Hello,

This is my first question to any forum.
I have captured my first 6 home videos using Premiere Pro 1.5 and am just testing what is the best encoding settings to use before I capture my other 50 odd tapes.

I have captured them as PAL 720x576 at 25fps,48000HZ 16 bit stereo.
The videos combined is 1hr 30min long.

I read everywhere that it is better to choose 2 pass so I chose the following.
PAL DV 4x3 High Quality 4mb VBR 2 Pass.

I let it run for about 6hrs and it showed that it had only completed a third of the encoding. Am I doing something wrong?
Should I use a different setting. I saw a similar on
e with Progressive Scan.
Would that be better.

Am I just waffling on too much.....

Any assistance would be muchly appreciated so I can actually start editing some footage.

I am running Windows XP Pro on a Toshiba laptop.
Intel Pentium 4-M CPU 2.20GHz with 512mb RAM.
Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller.

Hi,

2 pass encoding does take longer, and I've heard that the Pentium-Mobile CPUs aren't as great as video encoding compared to their desktop versions. I would expect it to take a few hours, but 6 hours for the equivalent of 30 minutes of footage does seem very long.

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why
"before i can start editing some footage"?

The encoding should come AFTER you've done the editing.

Drebin is capturing from an analogue source, and this therefore needs to be encoded as it's captured.

That said, you can't therefore use two-pass for encoding on the fly.

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My first 50 odd tapes are analogue which I captured by connecting my analogue video recorder to my digital recorder and then to laptop.

I don't won't to get into editting yet because that is the most time consuming and I want to have a standard set of instructions from capture to final product.

I am just trying to figure out the best possible quality for encoding my avi files.

If it takes 12 hrs because of my laptop and analogue data then so be it, I just want opinions from you experts on what is the best choice to make and I will then stick to that.

Hi Drebin

I have to agree with Mike Thorpe about laptop processors not being powerful enough to handle video editing. If you have that number of tapes to get through and want to get into video, a desktop PC is the only way to go as it will just take you so long to render even 30 minutes of video and thats not to mention effects, transitions etc and then burning them to DVD. The hours you have to wait is ridiculous, would you not consider selling your laptop and buying a desktop PC instead - the difference is immense.

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Hi Nikosony,

Thanks for your reply.

Are you saying a Pentium 2.2ghz in a laptop would process slower that a desktop Pentium 2.2 ghz.

Since I haven't had a desktop for over 4 yrs I can't compare the difference. You really believe that is my problem.

I guess I can give the avi to a friend of mine with a desktop and have him try it on his machine to get a time I can compare with.

I have limited space, so then I guess I could get a MAC which is all built into the monitor, but I am a PC guy and don't really want to be limited by software choices of a MAC.

Personally I wouldn't use a laptop to edit video. They only have a 400mhz or 533mhz front side bus whereas a desktop pc has 800mhz. They also have 7200rpm hard disks whether that is IDE or SATA and a laptops runs at 5400rpm (generally speaking). 512Mb ram is good but I would prefer 1GB and a processor running at 3Ghz. The difference in speed is incredible. I can assemble a video in one to one and a half times the length of the movie, so a 40 minute video will take something like 40 to 60 minutes to render depending on how many effects and transitions are included. It will then take about 30 minutes to assemble, burn and verify to DVD. These are the kind of times you should be looking at, not 6 hours.

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Thanks.

I guess I will just have to capture all my videos and save them as avi's for now.

I will then have to wait till I get a desktop beore I will do any editing and burning to DVD.