Hello fellows..

I'm about to capture from my sony DCR-HC21E on Premiere Pro 2.0, but when i check click device info online, my device is not even listed. I had problems with pro 1.5 of getting 'Unknown Record Error' every few minutes while capturing, was this the problem perhaps? I think the other problem was NTSC being selected hence my country is PAL. I'm pretty new in editing and would like these few things to be clarified..

songz

How have you the camcorder connected up to the computer? It should only be connected with a Firewire cable and nothing else. I don't think you'll find that specific camcorder listed, there may just be a 'Sony' camcorder or try 'Generic' but you will need to start and stop the camcorder manually.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

Hi Songz

I am almost certain that having NTSC selected instead of PAL would have caused the problems. My particular Canon camera isn't listed amongst the cameras in Premiere either, but Premiere is still able to device control it without any problem. In your case, just choose Sony as the device brand, and leave the device type as 'standard'.

You could forget using Premiere to capture, and use WinDV instead. It will also device control your Sony with ease. I've already harped on about this program enough in these forums, so I'll spare you all a repeat sermon. Just search the posts for WinDV if you are interested.

Hope this helps.

I've changed from NTSC to PAL, configured the settings to Sony and General, changed PC's, but still getting the 'Unknown Record Error'. Bert i was planning to use an alternative capturing software & am stongly looking for one which will produce best quality 'avi' files as premiere does or even better. If WinDV does then my problem is solved otherwise please advice on any other. I still want to use premiere for editing though..

songz

My bad.. Just tested Windows Movie Maker and has produced a very good quality avi (firstg 10 min). Problem though is it has already taken 2.2GB of space. I'm still to capture entire 90min tape which will require 90GB.. What's happening here? The settings are Bit rate:25, size 720x576, frams ps:25, PAL... That's too big then

Yep - sounds about right. DVAVI files are big. Bank on files being in the region of 225Mb per minute of video. This is normal. You need some free hard drive space to edit DVAVI files (I just bought a 250 Gb hard drive from Ebuyer for £52 if that helps!).

By the way, being digital files, the DVAVI files that you import from your camera will be the same quality no matter what software you use to do the job, be it WinDV, Movie Maker, Premiere etc. Liken the video files on your camcorder tape to JPEG images in your digital still camera - they will look the same whether you use Windows camera wizard or Photoshop to import them.

Hope that helps.

PS - do NOT attempt to capture the entire miniDV tape to just 1 DVAVI file - it will be huge and difficult to edit. Instead, capture individual clips by reference to tape timecode changes. Failing that, capture the footage in 3 minute chunks.

PPS - I've just had a thought - you said 90 mins, right? Are the 90 mins on a 60 min tape that you recorded onto using extended play? This may be a cause for Premiere not being happy with the capture. WinDV may also not like it, based on personal experience. If Mvie Maker is happy with importing 'long play' footage then you might want to consider yourself lucky - a lot of capture software only works well with 'standard play' (ie non extended) footage.

Never use extended recording modes, as problems can occur during capture. Tape is cheap.

Ah! that's it bert.. The long play is then causing it. Thanx for all your patience with me. WinDV is doing wonders for me. I have captured the 1st 90min tape with trimmed clips as you suggest. The total clips results to 19G & yes looking at buying a new 250G HHD. Oh! lastly, editing 19G clips would fit to a single DVD correct? doubt if this is possible.. But hey thanx to all three of you.. Getting excited with my first editing..

Cheers!

The finished video will need to be compressed to MPEG2 DVD, using this compression you can squeeze about 2 hours of very good quality video on a single sided 4.7gb disc. If you reduce the quality slightly you can get more.

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Edius Pro 4 Broadcast, Edius DVX, ADVC300 -- PremPro 2.0, Matrox RT X100

Thanx miwhel.. Keep well