i want to get my first 15min of footage into premier.

When I was using pinnacle if I had 15mins of footage, pinnacle would take all this in and manually break it down into clips.

Using premiere, do I have to record to my hdd as one a 15min clip or do I have to record it myself as 2min or 5min clips.

if you have a whole 15min clip as an avi are you able to break it down into smaller bits with premier.

I think I need to buy a book!!!!!!!!!

Is this a filesize issue? If so then I guess the first/best advice to offer is to upgrade to Windows XP asap.

If it's not a filesize issue then why bother to turn the larger clip in to multi small ones. Take you single clip and create a series of 'virtual clips' from it in Premiere and then refer to those in your project. I haven't mastered this technique myself yet (still new myself) but a colleague explains that's how he does this all the time.

As for books. Proof of the pudding I expect. I bought the 'Teach yourself in 24 hours' which i personally think is ok as it brings you in gradually and reads a little better than a huge reference guide. No doubt you'll get many views on a variety of different books in here.

so you are saying if I have a clip 15mins long or even 20mins long, i can use this virtual clip mode and it will automatically break it down into smaller chunks or thumbnails or smaller clips basically?

how is this actually done? do i highlight my clip, right click or something.

cheers

First, I'll reiterate that I haven't done this myself yet so you'll need to fill in the gaps but it is explained to me as the following so I'll regurgitate what (little?) I know int he hope it proves useful before you can learn from soemone who can ead you further.

It won't actuall touch the original clip. Virtual clips are simply a mechanism (within Premiere) of specifying the start and end of a 'real' clip and having that 'section' represent itself as an autonomous (and virual because it doesn't actually exists in it's own right on your hard drive) clip within the Premiere project for use elsewhere.

A technique for re-use of parts of a clip (action replays and such?). You'll certainly need to learn this technique if you wish to (ever) apply multiple transitions between two clips.

HTH