happy about it (it's slow, sometimes it crashes). Having other computers at hand (both at home and at work - sssh! don't tell my boss) I can use other pieces of software, like VirtualDub, to decode or transcode the footage into DV-AVI.

My question is, what codec should I use? The one coming with Windows (Microsoft Video 1) is old, type 1, low quality DV codec. If I'm not mistaking, all of the Adobe products use a MainConcept DV codec, correct? Would purchasing this codec be my best option, or there are others as well? Does the free Panasonic DV codec work, and at what quality? Remember, PremPro is not installed on the machines that would do the transcoding, so the MainConcept codec is not installed, and also that my goal is to transcode to the highest possible quality DV format that can be immediately imported into Premiere Pro.

Thanks,

You are mistaken. Adobe applications use the Microsoft DV codec exclusively. I have several DV codecs and I could not get AE to recognize anything but Microsoft's.

If you are using the DV files as proxy, then it should not matter if the codec is of lower quality since the original format will be substituted for the final cut.